Of Bards and Witchers

Twelfth

    As it happens, Jaskier was not particularly lucky-- this is accentuated by his fifth sneeze in the last hour and his dreadfully clogged sinuses. He shivers even as he pulls Geralt's cloak tighter around his shoulders.

    "I'm dying," he concludes, solemnly.

    Geralt blinks at him from across the fire, then shifts back against the wall and closes his eyes.

    "How am I to sing like this?" He questions. "My career is ruined before it has even truly begun-- the greatest bard of our time thwarted by a plague." He falls against the bedroll with a huff and curls into the cloak fully.

    "You don't have a plague," sighs the Witcher.

    "I am most definitely dying," he says, woefully. The fabric muffles him but they both know Geralt can hear him perfectly well.

    "No."

    "My demise rounds the corner, I will die in this cold, damp dingy cave. What if Valdo Marx takes my place? Geralt, as my dying wish, I beg of you, be rid of Val--"

    "Jaskier."

    The bard lowers the cloak enough to peek out from beneath it and startles. He doesn't know when or how, but at some point Geralt had made his way beside him. The man hums and puts a palm to his cheek-- surprisingly cool against his skin despite his shivering-- then his forehead.

    "No plague," he says. "A little feverish."

    "A little feverish?" The bard echoes. "My head has been stuffed full of cotton, I am freezing yet disgustingly damp with sickly sweat--"

    "Hmm," the Witcher says, comfortingly, then he reaches to pull the cloak back over the bard's head in a valiant effort to silence him. Jaskier opens his mouth and instead sneezes once again by way of complaint-- but the hesitantly delivered pat atop his head isn't entirely unwelcome. He chuckles into the fabric-- at the image of the White Wolf of Rivia patting his barker's head by the breaking fire ( and can practically feel the roll of Geralt's eyes ).

    --

    "You need a nap!"

    Geralt snarls, looking remarkably wolfish as he bears his teeth-- which isn't an odd occurrence in and of itself with the routine sniffing and occasional growling-- but it passes just as quickly as its begun, he wades back into the river and Jaskier can't bring himself to care regardless.

    "Don't come back here, Julian," she says. "This is not love, and I am no conquest."

    They've faught before, obviously. You can't follow one across the continent without having your bouts of disagreement, but it rarely ends with blood spilling from his lips or a tumor bulging around his vocal chords-- and it most definitely doesn't end with him waking up to a naked witch crawling towards him.

    He laughs airily, all raw nerves and the taste of copper pooling on his tongue-- not blood, chaos, he can see in her face that she hungers for it-- stumbling back as she stalks after him like some starved but dignified cat and presses a blade to his assets-- "Make the wish, Bard. Relenquish it unto me."

    So he does. And then he runs. And then Geralt runs back for her.

    He thinks maybe he would have liked Yennifer if it weren't for the knife. Or the fact that she sent his best friend on a bloody rampage, or found herself being fucked by him in the wake of the crumbling building-- which, to be quite fair, is none of his business, really, but he can't quite look away. He isn't even really seeing, maybe he isn't really there. Maybe he's just dreaming, and none of this has happened at all. Something settles painfully beneath his ribs.

    The elven medic clamps a hand down onto his shoulder and grounds him.

    "We should, er..." the man quirks a pained smile. He'd fallen for the witch himself. "We should go."

    Jaskier blinks at him.

    Jaskier is selfish. He wishes Geralt hadn't gone back into the house. He mumbles something about going into town and pulls from the man's grasp.

    And then he is on the path with nothing but his lute slung across his back and he hasn't a clue where he is or how he got there, and the silence is stifling. When he touches his cheek his fingers come back damp.

    Green isn't his color.

    --

    Jaskier is almost positive that something is wrong with him. There is a melody that has been plaguing him for quite some time now, day in and day out. He's been playing for hours, days, weeks, months-- tweaking it with every go. It's never right. Never enough. Something is always missing.

    Presently his lute sits on a chair at his bedside. Its been three days since he'd last picked it up and he feels an ache in his bones that he can't remember procuring. He glances at it from the corner of his eye and his fingers twitch with that ungodly need to play.

    Play me, it says, pull a melody from me just once more.

    Jaskier is certain that something is very wrong with him.

    Play me.

    He reaches for his lute.