#angel yennefer? sorta?

[bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher]

Statuesque Finale

The final installment of my museum au!

Other Parts Here

---

Jaskier looked just as beautiful as he did any other day, carved out in unforgiving grey marble, his eyes pupil-less and vacant. His body was perfectly formed, each muscle, hair, and fold of clothing was carved by a masterful hand. He was frozen forever like that and Geralt hated it. He hated the falseness of the stone grace. There was no trace of Jaskier’s usual charming, nearly perpetual wave of sound. There was no warm smile. No fluttering lashes. No gentle voice that soothed and provoked in equal measure; that teased and placated Geralt like some kind of conversational acrobat. 

Nothing looked back at Geralt but a face made of cold, emotionless stone. It stared into the distance almost mockingly. Was Jaskier even in there anymore or had his soul been forfeited as well as his body? Sometimes the newly born human could hear that familiar dulcet voice at the back of his head, whispering: You did this to me. You made me this way. You tricked me, Geralt. You did! You!

The ex-demon was buried so deeply in his cloud of self-loathing that he didn’t notice a dark-haired woman approaching. She bumped into his hip with her own, jostling him to the side and away from any listening ears. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled, stepping back a half-pace and even further from the gathered audience. She followed. 

“You visit often but you never look around,” the woman remarked, her own gaze equally fixed on the marble figure. “You always choose to stand here, out of the way of the crowd but always within view of this particular statue. You keep your arms crossed and that same sad scowl on your face, staring for hours at this reclining demon carving. What is it about this statue that drives you to brood so violently?”

“Hmm,” Geralt replied. Usually stoicism got him some peace and quiet.

The strange woman was not dissuaded; she continued to talk, almost as if she was carrying on the conversation with only herself as a partner: “He reminds me of someone. An old museum employee, actually, who mysteriously disappeared one night and never returned. Not even to pick up his last paycheck, although that went missing, too. Gone right out of the mailbox without a solitary flicker of an image on the security camera. Do you know anything about that, Broody Bunch?”

“No,” he muttered. “Why are you talking to me?”

The woman gave a slow, quiet half-smile. “So you used to be a demon, huh? That used to be you up there?”

Geralt’s head snapped to the side. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Punky Broodster,” the woman smirked, looking him in the eyes now. “You were the demon from before, weren’t you? You fell in love with him.”

“I just needed him to say the words to lift the curse,” he huffed. “Now, as repayment for his kindness, I’m keeping him safe.”

“Admit it, child of darkness. You can tell me if you miss him. You can whisper to me that you yearn to hear his voice and feel his touch, freely and without restraint or limitation. You don’t feel like eating or sleeping even though you’ve been dreaming of your potential human life for years. You barely take care of yourself because every moment that passes feels wrong without him in it. Admit it to me, demon, and I will take it as confession.”

“What are you?” 

The woman shrugged again, just as nonchalantly and noncommittally as before, “I am a representative of the Powers That Be.”

“And what do they want with a little ex-demon?”

“It’s not you that I’m here to look after. It’s him.”

“Jaskier?”

“He has a very important role to play,” she stated. “And now you’ve gone and complicated things.”

“My sincerest apologies,” Geralt grimaced. It was never good to upset the Powers That Be. He was about to go from one curse right into another. “I do love, him though. You’re right. And I miss him more than words in any language can express, human or celestial.”

“Good. Then we can get on with it.”

“Get on with what?”

“I’m here to give you the secret to breaking the spell. It’s going to make you laugh, I promise.”

“Hmm?”

“True love’s kiss. You smooch that statue on the lips,” she pointed, “And he’s all yours.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Hmm.”

---

Geralt walked across the empty expanse of room; it had looked so much smaller when he was stuck to the pedestal. It seemed to take forever for him to reach the statue now. “I’m so sorry about all of this, Jaskier,” he mumbled as he drew close enough to touch. “I’m so incredibly sorry.”

He leaned forward, pressed his lips to the statue’s, and watched with bright eyes as the dreary grey of carved stone faded to the soft, warm pink of the young man’s skin. “G-Geralt?”

All the ex-demon could do was throw his arms around the human’s slender waist and hold on for dear life. He buried his nose in Jaskier’s soft brown hair and breathed in deeply, so deeply that it pained his lungs to inhale any further. He released it all in a pent up sob, his hands fisting into the material of Jaskier’s scanty toga. 

“I’m so sorry,” he repeated, over and over like a mantra. He knew he was undeserving. “I’m so sorry, Jaskier. I love you, too. I do. I love you.”

Jaskier was clinging back, crying in tandem and snuffling little hiccups against the side of Geralt’s neck. “I missed you. I saw you keeping an eye on me. I saw you. I knew you’d find a way to get me back.”

“The Powers That Be have great things in store for you,” Geralt smiled. “They couldn’t let my stupidity put out that bright spark.”

“You’re half that spark, now,” Jaskier sighed, cuddling closer. “Now take me home and get me some pants, this is awful.”

[angst-fairygodmother]

Phantom of the Opera AU ⭐. Talk about whatever you want about it, but if you want a proper prompt maybe how the Phantom went from just a stalker into a demon possessing someone. Just your version of the Phantom in general really, it's a cool concept.

I’m so glad you like it! I am very fond of my Phantom, so I got a little carried away, but I appreciate the ask very much. 

I’m just going to start by dropping a link to the now complete series (still haven’t gotten over the fact that it’s done) here.

Second starting note, I mentioned it in the last Director’s Cut for Sing Once Again With Me, but since you asked me to talk about Phantom!Valdo it’s especially relevant so I’m going to say it again: this series Would Not Exist without @ficsandcatsandficsandcats. One night I couldn’t sleep and started watching Phantom of the Opera. My brain jumped to an AU for The Witcher. And then I went “nah, that’s stupid, but I’m going to send it to this new sorta-friend (now definite friend) and we can laugh over it together.” Instead what I got was encouragement. It may have been in the form of a Shia LaBeouf gif, but ya know, we accept the gifts we're given in whatever form they take.

I also wasn’t sure on my casting other than Jaskier as Christine. There was an idea that the whole thing would be a Reader Insert story where the Reader was serving in the Raoul role and possibly Geralt would be the Phantom. But, I didn’t love it, and again off that same initial ask, Kat in tags said “also Valdo is the Phantom kthxbye” and the world opened, angels sang, and I banged out an initial outline in about 10 minutes.

From there it was a pretty organic progression into the Phantom/Valdo because a lot of it was based on obviously the source musical. And then where I wanted to distinguish the appearance as Valdo Marx, I just sort of went with what sounded good. I was an early subscriber to the “Robert Sheehan as Valdo Marx” idea, so I did play with that a lot, and luckily (or unfortunately depending on your perspective) he has had many styles over the years but still managed to maintain something very distinctive about his look so that was great for this.

Anyway, before I get too distracted waxing poetic about Robert Sheehan, as you mentioned, the really interesting part of the development of Phantom!Valdo was the idea that it wasn’t just an obsessive ex/stalker and that there was a magical compulsion between him and Jaskier drawing the two together, and then later demonic possession. Part of that came from the fact that this was still The Witcher. With both Geralt and Yennefer so heavily involved in the story, the fact that the danger/crisis was something mundane felt inorganic, untrue to their characters. If Valdo Marx was just a man, there would be no need for either of them to fear him and they’d have solved things with the snap of their fingers. The threat needed to be greater.

In addition, with Yen in the Madame Giry role, there were a lot of things that didn’t line up if it was just Valdo Marx, the man. In the source musical, Madame Giry, as a young girl, is responsible for sneaking the Phantom into the Opera House basement when he is also a child, and sort of establishing and aiding his presence there until he is able to care for himself, at which point she distances because of her own life, responsibilities, etc. I didn’t want to change backstories significantly, because at least theoretically, it’s post-season-one canon-compliant the way the story is now. Also, I couldn’t find a motivation for Yennefer to do that and help someone hide out, without getting something in return (although later thoughts, if I had been willing to sacrifice backstory, I can think of several good things including flipping the “the Phantom was hated for his ugliness” on its head and having Valdo being the first person to be kind to Yennefer despite her disfigurement/disability, albeit for self-serving reasons, and I’m going to stop myself there before I go off on a tangent and start re-writing or something). But, the Yennefer we know and love from season one is a self-serving, power-hungry sorceress who will do anything to undo the sacrifice she made for beauty and power (without giving back those things). So it was not unthinkable that she would summon a demon/spirit/powerful magical entity and try to bargain with or command it, as she did with the djinn. I just needed to make it something powerful enough that she couldn’t control or defeat it on her own. And then to explain it taking Valdo’s form, it was simple enough to have something tragic befall him that would make him willing to bargain as well, which I had sort of already done in explaining the mask and why he was hiding out in a basement. 

And from there, everything just panned out beautifully. It is also what opened up my ending for something final and little bit heartbreaking, and less “solved by romanticizing and rewarding emotional abuse” than the original.