theDemonCat

Long before he ever called himself a bard, before he learned how to walk on legs instead of drifting through moonlit tides, he had abandoned the sea in search of two things.

Music.

And love.

The first had been easy enough.

Music had found him almost immediately. It lived in taverns and marketplaces, in royal courts and lonely roads. It sang through his lute strings and echoed in every crowd that gathered to hear him perform. Music welcomed him with open arms.

Love, however, proved far more elusive.

Jaskier loved often. He loved recklessly. He loved poets and princes, scholars and scoundrels. He fell in love with smiles, with voices, with impossible ideas.

Yet none of it ever felt quite right.

Then he met Geralt.

And somewhere along the years between monster hunts, campfires, and endless miles of road, Jaskier began to think that if he were ever to find the sort of love he'd crossed an ocean for, it might look a little like this.

A little like Geralt.

So every morning, without fail, Jaskier would ask.

"Do you love me today?"

And every morning Geralt would grunt, sigh, roll his eyes, or pretend to be deeply interested in saddling Roach.

But he never answered.

Not because he didn't care.

For a heartbeat, Jaskier’s expression stilled—an eerie lull, like the hush of a forest moments before lightning remembers the sky.

“What I am hearing,” he announced, rising with the sanctified gravity of a man delivering last rites to common sense itself, “is not criticism. It is the unfortunate echo of a gentleman whose wit perished at birth and was interred thereafter in an unmarked grave—presumably out of consideration for public health.”

The words hung in the air like a drawn blade, gleaming and indiscreet. A silent warning rippled through those nearby: brace yourselves, or flee while dignity still permits it.

Undeterred by the growing tension—or perhaps nourished by it—Jaskier pressed on, brightness sharpening into something almost radiant and cruel.

“If ignorance were minted coin,” he continued sweetly, “you, my good sir, would be a sovereign hoard unto yourself. Though I suspect even beggars would cross the street rather than share a cup with you, lest stupidity prove contagious through mere proximity.”

A chair shrieked against the floorboards.

The man rose.

A knife appeared in his grip with the unremarkable ease of long habit, as though violence were merely another tool in his trade, like coinpurse or breath.

This was typically the moment where the room’s story fractured into chaos.

Geralt of Rivia lifted his drink with unhurried patience, as if time itself had grown mildly inconvenient.

Jaskier leaned in, eyes alight with theatrical delight. “Oh, splendid. A blade. How refreshingly inventive. I do hope you’ve at least honed it on something more stimulating than your personality.”

A low tide of unease rolled through the inn. Someone whispered a prayer. Someone else quietly placed coin on wood, as though wagering on inevitability rather than outcome.

Then the man lunged.