Fanfics from Ao3 - Private

Slightly Akin to Wonder - StarsInMyDamnEyes

In hindsight, he could say that it was at least while they were alone in Kaer Morhen, and not in the middle of some fucking backwater village, surrounded by eavesdropping and gossipy laymen, that the whole ridiculous farce had come undone.

Jaskier was by no means oblivious, he knew that people knew of him.

He had a penchant for gaining notoriety - and he was in no way, shape, or form scornful or regretful of this fact - with comparatively little effort on his part, so much so that he'd managed to become exceedingly well-known and somewhat appreciated across not only one life, but two. How, exactly, he'd managed this eluded him - really, it must have been some kind of secret talent on his part that he was unaware of - but the fact remained that if one quoted one of either names he went by, chances are it would be recognised.

He only hoped that nobody would ever draw the connection between the two.

Before Jaskier had been famous as Jaskier the Bard, he'd gained a fair amount of notoriety as a witcher. Julian of the Continent, he'd given his name as - though that was wasted on the world, because nobody dared acknowledge the joke in front of a witcher, pity - and he'd amassed quite a reputation for himself.

At the time, he'd been so utterly oblivious that he hadn't even realised it happening until he walked into a backwater town in Kaedwen for a contract and gotten called by name by a complete and utter stranger.

The man had damn near shat his breeches when he looked up at Jaskier, mouthing his name in a mixture of horror and awe, and then the idiot witcher had gone and fucked the situation completely by nearly collapsing with laughter at the sight of his face.

His creed as a witcher had been something vaguely about not causing unnecessary harm, but also taking absolutely no shit - and in hindsight, maybe that was what had given Julian of the Continent, the man whose title was a joke that nobody laughed at, the final little push that shoved his name into the spotlight. Then, of course, it would have been his competence at his craft - because despite the air of amiable ineptitude he's always liked to put on, Jaskier would never settle for mediocrity - that cemented his name in the history books.

Still, he'd retired a long time ago, almost three decades, in fact, having figured that he at least deserved to pursue his passions in life after working so tirelessly for so many years. So he'd dropped off the face of the continent completely, armed himself with a glamour around his wrist, and started learning the Seven Liberal Arts in Oxenfurt, enjoying the increasingly wild rumours around his own disappearance and death.

That was when he'd stopped paying attention to what people were saying about Julian of the Continent, the witcher who destroyed monsters with his swords and people with his wit, and that had apparently been his mistake.

Jaskier wasn't oblivious, he knew that people knew of him, but he'd evidently missed the part where people stopped thinking of him as a competent, albeit mildly terrifying, if you asked the general populace, monster-hunting witcher and started fucking glorifying him.

Sure, it had been thirty gods-damned years, and he knew - better than most, really, given his day job - how quickly and easily embellishments could spread. He wouldn't even have found it so odd if the adoration - the fucking adoration, gods, to think that the people who pissed themselves at the sight of his face would adore him - stopped with the laymen that inhabited the rural countryside.

It was easy to spin anecdotes into hyperboles, turn lies into legends. Jaskier was a bard, a bloody poet, and he was well aware of that.

He just hadn't expected Geralt to fall into the trap of swallowing all of that complete and utter bullshit.

He wasn't even sure how the conversation had come to this in the first place, really, he'd only half-been paying attention to what he was saying, but then Geralt had mentioned his fucking name - his old name - and Jaskier's stomach dropped.