Work Text:
Geralt shuts his eyes when the bard performing in the inn he’s staying at starts to string an achingly familiar tune on her lute, her high, sweet voice filling the air with song and twisting his stomach like a knife in a wound.
“Yours for e’er after,
Where e’er you go,
Is where I belong,
I am still here, I am with you,
I am in the wind and in this song.
I am in the sea, and in the starlight,
In the rain, and in the snow,
In the sun, and in the moon,
And in the notes that carry on.
Just know, my love,
When my time has passed,
That I will be with you your whole life long.”
The song lingers in the air, sweet and sorrowful, and Geralt downs another two pitchers of ale before he can find the strength to stumble to his feet and head out of the door, making sure to slip the bard a few coins before he goes. She blushes and tips her hat, but Geralt only turns away quickly before she can see the pain on his face. He steps out onto cobblestone streets and winds through the familiar path of Oxenfurt, out and away from the main part of the city’s bustle and towards the outskirts where a garden grows, maintained by the University: a refuge of sweetness amongst the stink of city life. He’s drunk, drunker than he’d planned when he’d stopped through for his yearly visit, but his feet find the way without much thought. He has been here many times before.
In the middle of the garden, a small hill crests, and a weeping willow bends in the wind, trailing long vining leaves over the single headstone that stands like a pillar amongst the flowerbeds and younger tree saplings. Geralt climbs the hill, reaching out to brush the willow’s leaves away where they trail like tears over the gravestone’s front, and takes a shaky breath. With a grunt, he kneels on aching knees, sagging forward to rest his forehead against cold marble, and breathing in the scent of sweet spring blossoms and green, growing things.
“They were singing your song again,” Geralt whispers, his voice hoarse from disuse. He has few reasons to talk to anyone these days outside of making contracts. “A young bard, probably just out of Oxenfurt. She -” his voice breaks, and his shoulders bend under the weight of his grief. “She didn’t sing it as well as you did, but I’m sure you’d argue different.”
Well, of course she didn’t, a voice laughs, in the back of his mind. But it’s hardly fair to compare a novice to a genius, darling.
Geralt huffs. “So vain,” he mutters, managing a small smile. “Such a peacock.”
Don’t lie, sweetheart, we both know you enjoy my peacocking.
He sighs. “Always so pleased with yourself, aren’t you?” Geralt pauses. “You’d be pleased with yourself now, I suppose. You were right - they do remember you, even now.”
He shuts his eyes. A phantom hand brushes through his hair. Geralt, whispers that voice. Dear heart…
“They remember us,” he rasps. “You bastard. You were right, and they remember us.”
Good. The voice is soft and gentle. Good. That’s what I wanted. I wanted the world to be kind to you even when I wasn’t there to sing you praises anymore.
“They have been,” Geralt promises. “They have been. More than ever. They play your songs and people remember the bard who loved Witchers enough to change how the world saw us.”
A happy, pleased hum. It’s the least you deserve, after everything.
Geralt sighs again and leans back on his heels, opening his eyes and wiping a shaky hand down the front of the stone. Jaskier, it says, Bard of Witchers and Professor of Music. Beloved and Remembered. Beneath the words, a tiny buttercup, and an even tinier wolf’s head.
(“Don’t let them put Julian on my headstone,” Jaskier had whispered, fifty summers ago when the healer told him that his heart wouldn’t last another year. “Anything but Julian, gods preserve me.”
It had been an easy enough promise to follow through on. Oxenfurt had offered to pay for the funeral, but Geralt had refused, had commissioned the gravestone himself and ensured that Jaskier’s body remained in the city he loved instead of being sent back to Lettenhove like his father’s will demanded.
“Whatever you do, don’t let them bury me next to my mother. Fuck, I think I’d have to turn into a ghost and haunt my brother’s children if he did that to me.”
“I won’t, Jask,” Geralt had said through gritted teeth, his heart aching like something was gnawing on it. “I won’t let them take you away.”
Jaskier had sighed and rubbed his wrinkled face into Geralt’s neck. “I know you won’t, love. I know.”)
The memory gnaws his heart even now.
“I wish - I wish you hadn’t written that stupid song,” Geralt manages.
No you don’t.
“Yes, I do,” he snaps. “Did you have to make your last song so fucking sad?”
I was selfish. I wanted you to remember me, too.
“How could I forget you?” Geralt moans. “How could I?”
Sixty years. Sixty years they’d spent by the sea, once Jaskier’s old bones had become too weak for the Path. Sixty years, decades longer than any human should have lived, his life extended by Yennefer’s potions until even magic couldn’t keep his aging body going. Sixty years of peace and love and waking early just to watch the sunlight creep in through the window and kiss the lines on Jaskier’s sleeping face. Sixty years, and still it felt like a robbery, a candle that had burnt too bright and too quick. Sixty years, and then it was over.
And here he is still, fifty years later. Fifty years of tending the grave that grows beneath a weeping willow he’d planted with his own two hands, a silent watcher to stand over his lover’s final resting place. He’s not sure whether he’s grateful for his perfect memory or not; fifty years later and he can still recall Jaskier’s face in his mind in perfect detail, but it means that on some mornings the memory is so fresh he feels like he could roll over in bed and find Jaskier still waiting for him.
“I’ll never forget you, little lark,” he whispers. “I couldn’t if I tried, and you know I’ll never try.”
I know.
“I love you.”
I know that, too.
“Should have said it more.”
You said it plenty, sweetheart. You said it in everything you did.
Geralt sighs and brushes away the tears that fall from his eyes. “I miss you,” he whispers. “I just miss you so fucking much.”
The wind blows in his face, bringing with it the smell of freshly bloomed buttercups, and Geralt lets it carry the sound of his weeping into the distance. That phantom hand reappears, stroking his hair out of his eyes; that voice dips into song.
“Yours for e’er after,
Where e’er you go,
Is where I belong,
I am still here, I am with you,
I am in the wind and in this song….”
“I know,” Geralt whispers. “I know you are. You always have been. Always will be."
A laugh he still dreams of every night tickles his ears, and the whole world smells of buttercups.