#shapeshifter!jaskier

He was also shivering and stubbornly not shifting back. Geralt had suggested it, but Jaskier had just hopped off the bed and darted off down the corridor, leaving Geralt to chase him through the halls towards the kitchen. If someone had told him that he would spend his morning chasing his boyfriend-turned-rabbit through Kaer Morhen, then he would have laughed and told them they weren't blessed with the gift of prophecy.

When they made it into the kitchen, they were greeted by a wall of warmth. The fire was burning brightly in the hearth, and Vesemir was standing in the corner prepping the venison for their dinner, and he looked up when he saw Geralt enter the room. 

"Wolf," he grumbled, before getting back to his work. "What brings you here?" 

"Jaskier." 

As if to prove the point, Jaskier squeaked, hopping around Vesemir's legs before jumping up at his shins. 

"He's cold," Geralt added as Vesemir reached down to scoop up the rabbit, cradling Jaskier in his arms.

If Jaskier had been a cat, there was no doubt that he would be purring contentedly in Vesemir's arms, but as it was he leaned into the older witcher's chest, ears flopping as Vesemir scratched his head, and his blue eyes squeezed shut. Every so often his nose would scrunch up but he seemed to be shivering less already in the heat of the kitchen.

"A rabbit is an odd choice, pup," Vesemir chuckled at the rabbit in his arms, moving his fingers out of the way before Jaskier could bite him. "But I won't question your instincts. Fascinating really. All the options on the Continent, and you choose a rabbit. It's fascinating." 

Jaskier squeaked, hopping back onto the floor and pawing at Geralt's trouser legs until Geralt picked him up with a roll of his eyes. Out of all the witchers at Kaer Morhen, Vesemir's natural curiosity triggered Jaskier's anxieties more than anyone else. It was frustrating but Geralt could understand why. It was a witcher's job to know about the creatures of the Continent, and Jaskier defied all their expectations. He was truly unique. Thankfully, Vesemir had the decency to look sheepish as he moved across the kitchen to the pile of chopped carrots on the side.

"My apologies, pup," Vesemir hummed as he offered the carrot to Jaskier. 

The shifter's nose twitched and his head reached out to sniff the carrot before nibbling at it, and pulling the morsel into his mouth. 

"He'll be okay." Or at least, Geralt hoped he would be. Jaskier hadn't changed into a mouse this time, so that was a good sign. He'd merely retreated back into Geralt's arms, and it was an honour to be trusted even after all their travels together. "Do you want to stay in the kitchen, Jask?" 

The rabbit's tail wiggled and Geralt took that as a yes. There were chores to be done, but he figured it was alright to take a break for now. The wall could wait for tomorrow.

_

The night was dark, the moon barely a sliver in the sky.

A man lies on the moss, white hair stained and dried to his face with crusted blood. Shivers run through his body, and he whimpers, pressing a hand to his side.

“Please,” he pants when Jaskier approaches, his hoofs barely making any sound. It surprises him that he was noticed.

When he listens again, ear twitching, he realizes the man is unconscious. Carefully he approaches, nosing at the crown of his head. Something smells wrong about him.

“Please,” the man pants again, his fingers curling in the moss.

Is he begging for life? Death? Does he know himself?

Jaskier looks around, finding a bloodied sword a distance away, and among the trees a horse. He looks to her for guidance.

Her feelings are fascinating to him. Fierce and loyal and angry and lonely. And scared. She is scared of the loneliness, of losing the human on the ground.

Jaskier wanted to tilt his head, but he learned that with heavy antlers, it takes practice. And this form is new to him yet, so instead he blinks and turns back towards the man.

Hoofs are useless when tending to wounds. Paws won’t do well here either, nor claws.

The human form is not something he has tried before, but Jaskier will not shy away from a challenge. His skin changes, his fur draws back. Well, most of it. He has seen humans with hair almost as thick as fur, and he is reluctant to part from it.

When his form resembles who lies before him, Jaskier kneels. His knees are bare, the moss cold against his skin. 

Gently, he drags his fingers over the man's face, bloody strands of hair revealing a pale face and black veins. Humans usually don't look like this. His mother would scold him for his curiosity, for his carelessness, but he can’t help himself.

Jaskier turns the man to his back and puts his own hand over the gloved, bloodied one. He is not supposed to do this, not supposed to interfere, but behind him the horse is approaching and watching his every move.

Blood feels strange on human skin. He has hunted before, killed before, but he never tried healing. The medallion around the man’s neck hums when Jaskier’s essence leaks out of him, blends into the human’s blood.

No. Not human. Not entirely.

And now even less so, when a shimmer of sunlight on the waves spreads through his veins. It’s nothing more than a droplet, and it travels through the body of the man until it finds its way back to his fingertips and back into him.

Jaskier feels different now, a small part of him changed as he changed the other. It’s not unpleasant, but it is unfamiliar in a way he is not used to. A body can be new, but this is something else. His hand remains over the unconscious man, their fingers fitting together, much like the seams of the glove. One thread hangs limply down, and Jaskier picks at it distractedly.

He remembers himself when the horse snorts loudly behind him, spraying his bare back with the contents of her nose.

“Thank you,” he says to her, this language foreign on this tongue.

Oh. Human speech must be different from the whispers of birchs and leaves. Her lips twitch with amusement, so Jaskier thinks she understands either way.

“I must leave you now,” Jaskier tells her. The horse disagrees and Jaskier smirks, standing up. “He will wake soon. Don’t worry, I won’t be far.”

He looks down on the man in the moss. He is still pale, white as the sliver of the pale moon in the far above sky. But the bleeding is stopped, his breathing is even, and in that small part of Jaskier, the part that traveled, that feels so foreign, calls for their joining once more.

No.

“My friend, I beg you, carry a burden for me?” Jaskier asks the horse. She says nothing, as horses rarely do, but she waits.

He approaches her, calling forth the foreign part of him.

“As he is yours, I am his, but this calling is not for me. Would you carry it for me and stay by his side?”

The drop that is not him anymore, the drop that is now someone else. He puts it on his lips, feeling them tingle. Her silent acceptance makes him approach, and he touches her lips to her forehead.

The piece of him and of the man leaves him, and she shudders with the weight of their lives merging with hers.

“I thank you, my friend. Keep us safe. May you be safe on your travels.”

He leaves then. His fingers become hoofs once more, his head heavy with antlers and his fur rich and warm. Leaving a part of himself with them is dangerous, he knows, but he doesn’t have the time. He has a world to explore, through shapes and forms.

What was unfamiliar to him was the depth of her emotions.

--

They make it back to the little clearing he had run from, Jaskier’s cloth-wound body bundled in Geralt’s arm like something precious.

As shock begins to lose its grip on his mind, peeling back the layer of numbness he’s been afforded, the pain comes seeping back. With every step and jostle, something rattles in his chest. His joints move, but they move wrong.

He doesn’t know if bones this brittle are made to heal, or if this is just a body built for breaking. The icy wet that trickles through his coat is almost a distraction.

It hurts so much. It should hurt more.

He doesn’t even have a voice to whimper in.

It’s not until he’s lowered gently to the ground that he realises where they are, recognizes the low-hanging branches and the saddlebags piled haphazardly where he’d last seen Geralt standing. Recognizes too the wave that now, his panic bled out into the musty leaves somewhere on the forest floor behind them, feels more like shame. Thought battles instinct in his frayed mind and he knows he cannot run, but he cannot stay, and -

And had he been an excess burden in Geralt’s life before, then now, surely -

For eyes as wide as his, meant to discern between friend and foe at a league, any feature this close might as well be cruel. The details of his face are unclear as Geralt leans over him.

But he does know movement. Feels the fingertip that strokes the divot in his forehead. Geralt speaks, but the tone is clearer than the words, and it isn’t harsh. While passing over dirtied fur, easing down his ears, the other hand moves into the space between them and makes a sign.

Just like that, Jaskier’s world grows small again.

Slowly, the phantoms crouching at his vision’s edge recede, forced back beyond the shadows of the trees, kept at bay by scant firelight. Mighty trunks stand sentinel, barring their return.

Gone is the endless sky and the swift death that soars there. Gone too are the open fields and the dangers that prowl them, pointed snouts pressed to the ground, wetting their tongues at the scent of his injury.

He only knows what moves within this temporary refuge - tonight in the forest, tomorrow in the field - and the rounded silhouettes of those that could, but would not harm him.

There is no grand reckoning. No speech or lofty monologue, no words to twist or tones to ring false. Geralt doesn’t beg for forgiveness, makes no excuses, but he talks - low and smooth, for as long as Jaskier is awake to hear it.

The words will have faded from memory by dawn, but their essence remains - the solemn promise made that night, heard by none but the tall pines, a red mare, and himself. The one wrapped around him like a cloak, applied in layers of soothing honeyed balm over claw marks and wounds before it is spoken into existence: That no new hurt will find him here.

It’s a tedious process, but Geralt is right: his body does heal. Though the first week or so is spent under a dim fog brought by his witcher’s hand, it requires a restraint he never knew he had to hold out until his flesh starts to knit together.

Once his bones grow strong enough not to snap under the pressure as they twist in their fastenings, he finds the gap between one form and the other, and wills it open.

The transformation, though not always voluntary, had always come easy. This does not. It feels like fitting an old key, like forcing a lock that’s threatening to rust shut, throwing his weight against it in the hopes that the bar gives before the hinge.

He takes his first breath in the ribcage of a man like one saved from drowning. It burns and strains, and he is dizzy with the sudden height - but relief floods him like a tidal pool, and drowns out every other sensation.

When he looks up, Geralt is there, holding his clothes and lute, the things he’d left behind when they became too much to carry.

That becomes a pattern.

I am healed, he tells himself, and tells himself until he believes it, once his shoulder bends and deep breaths come painlessly. He believes it when he sings the songs of great grey beasts and their mountain brothers, terrible monsters and greater heroes, piecing together their stories bit by bit.

I will be healed, he decides, and tries to forget the songs about moorhens’ clucking and black little paws through the dew. Putting those pieces together not because they fit, but because they must, and tries to lose the ones left over.

But more often than not, Geralt is there and he picks them up, one by one, and hands them back in all the right order.

“You weren’t a hare when we met,” Geralt states one evening, in a moment of relative quiet - as quiet as their evenings are, one tuning his lute and the other sharpening the hunting knife he’d just tried to give Jaskier a lesson in wielding.

As if conjured by the mention of its name, Jaskier’s heart sets to beating. Although many unsaid things had become topics of conversation lately, neither had tried putting words to that. He suppresses the nervous shudder that crawls along his neck.

“I’m not a hare now either,” he says, and though it’s phrased in jest, it’s a reminder more than anything else: That he is not prey, and he will not run.

Geralt dismisses it with a grunt, and Jaskier knows that wasn’t what he had meant. There was a question in that statement, one of the dozens he himself had pondered over years, though he’s not sure which one exactly. Luckily, they all have the same answer.

“I don’t know,” he says, and the pressure at the back of his throat and how the words in his head refuse to conform into sentences tells him whatever comes next will be a ramble. While he’s never had trouble speaking frankly, honesty is harder. !I don’t know when or why or… how. Not how it started, even. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t - or when I didn’t - whatever I am.”

He’s aware that he’s stopped playing. Looking at his hands still poised over the strings, he wills the stream to slow, and tries to find solid ground to stand on. Geralt, bless him, gives him time.

“I believe it changed, though,” he continues once the whirling pool in his stomach has settled, when he’s less at risk of going under. “When we were in Rinde - perhaps later? I felt as though I’d come apart. Like a music box shattered on the floor and put back together, looking just like it had before, but the melody not playing the same.”

“In Rinde,” Geralt repeats, frown deepening with something akin to guilt. “Do you think the djinn, or Yen…?”

Jaskier has thought about it. Still thinks about it, when it all comes seeping through a bedroom window, when the sweet beckoning of the wind outside becomes curses. When it raps at the glass and taunts him for hiding his face in borrowed blankets or warm skin of a stranger, laughing at his cowardice. He remembers going out of tune, dissonant thrumming at his core at the disturbance of foreign magic.

“Yes,” he says.

But he also remembers Geralt’s gaze falling on another, losing the weight of it and coming unmoored. A beautiful sorceress, soft arms wrapped around rough, hushed voices ringing in unison. Seasons shifting and roads turning under his feet as he followed that to which he had tethered his dreams and aspirations. He remembers the scent of smoke and hunt and howl, and laying claim to a home, to a heart that wasn’t offered.

“But I think it was me, too,” he finishes. “I think the djinn - or Yennefer - or something may have pulled my pegs loose, so to speak. But the shape I took, that was mine.”

He’s always found it curious - if sometimes unfortunate - how words not intended to be spoken aloud but come by their own volition often seem to manifest more strongly than those initially planned. How much harder they are to ignore.

Curious, too, how a thing once named becomes tangible and must, at least in concept, adhere to the rules and limitations of the real world. How it can be touched and held, put away and taken out, turned over until it stops hurting.

The nights grow long in the wilderness, and the passing of summer shortens the days. And while he is no longer driven to bolt from his skin in fits that feel like madness, the whispers of the dark still tinge the air he breathes with the sweetness of rock-rose and blackberry. There are nights when it becomes inevitable, when he knows before the sun has set that the carefully balanced scales of temptation and trepidation will tip, and he will spend the hours of darkness trapped within this animal that cannot sing.

But even then, there is respite.

An index finger easing the tension of his furred head, careful strokes to coax his ears from their rigid stance, from turning at any sound real or imagined. Palms coming settling over his temples, roughened fingertips on bare skin, providing solid walls against all that feels too vast to comprehend, and reducing his world to just what can be held between two hands.

If the drumming of rabbits is his signal of peril, the signal of peace becomes the rhythm of a slow and steady heart, beating faithfully in the chest just beneath his ear.

It’s there, in the secluded space between their bodies where he draws circles to match the caresses over the small of his back, that he finds the courage to unearth the fragments of what he once was, mismatched bones and unmoored thoughts and instincts all he has been unable to lose, and starts to mold them back together into something recognizable.

As the thing that has sprouted and grown lush from the ruins of what was between them matures and turns vibrant, so do the leaves.

Autumn brings abundance the likes of which he has barely known. Roadsides overflow with wildberries to rival the richest vineyards of Toussaint. Cider sweet as honey pours in every tavern in their way, pressed apples picked from branches hung so low to the ground they must've sighed with relief at the loss of their burden.

Yet no sun-warmed apple cider shines as golden, nor has any Toussaint wine rendered him as drunk as his lover’s eyes or lips on his. At his side, in his arms, Jaskier finds the hollow indentations of a former self still vacant, still waiting. And the corresponding edges, worn smooth like river rocks over time, fall into place with such ease he wonders how they ever came apart at all.

There, safe under Geralt’s gentle touch, the wild may call all it wants.

--

Another forest’s edge, another contract, another waning moon.

Jaskier stokes the fire, tending to the warding light, wondering idly whether flames ignited by a Witcher’s sign hold more power than those lit by mere mortals. He likes to think they do. If he leans into it, he can easily convince himself of Geralt’s grounding presence remaining long after his footsteps are lost in the undergrowth. Behind him, Roach grazes in a patch of clovers, her calm tempering even the most skittish of his natures.

It is still, stiller than it has been for a while. The slight gale that picked up at the setting sun has dwindled to a breeze. He thought about unpacking his lute near an hour ago, but wouldn’t risk disturbing the sanctity of the evening, its melody would feel too far out of place in the arrangement of grasshoppers and midnight warblers.

Even to his human senses, animals of bush and green play in concert - from the whip of a falcon’s wings to the complaints of adolescent woodgrouse reluctant to leave their natal clutch - unknowingly orchestrated, and all of them distant. None, no matter their place in nature's hierarchy, dare test their mettle against the ever-present sense of death and danger that shrouds the dwelling of a witcher.

They stir and fuss, some waking while others settle down to sleep, until they don’t.

Jaskier’s buried instincts know it before his waking mind does, the urgent shift in pace and tune, discordant notes of prey’s first warning.

He listens intently.

It must be large, or voracious, or both. Seldom does a simple beast inspire such disquiet, word of its advances sending ripples of caution to every ear that knows to harken.

Be quick, they say, or be quiet.

Though he can’t make out the movements of the thing itself, the tell-tale cries and rattles of other creatures point its path. A bird takes wing, then another, each one closer and all too close to their camp.

Roach stands frozen, nostrils flared. He thinks he can hear it now. Smell the stench of its breath if he tries, make out its shape in there amongst the trees, moving with far too much stealth for anything that size. Too large for a cat, too quiet for a bear.

It closes in, so near now that a crouch, a leap, might take it into their midst.

Jaskier holds his breath. There is nothing else to do. Not as a fox, or a hare, or a man. Nothing to do but wait.

Whether real or supplied by imagination, he hears it scuff at the ground, draw a deep lungful of scent down into its massive body. And then it moves - away, back into the woods.

For a moment, he welcomes the silence, rushing elation that fortune has yet to claim his debts. But realization doesn’t follow far behind.

No wild thing would come upon a witcher by accident. None could miss the scent of one, and none should come so close to it before changing their mind, unless...

The lone hunter, whatever its goals, has picked a fresher trail: Geralt’s.

It’s ill-advised. More so, it’s stupid. The knife feels foreign in his hand.

He’s not such a fool that he thinks he can fight it, or that the blade or his ability to wield it would make any difference at all. But he must do something, needs to try. If only he can warn Geralt, call out in time and let him know before the beast can pounce…

But it moves fast, and his eyes are slaves to the light, inadequate under the ceiling of leaves and branches. Soon, he hardly knows if he follows it at all.

Every fiber of his being wills against abandoning this last shred of defense, but he knows he has no choice, not if he is to make it.

The knife lands with a thump, the soft ground cushioning its fall. For the first time in a long time, by his own volition, Jaskier shuts his eyes and folds his frame in on itself, opening them to a world tall and vast and all too sharp.

Speed is on his side. This is a body made for running, and run it does. By whatever force his kind is blessed, by fate or chance or both, nothing stands in his way. Though moments wasted on doubt comes at a price, and though he covers ground thrice as fast, he can’t gain it all back.

His vision is wide. The white of Geralt’s head, back turned as he brings his weight down to end the last of the ghouls, lights it like a beacon.

And the ragged shape, hulking even where it’s coiled to spring, attention locked to Geralt’s undefended back with an intensity that swears violence. Canine eyes do not glow, but in that moment, in his world of ash and shadow, Jaskier swears the werewolf’s eyes shine red.

And a hare’s cry, no matter his haste, no matter how shrill, holds no power to them.

He sees everything at once.

Glints of teeth under snarling lips as it jumps. The flash of the witcher’s blade as it swings too high, going clear of the werewolf’s head.

Its jaws lock at his side, tearing through armour and sinew into muscle, grating against bone. Jaskier has never heard a sound like this. Not from man, or from beast. Not from Geralt. It's sheer anguish turned vocal.

Something in him breaks, then.

Like an old joint, once healed wrong and calcified, cracking open to swing freely. It hurts at first. The snap, burning white-hot and blinding. And then: Euphoria.

His body regresses to the confines of a man, and beyond. The change is too fast to feel, too fast to track.

A new form, new instincts bursting through before he knows how to tame them. Fear gives way to fury. By the time he knows he is moving, he has already moved.

It takes no thought at all to lower his head. To align his skull and spine. Leap from his spot.

The impact ought to hurt, but it doesn’t. There’s an audible crack as something breaks, but not from him. Neither is the inhuman yowl that follows, sound reverberating through the forest.

The smell of blood fills his lungs. He doesn’t balk at it.

His face runs warm, runs wet. Twisting to free himself of frantic limbs and mottled fur, he shakes his antlers to strike again. This time, he finds the wolf yielding, limping back just shy of his sharpened crown. When it flees, he thinks to follow, to make up for every night and every hour spent in terror, driven underground by lesser beasts than this.

But Geralt’s scream still echoes in him, the sound of it a weight he cannot bear, couldn’t move under had he tried.

In the moment it takes to hesitate, doubt rears its head. Face awash and prongs painted red with the blood of another living thing, he feels about as far from the self he has learned to accept as one can come. To anyone else, he must look monstrous.

But when he turns, Geralt isn’t looking at him with disgust. Not with scorn, either. Or pity, or any other thing Jaskier had thought he’d face if he spoke the truth of his nature all those years ago.

Geralt raises the arm at his uninjured side. Had Jaskier been smaller, and softer, he would’ve slipped under it, curled up in the hollow at his witcher’s throat and stayed there, felt his heart beat and his chest rise until morning came to see them hale.

Instead, Geralt steadies himself with a hand on his neck and draws close. Giving more of his balance Jaskier than perhaps he means to, but no more than Jaskier can hold, his breaths so deep they might as well be sobs.

There are words to be had. Answers to be found. Leagues to walk, and promises to keep.

Soon enough, winter winds will sweep down across the continent, summons ringing from empty halls in far northern mountains, and they will answer.

But for now, Jaskier is home.

For now, the witcher leans his forehead against that of his hart - or fox, or hare, or bard - knowing that neither will follow that path alone.

At the edge of the woods and throughout the field beyond, rabbits cease their drumming, and the first few songbirds wake to herald the dawn.

--

Sorry for showing up half-assed four months late?

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He crawled up onto the rock Geralt had laid down to warm in the sun while their clothes dripped dry on the clothesline they’d set up between the trees. He stretched his spine, the undercoat of his otter form comfortably dry and debated waiting to shift until after he’d dried.

He shifted anyway and the water seeped into his skin as he laid next to Geralt on his belly.

“Geralt look what I found.” He poked Geralt who ignored him. “Geralt I can find a more annoying form if you don’t look. Don’t test me.”

“You’re already in your most annoying form Jaskier.” He said without opening his eyes. White hair splayed out behind him on the rock, a handful of knots obvious in it. It made him want to run his beak through it, preening Geralt.

“How short your memory is. Don’t you remember the ferret? I could do that again.” He ran his prize between his fingers. It felt so much smaller like this. “Or since you don’t have your clothes on, I could test your tickle response to various textures. Feathers, fur, fingers. I’ve no lack of options.”

Geralt snorted but cracked open an eye.

He lifted his prize up for Geralt’s inspection. Clutched the perfect stone between his thumb and index finger. Its edges beautifully rounded by the lake, its color marbled brown and black.

“A stone?”

“The perfect clam cracking stone Geralt! Look at it! It’s perfect! The color! The shape! The smoothness! It’s beautiful! Perfect! I shall have to write an ode to its majesty!”

“Have you ever even found a clam before?” Geralt smirked lazily. “Or tried to open one with a rock?”

He looked down at the stone. “Well no. But that doesn’t make it any less perfect. I have very good instincts about these things I’ll have you know.”

Geralt closed his eyes with a small shake of his head.

He flipped the stone between his fingers.

He did have good instincts. Not. Not about hunting maybe. But he knew how to fly. To swim. To walk or run no matter the form.

He could fit in with wolves, birds, otters, horses or men. Fit in just enough for them to believe he was one of them. But. But they all knew he wasn’t. Just a little. At the edges. Never quite wolf or otter or bird.

Never quite human.

“I wish I was human.” He rubbed the stone between his fingers. The sun toasted the lake water from his back.

“You are.”

“But I’m not.” He rolled over so their shoulder almost touched holding the stone up, blocking the sun. “I’m not.”

“Were your parents human?”

“Yes. But I’ve no proof either of them can shift. It seems I might very well be a bit of a cuckoo bird.”

“That would explain your habit of bedding married folk.”

He smacked Geralt half-heartedly and quirked a smile. “Perhaps it does.”

“Hm.”

He draped his arm over his eyes. “Of the two of us you’re far more human than I.” Geralt made a disagreeing noise. “You are. Even if you believed the nonsense about Witchers, which to be clear I don’t, you were human once. Which is more than I can say.”

“Brooding doesn’t suit you Jaskier.”

“No, I admit it’s much more your color.”

“I may have been human once but.” Geralt hesitated; painfully. “The trials mutated that out of me. I don’t know how to be human. You, at least, learned.”

The reassurance rang hollow in his chest, as he imagined his did in Geralt’s. Still he tried, “An albino wolf is still a wolf. A man is still a man whether his eyes are brown, blue or gold. Your mutations do not make you any less human Geralt.”

“Then your shifting and instincts about river rocks doesn’t make you less of one either.”

He made a noise that wasn’t agreement or disagreement. Let his eyes drift over to Geralt and droop closed.

The stone in his far hand and the waves at the muddy shore tugged at him. The otter still half formed under his skin.

“Geralt?” He grumbled sleepily. “Indulge one of my inhuman instincts?”

Geralt hm’d approval.

He took Geralt’s hand in his and held on.

"No Geralt today?"

The crack of bones never failed to make Morgan flinch as the feathers morphed to pale skin, and Jaskier shook out his hair.

"Not today, our daughter is visiting."

"And what was it this time?" Morgan laughed as they gathered up the rest of Jaskier's order.

The shifter flushed a bright red, scratching absentmindedly at the scar on his neck. "Ah, umm... Ciri is very good at sneaking up on people, and I was a little bit drunk, well- I... maybe a lot drunk, and she just- well she popped out of nowhere."

"So you shifted?"

"I was scared!" Jaskier snapped, pointing at them with the other hand resting on their hip.

The one thing Morgan never got used to was Jaskier's complete lack of shame with his body. They had probably seen more of Jaskier than anyone else they'd met. Still, the naked bard in the middle of their living room, pouting like a petulant child was fucking hilarious and they couldn't help but laugh at the poor man.

He might keep them in business, but gods, he was a disaster.

_

But another winter came and went without success. His bond with Geralt had settled, the pair of them getting more and more used to the storm of emotions racing through each other, but that didn't mean it was easy. Jaskier still yearned for something just beyond his grasp, and with every day that passed without a sign of that blasted witch, he felt his energy draining. It wasn't like the feeling he got when he hadn't shifted in a while, but... it was comparable. The fatigue, the constant need for something that he couldn't fulfil... but his skin didn't itch and he didn't feel like his body was on fire. Jaskier just felt... empty, and there was nothing his mate could do or say to help.

Those that said witchers had no emotions were clearly idiots. On days where Jaskier could barely contain his own anxieties, he was easily overwhelmed by just how much Geralt did feel. At his best, Jaskier was good at navigating the bond, far better than Geralt. He could block off the witcher when he needed space, or project his feelings and surroundings to the point where he could almost verbalise words... not quite but it was close and he was sure it was possible. Perhaps if Geralt had been a shifter it would have been easier, or if Jaskier had had a mentor and not had to work every bloody thing out on his own. Right now, Jaskier was not at his best, dear Lillit, he wasn't even half way there. The bond was out of control. He was out of control.

The world was spinning around him in a haze of too much emotion, or not enough. Fuck, it was hard to tell.

It was hard. Everything was just... hard.

So Jaskier shifted to a wolf, his first form outside of human, his most natural, his favourite, and there he stayed. He padded next to Geralt wearily, not really paying attention to the world as they made their way across the Continent for what felt like the hundredth time in the last two years. How was one mage so bloody hard to find? Jaskier had foolishly thought that she would be interested in him, just like she had been when he was a child. He shuddered, pressing his nose into Geralt's hands as violet eyes flashed in his mind.

"We'll find her," Geralt hummed, his fingers delving deeper into Jaskier's fur and scratching behind his ears in a way that usually made Jaskier's leg kick out because it felt so good. Now, it just felt... okay.

It was as if the world had lost all its colour. He couldn't remember the last time he'd picked up his lute to compose, even when he had felt comfortable in human form. It was driving him mad, this cloud that had fallen over him was sucking the joy out of all his favourite things... fuck, even Geralt. When was the last time they'd kissed, made love...

Jaskier huffed a sigh and dropped down on the path, resting his snout on his paws. He could feel his mate's gaze burning down on him, and Geralt's concern was a heavy weight through their bond, but he didn't speak. That was a blessing, even if he could reply, Jaskier wasn't sure he had the words.

Instead, Geralt just sat down next to him, keeping a hand in his fur and then he began to… sing? Jaskier glanced up at his mate with a soft whine, nuzzling into Geralt's side and then resting his snout on Geralt's leg. Slowly, he let his tail beat against the ground to let Geralt know he would be okay. He wasn't yet, but he would be, especially if Geralt stayed by his side. The tune Geralt sang was unfamiliar to him, and the witcher's voice, whilst lovely in its own way, wasn't very skilled, but Jaskier was completely captivated by his mate's performance. His ears pricked up even as Geralt stumbled through the lyrics of what sounded like some old forgotten lullaby. He mouthed gently at Geralt's free hand, the warm earthy scent of the witcher grounding him.

When the song was over, they fell back into silence, watching the sunset behind the trees, and longer still as the stars began to shine in the sky. Geralt pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, shivering without their usual fireplace. Jaskier barked as he climbed into Geralt's lap, pushing his mate back onto the path as he buried his muzzle into Geralt's hair.

"Jask," the witcher sighed, his fingers stroking through the fur along Jaskier's spine.

Another bark rang out in the night, and then Jaskier licked at Geralt's face and neck, the scar that marked the witcher as his and his alone. Their hunt for Yennefer might not be over, and Jaskier would have to live another day in the never ending darkness, but he had Geralt. Even if Yennefer had no answers for him, he would always have Geralt.