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sageclover61 · 5 years

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It’s Only A Myth Witchers Don’t Need Family

@geraskierweek

TITLE: It’s Only A Myth Witcher’s Don’t Need Family

AUTHOR/ARTIST: @sageclover61

PROMPT DAY #: Day 6, Found Family

SUMMARY: The general population is wrong about a long of things. Witchers have feelings, Mages have feelings, and Bards are more than the shenanigans they get up to. Geralt might think he doesn't care what others believe him to be, but he's more than their hatred and their fears. Over time, he learns a valuable lesson about his pack.

WORD COUNT (if applicable):4881

BOOKS/NETFLIX/2002 SHOW/VIDEO GAME: Netflix

TRIGGERS/WARNINGS: NA

RATING: T

ADDITIONAL NOTES: AO3 link https://archiveofourown.org/works/22828018

Everyone knows that Witchers don’t have feelings. They don’t form attachments, they can’t feel anything , and they’re no better than the monsters that they hunt. Those who believe in souls would say that Witchers don’t have them, can’t have them, because they’re too inhuman for a thing as human as a soul.

Some say that Witchers were born without souls, and others would say that they were cut out of them. Either way, they were inhuman.

They’re wrong. Witchers didn’t do families. Or attachment. But it’s a choice, a rule, a law . They’re sterile, and the only thing that separates them from the monsters that they hunt is the choices that they make. But not because they were incapable of attachments or feelings. Rather, they felt everything too strongly, and used the coldness they displayed as a means to protect themselves.

They could live forever. No one around them was going to. Human lives were a single grain of sand in the hourglass of the universe.

Everyone knows that mages trade their capacity to feel things for the enhancements that make them beautiful and immortal and powerful. It makes them cold, and petty, and amoral. They’re human, anymore. They’re something greater.

Humanity fears them for it, and uses them, and craves to be like them in the same pretty sentences they weave to use to abuse them.

Mages don’t want families. They sacrifice their ability to have children in exchange for power. They don’t need anyone. Not to depend on, not to be dependent on them. They did live forever. Even the lives of the Witchers were but a grain of sand.

Everyone knows that bards aren’t to be trusted. Their words hid too much behind them, charming wives away from their husbands, husbands away from their wives, and running away before anything could be done about it.

But there were whispers, in dark corners of taverns at night, when no bards were around. Rumors of clandestine meetings, from which only the bard would leave alive and of coin trading hands as quickly as daggers sinking into hearts, and strange concoctions being tipped into drinks when no one was watching, leaving the drinker dead by morning.

They didn’t have families. They didn’t need families, all the bastard children running around unclaimed. They didn’t have time for them. Lives too short, too many places to visit and epic ballads to write, and deaths to be gleaned at the hands of jilted lovers.

They’re wrong, about Witchers. Witchers are less than human, but they’re more, too. If humanity is defined by their capacity to feel, then Witchers are defined not only by their infinitely greater senses, but also their infinitely greater capacity to feel .

Geralt can’t speak for all the Witchers, but he finds that their disdain for him makes everything, easier, somehow. They hate him, so they send him on his way once he’s helped them, often without paying all that he’s owed, and it’s easier to keep himself from getting attached to them. He says little, cloaking himself in a facade of whatever the fuck they need to keep from desiring to get closer to him.

He pretends so well and for so long, that he forgets that he’s pretending. Opinions of him decrease and decrease, until he didn’t know they could get any worse, and then it does get worse.

“You say that you can’t choose but you had to, and you’ll never know if you were right. Your reward will be a stoning and you will run. You will try to outrun the girl in the woods and you cannot. She is your destiny.”

She does not tell him that the stoning is his reward for caring so much, but it is. He cares deeply, and impossibly, and being able to do so is supposed to be against the way of the Witcher.

He kills neither the girl nor the mage, but the whole town of Blaviken is dead.

Geralt uses a Witcher Sign, and he wonders if anyone else had ever thought of such a use for it. He uses Axii to wipe the knowledge of the curse of the black sun from Stregobor’s mind, and force him to forget about Renfri.

He manages to convince Renfri to stop hunting him, and move on with her life. She’s safe, now. She doesn’t have to run unless she wants to, and she can discover for herself what she wants.

She’s 16 and she has never had peace. But she can have it now, she deserves it.

Renfri trails after him for 3 days, and then, she is gone, having chosen for herself what comes next.

She was the first of Geralt’s pack, though she did not know it.

Jaskier was, in all probability, the sluttiest slut who had ever been a slut. If not, he was definitely the sluttiest bard who’d ever existed. He who would happily charm into his bed anything and everything that could possibly consent to joining him there. The husbands, the wives, the elves, the monsters, even those who believed themselves to be the most celibate of priests and priestesses allowed themselves to be charmed into his bed.

He loved this life of performing for the masses, and running from vengeful cuckolds. Jaskier had always craved some more adventure, and this was as fun as it got.

But then, the great Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, walked into the bar while he was playing, and he knew that even greater adventure awaited him.

His first adventure, and he even ended up with a brand new, elven crafted, lute. From Filavander, the king of the elves. He didn’t think it could get any better than that, but then he was falling in love with the Witcher who didn’t use enough words, and, who despite his course addressing of him, treated him well.

Tumbling into Geralt’s bedroll with him, there was no place on the entire Continent that he would rather be.

He was the second member of Geralt’s pack, and followed by his side, faithfully, for twenty three years.

Yennefer did not have a choice. She had a series of impossible decisions, and a destiny that led in a direction she did not wish for, so she broke it. No longer was she the little girl to accept the hand of cards that had been dealt to her. No. She needed no one. She was as alone as she had always been, but she chose power over being a wife or a mother. She did not know that was her choice.

She did not know that humanity despised mages, even while demanding their services to fix their messes. Yennefer had the potential to be the greatest mage to ever exist, and yet for thirty years she was nothing more than a royal arse wiper.

Nobody. She was nobody. She was hated and despised by the same people whose very lives depended on her. It was not what she had envisioned, nor was it the power she’d so desired.

But then she was escorting the queen and the new darling princess the queen didn’t even want, and she could not allow her to so callously attempt to bargain with the assassin for her own life, with the life of her child.

What mother was willing to allow a fiend her child if it meant that she could live?

The assassin kills the mother with a single blade, but Yennefer is willing to risk her own life to save the babe, and the magic accepts her desire without requiring her life.

The baby wasn’t born of her blood, but she realizes that’s okay. She doesn’t know what Kalis named her daughter, so Yennefer names the baby Ksenia.

Yennefer hates being trapped in a gilded cage for a stupid mayor of a stupid town in a stupid country that she hates infinitely. But she must provide for the little girl she’s raising as her own, and this is the only way, now that she’s left the Aedirn court.

Ksenia is almost ten, and Yennefer loves her more than she's ever loved anyone, and if the mayor so much as touches a single hair of her head, she's burning this town down.

She was entertaining herself with a masked orgy when a Witcher brought her a pitcher of apple juice and a dying bard. What wish did they make, she wondered, as she mixed the antidote for the tumor in the throat.

Could she use the Witcher to get the mayor off her back? She didn’t want her daughter growing up here. It simply wasn’t the best place for her to be. So what to do…

In retrospect, using the Witcher to attack the members of the council she hated the most, especially before she knew all of what was going on, was an incredibly stupid mistake. She was lucky Ksenia hadn’t suffered any harm, once the djinn had set its sights on the house they were all in.

So was the fact that Geralt had made the third wish silently. It could be anything. But whatever wish he’d made, Ksenia was safe, and so was she. It had to be good enough.

“You know, you could have just told me that you wanted to get yourself out of this place.”

Yennefer turned around quickly, seeing the Witcher standing behind her. “And how do I know you truly would have helped us? Your kind isn’t so fond of my kind, as I recall.”

She could hear the bard speaking with Ksenia, but it wasn’t important. Whatever Geralt was about to say, however, she could feel that it would be one of the most important things she would hear for a very long time.

“Contrary to popular belief, Witchers aren’t all heartless beings. Regardless of my feelings towards someone, I will not ignore a child in danger, especially when there is a chance I can help save them.”

Yennefer didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent, watching her daughter. The daughter whose life she had risked foolishly, because she had been too selfish to ask for assistance.

Ksenia was laughing at something the bard had said, she wasn’t sure what. When had she last seen such a carefree expression on her child’s face? Had she really spent so much valuable time with this worthless situation, when there were so many more important things? Like whether or not her daughter was happy ?

There was a sigh from Geralt, then, as he moved to leave. “I will not keep you from your child any longer than I already have. All I ask is that should anything happen, you ask for help, before it is too late.”

“Ksenia.” She did not raise her voice, loathe as she was to separate her from what she was finding so hilarious, but she also needed to know that the child really was okay after all that had happened.

“Yes, Mama?” Ksenia turned her head in recognition of her name being called, but she didn’t move the rest of her body, and she was still grinning, eyes still laughing. She somehow looked younger than her nine years. Smaller and more innocent, but not unhealthy. Not injured .

“It’s time to go, My Heart. There’s another home waiting for us elsewhere.” She didn’t know where, but there would be somewhere . Anywhere would be better than this place had been for them.

Yennefer and her daughter were the third and fourth additions to Geralt’s pack, and neither of them had any idea.

“And what does a Mage like you want with a dragon hunt?” Jaskier asked the next they saw Yennefer. “Don’t you have a daughter to be looking after?”

The expression of sour hurt that spread across Yennefer’s face was almost enough for him to regret his taunt. But it wasn’t until she said, “Ksenia is dying from dragon pox, I need the dragon’s heart to cure it,” that he really regretted it.

Even after so long, he could still remember the fear in his sisters’ eyes as they heard of a mysterious plague sweeping through the land, and the horror in his parents’ eyes when the youngest had fallen ill with it. He could remember watching helplessly as it spread from one sister to the next, as his parents locked his sisters away in a room, unable to watch as the sickness slowly stole away their lives.

“Jaskier-”

It had been the strangest, and deadliest plague. A wasting illness, a horrible rash, an ever rising fever. It had left them bedridden, lost in waking nightmares. Famished, but unable to eat, and sweating more than they could possibly hope to drink. He could still hear their screams, as the disease had taken weeks to run its course. Though he had been told to stay away, he just couldn’t. He’d snuck into their room, laying with them, and holding them as they shook and cried, praying to any god who would listen to spare his baby sisters.

But it had all been pointless. A month after the first signs had been noticed, they had all been stolen away from him, leaving him alone to face his parents.

“Jaskier!”

Jaskier found himself blinking, staring at Geralt in confusion. When had the Witcher moved in front of him? “Geralt? What’s the matter?”

Golden eyes stared back at him, narrowed in concern. “You were speaking with Yennefer, but froze. I’ve been trying to get your attention for several minutes now.” he paused for a moment, eyes searching for any unseen wounds, but Jaskier knew that he wouldn’t find any. “What happened?”

He shook his head, trying to calm his heart as he put on the same fake smile he’d been forced to wear all those years ago. “It’s nothing, I was just distracted for a moment.”

Jaskier might have missed the whole of the battle sleeping in, but the fight he’d missed had nothing on the scene he witnessed now. The whole of the dragon’s lair was littered with blossoming flowers in a pale blue, yellow, and dark purple, and in the back of the cave, alongside the massive body of the green dragon, a golden egg was glowing .

He’d never seen this kind of flower before, but even from where he was standing, he could feel the magic emanating from the petals, so thick it was almost impossible to breathe.

His sisters would have loved it. A sunny meadow would have been prettier, but even a cave full of flowers in their favorite colors would have been a hit.

Despite himself, he reached down to pick one of the pale blue ones. Even as he bent now, it felt like blasphemy to vandalize it, but he just wanted to get a better look at the flower that reminded him so much of his youngest sister.

Even as he severed the stem, the flower crumbled into dust.

“Humans have all but wiped the dragons out, believing them to hold all manner of cures for their ailments. Fertility, blindness, lost limbs, even to hold the secrets of immortality. They’re wrong. There is no cure that can restore your womb.”

Jaskier glanced to where Borch was standing in front of Yennefer. Borch was holding a handful of the flowers that he’d just tried, and failed, to pick.

“These flowers only grow where dragon fire has burned, but they’re most common where we hatch our young. I give these to you freely. My heart will heal yours.”

“ Dragon’s Heart,” Yennefer gasped.

Jaskier swallowed heavily. “Borch,” he said, quietly. He did not think he could speak louder, but he also did not think the gold dragon would have any trouble hearing him. “Would flowers like these… have saved them?”

“Perhaps, Julien Alfred Pankratz.”

His insides burned at how ironic it was that flowers in their favorite colors might have saved the lives of his little sisters. There was a very sad, very epic ballad in there somewhere.

A dragon’s fire breathes new life.

“You may take these with you, Bard.” Borch handed him a bouquet of three flowers, one in each color. One for each sister. “They will not wilt, and if you were to plant them, they would grow.”

“Thank you.” There were no words that Jaskier could say that would convey his gratitude. But his heart burned, too. These were the flowers that would have saved the lives of his little sisters, and he was only holding them too many decades too late to be of use. “Yennefer, may I come with you?” He was intimately familiar with dragon pox. At the very least, he could help Ksenia feel more comfortable while Yennefer prepared the medicine to cure it.

“Jaskier.”

Jaskier turned around, and walked towards where Geralt was standing outside the cave. He hugged the witcher. “I need this,” he whispered, brokenly, even as Geralt kissed his forehead. “I need closure. And you need to go find your Child Surprise. She needs you.”

“I know you do.” Geralt’s voice was soft, almost softer than Jaskier thought was possible. “I’ll find you, or you will find me, when you’re ready. And by then, I may have my Child Surprise, ready for you to meet.”

Yennefer made the cure for dragon pox, and Ksenia lived.

And Jaskier found himself in a place he’d never ever thought he’d return.

There were three marked graves in a meadow in Lettenhove. The pox had been believed too contagious for them to be buried in the family graveyard, so they had been buried here instead. This was almost easier, however, because it meant that he could carry out his task without any witnesses.

He planted the baby blue flower over the first grave, the purple flower over the second grave, and the yellow flower over the third.

“Answer your calling,” his eldest sister had said, her dying words to him, as he’d held her hand and fervently wished that she would live. “Go be a bard.”

He had spent his entire childhood trying to be the very best big brother that he could be. He’d learned to braid their hair, and had played dress up with them, and stolen their mother’s makeup, and cooked with them. He’d also sung an infinite number of songs, and read bedtime stories or made them up, and all in all, they were his fondest memories.

But they had been gone for decades, and he’d left very soon after their deaths, unable to cope with their absences in a house in which the ghosts weighed more than the air they breathed.

There had been no joy, and the pain had not only been emotional.

“In a house of too many secrets

There’s no people, only their strife.

At the end of dying meadows,

A dragon’s fire breathes new life.”

He sighed. “No, no, that’s not right. There needs to be something about the memories in that house. It was… rife with them.”

“Excuse me. I’m sorry, are you desecrating those graves?”

Jaskier spun around. A brown haired woman was leaning against a tree at the edge of the meadow. She looked young, but looks could be deceiving. “Excuse you, I would never . If you must know, they’re family.”

“Sometimes our blood is the people we want to hurt the most. I’m Renfri. You’re… Jaskier, the bard, right?”

She was armed, but she hadn’t drawn her blade, nor did he think that she was about to attack him. Or at least, he hoped not. He was armed too, at least. If it came to that. Not that he was very useful with a blade.

“They died of dragon pox. I wish them no ill will, I’m simply here for closure. What brings you to the graves of three Lettenhove daughters who didn’t even have the respect of being buried in their family graveyard?”

“I had heard that the bard who traveled with the white wolf of Rivia was traveling this way, and I wanted to meet you. I’m on my way to see Geralt again, it’s been… a number of years since I saw him last, and I thought it would be polite to ask if you cared to accompany me.”

Jaskier looked back at the graves. The flowers seemed… healthier, than when he’d planted them. Taller, perhaps, if that was even possible.

“As I’m sure you know, there’s an inn not that far from here. I’m leaving in the morning, but we can stop here as we leave.”

He didn’t have his closure yet, but he did also greatly want to go back to Geralt. He’d been feeling lethargic for days.

It was possible the woman was using him as a trap to get Geralt, but if that was the case, then she had no idea who she was dealing with. If she was telling the truth though, and he really thought she was, then it meant he didn’t have to travel to Cintra by himself, and he liked that idea.

“I’m not ready to go back to the inn yet, but I will travel with you back to Geralt.”

He sang a few ballads in the tavern at the inn, including a new one in his rotation about the White Wolf. Songs of heartbreak and the lonely Witcher were popular with the masses, even if it was mostly an exaggeration.

He loved Geralt, and maybe Geralt loved him back, but while his heart did feel broken, it has nothing to do with Geralt and everything to do with three little girls.

He still channeled it into the song.

"Did Geralt break your heart?" Renfri asked when he joined her after his performance. "I would be happy to knock some sense into his skull for you."

Jaskier shook his head. "We both had things that we needed to take care of, and we'll see each other again when we're done. But some audiences prefer songs like that one and I like the coin they'll part with when they're satisfied."

"I couldn't help but overhear you in the meadow, were you writing a new ballad?"

"I'm hoping it'll bring me closure. Anyway, I think I'm going to head to bed."

Travelling with Renfri was nice. She let him ride double on her horse, and they made really good time.

They chatted about their adventures, telling various stories or just making idle chit chat. She was infinitely more talkative than Geralt.

But it didn’t help with the emptiness he was feeling in his chest. It was growing. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but now, Renfri’s random diversions of dialogue was the only thing distracting him away from it.

“Tell me about the bards who assassinate people with poison while wandering around the bar with no one ever the wiser.”

He blinked. “What?” He supposed it wasn’t exactly a secret that some bards used the opportunity provided by their ability to wander around mostly unnoticed to perform more nefarious acts, but he’d never done it himself. He’d never… felt that urge. “There’s probably good money for those with the skill and inclination. But why commit murder when the greatest pleasures in life comes from sleeping with them?”

It occurred to him that he’d slept with a lot fewer people once he’d started sleeping with Geralt. The Witcher had a lot more stamina than your standard human. Needed less sleep, too. Meant the best of both worlds.

“The call of the White Wolf is loudest at the dawn

The call of a stone heart is broken and alone

Born of Kaer Morhen

Born of No Love

The song of the White Wolf is cold as driven snow

Bear not your eyes upon him lest steel or silver draw

Lay not your breast against him or lips to ease his roar

For the song of the White Wolf will always be sung alone

Cast not your eyes upon him, lest he kiss you with his sword

Lay not your heart against him or your lips to ease his roar

For the song of the White Wolf we'll always sing alone

For the song of the White Wolf we'll always sing alone”

Jaskier was singing in the bar of an inn somewhere north of what was left of Cintra, and he was beyond exhausted. Sleep did not come easily, and what sleep did come was plagued by nightmares of losing what little family he thought he’d gained.

He was about to beg off because even just lying restlessly on a bed sounded better than staying down here any longer, when who but Geralt walked in, Ksenia and a younger girl he didn’t recognize on his heels.

The younger girl was the spitting image of Pavetta, and he realized it could be none other than Princess Cirilla of Cintra.

“Geralt!” he exclaimed, barely noticing as Renfri made a beeline after him as he hurried over to embrace the Witcher. “I missed you so much,” he whispered, standing up on his toes so that he could kiss Geralt.

“And I you,” Geralt answered, after kissing him back. “Ciri, meet Jaskier.”

“Hi,” the little girl said.

“Geralt.”

“Renfri?” Geralt smiled at Jaskier’s traveling companion, who was standing behind Jaskier. “It’s good to see you again. This is Ciri, and Ksenia. And I guess you’ve met Jaskier?”

“Ran into him in Lettenhove. Geralt, I would be happy to see that the girls get something to eat, and a room.”

“You should do that,” Jaskier suggested, before kissing Geralt again. “I think Geralt and I have… some things to, uh, talk about.”

“We do?”

“We do,” Jaskier repeated, dragging Geralt in the direction of the room he and Renfri had already rented for the night.

They stayed a few days longer than Geralt had intended, but Renfri and Jaskier had enough coin, and Ksenia and Jaskier both needed a few days of rest before making the long journey to Kaer Morhen.

Once they left, Ciri and Ksenia, who had been riding double on Roach, took turns riding double with Renfri so that the horses could rotate who was carrying the weight of two. Sometimes Geralt would insist Jaskier ride as well, which was new, he’d never let Jaskier ride Roach before.

It took them weeks to get to Kaer Morhen, but Vesemir was waiting for them when they arrived.

The eldest witcher stared at them, and then he rolled his eyes as he opened the gate to let them in. “The others didn’t bring their packs this year,” he said. “But Lambert, Eskel, and Coen are all here.”

“Thank you,” Geralt said, and with that, he led his family into the home that would always welcome him.

Destiny would bring Yennefer back to them, and time would allow Ksenia a full recovery from her time bedridden by the dragon pox. Yennefer would have to come, someone had to teach Ciri control of her volatile magics.

Vesemir wasn’t going to say anything, but he really hoped it was before Ciri managed to dismantle the entire keep with a single shout.

The other Witchers learned to enjoy having some women in the keep who could remind them to stop eating traveling rations all winter long. It was a reminder, really, that they deserved good things too.

And Jaskier… wasn’t just a bard. He taught Ciri and Ksenia, with Renfri’s help and using Geralt’s long hair, all of the courtly braids he’d learned to make of his sisters’ hair. He also made a mean chicken noodle soup.

He also worked on his newest ballad, an ode to the memory of his sisters.

“Jaskier! You have to play a new ballad! A sad one, those are my favorites,” Ciri begged, one eaving after supper when Geralt’s pack and all the Witchers had gathered in the main living room, in front of the warm fire. She was sitting at Jaskier’s feet, watching out the window as it continued snowing.

Jaskier hummed, and plucked idly at his lute as he considered whether or not he was ready to play the ballad that would bring him closure. “100 years ago, the dragon pox took my little sisters away from me. I haven’t finished it yet, it’s not really telling the story I want to tell.”

“That’s okay,” Ciri said. “I want to hear it anyway.”

Jaskier smiled, sadly. He couldn’t deny her anything, and he didn’t want to.

“At the end of the old road

In a house built on a foundation of strife

There’s too many secrets, too many memories

Too many necessaries after too many centuries

All the things of which it was rife.

Far too much that was all but owed

And yet, a dragon fire breathes new life

Into what first appeared a dying meadow

Being that which is not a rough

But all it ever needed was that new life.”

He plucked a few more chords, but he didn’t resist when Geralt tugged the lute from his idle fingers. “You’ll be happy with it when you finish it, and it’ll bring you the closure you’re still seeking.”

“I’ll help!” Ciri exclaimed. “It’s just a matter of finding the right words, right?”

“Something like that.” He leaned against Geralt, and let himself find comfort in that.

#witcher fanfiction #geraskier #found family

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