Love As You Are

Chapter 6

Geralt has a lot of time to think as he passes the winter in Kaer Morhen. He finds himself alone there this year, which is probably what he deserves.

What he'd said to Jaskier on that mountain hadn't been fair, but it hadn't been entirely inaccurate.

It was Jaskier's fault that Geralt had gone to the banquet. And it was Jaskier's fault Geralt was even searching for that fucking djinn in the first place.

Jaskier had not shown interest in repeating their tryst from the day of the banquet, which Geralt never begrudged him. Women are Jaskier's preference, and as they're usually Geralt's as well, he couldn't fault him. It should have even been a relief, given Jaskier's tendency to fall in love with anything that moves and resembles a human.

So it had come as an unbearable surprise when he found himself longing for the bard's presence. When long stretches of time passed between their meetings, he found it hard to sleep.

If it hadn't been for Jaskier, he would have been able to sleep. If he'd been able to sleep he never would have gone looking for the djinn. If Jaskier hadn't then decided to show up, Geralt's wish wouldn't have gone horribly awry, and Geralt never would have met Yennefer.

His mark may never have appeared.

Yennefer is the thunderstorm which breaks the oppressive summer heat, and Jaskier is the sun that breaks through the clouds, and neither should be cursed to suffer Geralt though he can't seem to stay away from either of them.

He dreams of one and then the other, but it's Jaskier's face that burns itself behind his eyelids, the one he wakes with each morning.

He hadn't known for a long while if the mark had belonged to Yennefer or Jaskier, but he'd chosen to believe it was for Yen. Now, though, he can no longer hide from what he's known to be true all along.

Geralt had made his way down the mountain alone, wishing for Roach's company. The heel of his foot throbbed with phantom pain. The healers in Novigrad had told him about this phenomenon once when he'd watched a man crying out in pain, pointing to the air where his missing arm should have been.

Ahead of him, the sunset was a violent battle against the night, the sky aflame as though the sun was holding on for dear life. Geralt tried not to think of what Jaskier had asked of him, looking sharply down at the ground as though the sun could hurt his inhuman eyes.

Losing Yennefer and Jaskier all at once was painful, but the outcome was better in the long run. Like setting a bone or amputating a poisoned limb before the toxin could spread.

The truth struck him with such awful clarity then. He knew it in the same way he knew the sun would lose its battle tonight and rise again tomorrow, that Jaskier was the one the mark had appeared for.

The realization has been slowly bubbling to the surface of his brain, a downer rising and rising to the top of a lake before it makes a fatal strike. He'd turned his head to the side while he was inside of Yennefer only to see Jaskier through the window-- alive , healed, full of happy relief--and that awful, tender part of Geralt's heart, the one he keeps under lock and key, the one that belongs only to Jaskier, had leapt in surprised, unguarded joy.

From the pain that had filled Jaskier's eyes on the mountain, the way the mark on Geralt's foot had screamed , Geralt suspects that Jaskier had already known the truth. Geralt had been foolish or willfully ignorant enough to convince himself that if Jaskier had the same mark, there was no chance he'd be able to keep that fact to himself.