#just. thoughts abt geralt going back into that manor for yen and back to cintra for ciri but leaving jaskier alone on a mountain

[jaskefer]

Geralt’s thumb glides across Jaskier’s hand like a map. 

Tracing over veined rivers and bruised knuckle mountains, he moves slowly, committing the route to memory. It’s only been a year, yet there’s a litany of unfamiliar journeys etched into his palm. “I could have stopped it,” he says, lowly. 

Jaskier shakes his head. “None of that, now,” he soothes. His words are soft, but they crack against his teeth like aging mortar. “You didn’t know.”

He says it so simply. Like ignorance is all there is to it. Like it absolves Geralt of responsibility. 

He says it so simply, he could almost convince Geralt that he believes it.

Almost.

Jaskier’s skin seems to scream up at him, marred red from past fire and present ice alike. Geralt smothers his crackling fears long enough to press his lips against that anger. "I could have come back for you," he murmurs. A poor excuse for a salve.

The words are but a hum against his fingertips, but Jaskier feels them rattle down to his bones. His hand is trembling in Geralt’s own, and it takes a considerable amount of effort for him to get his own mouth working. “Would you?” he croaks. 

It’s hardly more than a whisper, but it strikes against Geralt’s ears like a stone to his back, and he forces himself to look up. “Would I what?”

Jaskier gazes down at him with shimmering eyes. “Come back,” he says. “For me. On that mountain. You know, if you had known that something like this could happen. Would happen.”

Did happen, he doesn’t add.

Geralt’s answer is immediate and sharp. “Of course I would.” 

The words that linger on Jaskier’s tongue trip over a sudden laugh on their way out. The sound splinters as it spills from his throat, landing shattered and broken at Geralt’s feet. “You know,” Jaskier says after a moment, almost breathless, “if you had promised me anything else, I just might have believed you.”

Geralt frowns at him. Confused, not angry. Before his hollow courage can slip, Jaskier presses on. “I’ve spent… half my life trailing after you,” his voice wobbles. “Despite what the world might try to say, I know who you are. And I’ve no doubt you’d have tried to save me, if you could.” He spares a second to chuckle. “Ever the hero, you were. Are,” he adds, softer.

And gods, even now, fondness chokes Jaskier’s words like a vice. It burns a fresh wound in his mouth, falls like ashes from his lips. He bites his tongue, relishes in the sharp tang of anger that swells against his teeth, and swallows it all down to the pit of his stomach. Dead, gone, and buried before it can bloom.

It’s far from the first time he’s made a grave of himself.

Geralt is still holding his hand. There’s an ache around the knuckles where his lips had been pressed. “But?”

Jaskier’s lips twist into a grimace of a smile. “But I’ve also seen you change,” he says. “For the better, I’d like to think. You… care about people. And you don’t want to see them get hurt.”

The fingers over Jaskier’s hand tighten, gently. “You’re one of those people, Jaskier,” Geralt says, and it’s too kind, too intimately unfamiliar. “You know that, right?”

Jaskier sniffs. “Maybe I do,” he admits. “But at the end of the day, Geralt... you’ve come back for everyone but me.”