#prancing plotbunnies

cue an episode’s worth of Geralt going full witcher mode and going hunting for Jaskier, tracing his steps through Oxenfurt and leaving the kind of fear/paranoia Batman dreams of behind

I want this man to be lethal and relentless and terrifying, I'm talking witcher 1 game intro Geralt level of ‘this is very other and spoopy’,. Show us what makes Wtchers so uncomfortable for normal humans!

and then you can have the last bit with the reunion and the ‘fuck it’ at the end, Geralt going back to normal mode. it’d cinch it

anyone's seen this and can rec or want to take a shot at this?

the TLDR would be the same usual: alastor sets out to seduce lucifer, fully intending to manipulate him/make him dependent on him, etc etc

only it works too a little too well.

Either Lucifer uno reverses it and he's been playing Al just as hard as Al though he was playing him just to entrap him in a relationship he's gonna have no out of, OR Luci goes full yandere and is now devoted to Al in a way that makes Al genuinely scared to leave (and maybe he's kinda into it?)

just fucked up radioapple where Al forgot he was trying to play the devil and pays for it

some headcanon highlights of this AU (feel free to use or discard):

this world is Awful, the way they treat Witchers in general (and Geralt in particular) is HELLA bad. Refused service and entrance in more than half the towns he enters and being paid poorly if he gets paid at all, people terrified and hateful towards him

He finds out Pavetta jumped off a tower after her mother had Duny killed (guess you're finally free of that child surprise, Geralt...)

Calanthe has become an unhinged warmonger having nothing to lose, particularly against elves, who are even more decimated than usual

Eskel was killed as result of witcher propaganda getting MUCH worse after the raise of the white flame + the whole Blaviken thing

Vesemir is a shadow of himself, living alone in Kaer Morhen, not having talked to anyone for years

Lambert moved permanently with the cat caravan and blames Geralt for Eskel's death

less witchers in general (with a lot having died or retired since continuing in the current conditions is unsustainable) means a lot more monsters, particularly Necrophages and Wraiths

Yen is disfigured and severally weakened/borderline disabled after getting majorly cursed from eating that infant dragon's heart + several botched attempts at making it better (maybe they can use the djinn to fix the timeline?)

you know if netflix hadn't been fucking cowards, instead of all the filler bs we got, we could have had a scene in ep 1 where they recycle the book story (eternal flame).... and have him turn into Jaskier.

could be exactly like the story where it's just a job and geralt lets it go and have ciri be like "who was that, geralt?" and geralt says nothing, that would've been cool! choose your own response!

just SHOW Geralt still thought about jask, in some way? and oh gods, Joey would have KILLED it, you know he would have!

hell, if you wanna stick w the evil doppler (which i hate but i gotta work with what we got) to get ciri and once it turns into Jaskier either geralt can't kill it and Ciri/X character has to do it and geralt has to see 'jaskier' die right in front of him (and then maybe we could have had a reaction when yen tells him he's in trouble??)

like COME on, it was right there! It cold have been a 5 minute scene!

AU where the redenian crown needs to hire a witcher for witcher stuff and they hire witcher!Jask who of course looks something like

and Radovid has never, EVER wanted to suck someone's dick so bad in his life

Vizimir: Look at me. look at me in the eyes. I want you to promise you're not gonna fuck the mutant Radovid, already planning to get the witcher to fuck him so hard he'll feel it for a month: I promise I wont fuck the mutant : )

bard feels pretty... firm, huh?

I mean makes sense, he travelled with a witcher for ages, he's probably not some dainty little thing but this feels kind of uhhhh unexpectedly buff?

and then Jaskier just picks him up and sits him on a barrel or something and OHOHOH OK??

all i'm saying is that Radovid came here with some expectations of how th night was gonna go and then got deRailed to Toussaint and back, learned something new about himself that day and it makes perfect sense he was ready to throw it all to go after Jaskier.

…but what if he did, and what if it did??

what if Jaskier knew he was in love with Geralt and what if they were having casual, 'platonic' sex (lying to themselves?)

WHAT IF BEFORE THE MOUNTAIN JASKIER WOULD HAVE LIKELY BEEN OK WITH ANY RELATIONSHIP WITH GERALT, EVEN IF HE'D HAD TO SHARE HIM WITH YEN??

But now he's not.

because let me tell you guys, I'm feeling a certain way (FOAMING THE MOUTH) about this idea of Geralt thinking they can eventually get back to that, that this is a momentary hiccup and eventually they'll be back where they left of and it's like

no not gonna happen because Jaskier is actually… over it? Like it or not, the mountain changed things and Jaskier is now really reconsidering what he wants for his future, and he still loves Geralt, sure, but not the way he did, and not for the price of his own misery. He's ready for a relationship where he'll finally be enough on his own.

So now Geralt has to watch him start smth with Radovid, and realize this time things are different, that this relationship is different and, that, well.

something ends, something begins.