#totallynotwitcher!AU

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Something Ends, Something Begins chapter 6/7 - still ‘Bad Witcher AU’. The song at the end is Quedate Aqui from Desperado.

Warnings: none (unless you count friendly ribbing and name-calling, weasels (one particular weasel), some saucy wording, and erotic food. kind of.)

*

The table is set, the white cloth covering it embroidered with shapes of flowers and animals stitched in vibrant colors, each corner adorned by a form of a stag raising on its hind legs with its head bowed, ready to fall with the full weight of its body on a contender. Rabbits and foxes - not one alike any other found on the fabric - peek from behind the green grasses and the bushes full of red and black berries. The smell of burning fat and caramelized sugar grows stronger as Mojmira pours another cup of rowanberry wine on the roast.

Jack tries to slink by Lila unnoticed but she still catches him by his ear as he passes, the disapproving twist of her lips never budging from its place.

"It is your brother's hair-cutting, and you're shirking your responsibilities. Go, help your sister."

"Yes, mother," Jack answers. He reflexively massages his ear for a bit before approaching Mojmira, who gives up her place by the spit to him with hushed words that put blush on his cheeks. He swats at her, and she ducks away with a giggle and a poke of her elbow to his side.

Gabriel, well aware it is his turn to hear admonishments, brings his attention back to Lila and her stern gaze even if his eyes want to linger on Jack for a moment longer.

"Witcher," she acknowledges him with a curt nod, "did you find what you were looking for?"

Did he? Gabriel observes Jack turning the spit, his face and neck still reddish, focused ostensibly on his task, but the half-smile and the twist of his hips tell a whole other story. Lord Murders-A-Lot sits perched on his shoulder with its nose scrunching as it scents the air.

Further in the back, in the shade of a plum tree, Sombra, with the lute hanging off her shoulder, talks with Adan. He postures - does he bark up a wrong tree, for in this one a cat that cares not for the dogs sleeps  - and futilely tries to stay his eyes from her barely fastened shirt.

"I found a thing I never knew to look for."

Lila nods again, the incline of her chin still sharp - but deeper - the rings in her hair tinkle against one another with the movement.

"Take good care of him, witcher. There might not be another one of my son's ilk left in this world."

"You knew?"

"The babe slept dead in my womb only to wake up." Lila twines her fingers together over her stomach. "When he opened his eyes, I saw a boy I'd seen once before, when my mother brought me along to the village's alderman to see about the tylwyth foundlings."

Gabriel remembers it, Jack's small arms wrapped around him, chin propped on his shoulder, and the woman, her rich brown hair freely slipping from behind her back as she leaned down to speak in a language he was yet to learn, with a girl child at her side holding nervously her flowing skirts. Soon after, they were both handed off to the witchers regardless of Jack's promises of the village taking in the cubs even as strange as Gabriel. In retrospection, Jack was the stranger one, with eyes too blue and the complexion that knew no sun. A changeling, if there ever was one.

"And will you give him up to me, just like that?"

Lila scoffs, her lips quirking up almost imperceptibly as she regards him silently, enjoying his jest.

"He isn't mine to give, witcher, no more than the wind swaying the wheat or the songbird's trill."

It is true Jack belongs only to himself - there is no power in the world to force him to do naught but what he wants as long as he is what he is - and it is this fickle nature Gabriel had once dreaded, for no reason other but his own concern.

"He isn't yours to give, but mine to take."

Lila smiles, her forehead bowed; under the lashes, her dark eyes seem so much older, like they'd seen the world turn whichever way one too many a time.

The eyes of a sorceress.

Gabriel glances to the forest. No wonder she and hers were spared from the scourings.

"Come, witcher, sit, for today is the time of revelry, and you are our honored guest," Lila directs him to the table with a motion of her hand, turning already as if she considers their chat finished. Gabriel nods. The contract has been fulfilled. The fate won't be denied.

Sombra slipping into place by his side disperses those thoughts.

"Melitele's nips, am I hungry," she mutters and stretches vicariously before she switches her attention from the table to him, fingers idly tracing the line of her collarbone. "You look younger."

"I feel older."

"You're just tired."

"I don't tire," Gabriel counters, but Sombra smirks and pats her chest above her heart.

"You're as stubborn as I am, but take it from someone with more experience than you, just let yourself feel, let him take care of you."

"Like Amelie had of you?" The bait is tempered by the name, one of the many small concessions Gabriel made over the years, and the lines of Sombra's face soften into a shy expression of contentment.

"Yes."

"Have you...?"

"He's been... most accommodating."

Gabriel merely nods, his attention stolen for a moment by the commotion Jack and Mojmira make, both laughing as they try to take the roast off the spit while struggling to keep it in one piece, broken up only by Lila showing up to help.

"How is she?" He acquiesces, finally.

"Better than ever." Sombra quietens, an unguarded smile flickers across her lips. "Thank you. For asking."

They spend minutes in shared silence, neither wanting to break the moment of understanding - the interruption comes from Wrenund's booming laughter from the inside of the house. The man himself appears in the doorframe shortly after, leading Nielub in front of him with his hand on the boy's shoulder; they're both dressed in festive linen shirts bleached impossibly white, with cuffs and collars embroidered with red thread in a simple pattern. Gabriel finds he can't not smile at the boy's almost unrestrained energy, his wide eyes shining with excitement while he struggles to act solemn even if the day is one of celebration.

"Should I be the good godmother,” Sombra whispers, “or the spurned sorceress?"

"The versemonger.”

"Ah, so be it." She braces her elbow on Gabriel's shoulder and leans against his side. They both watch Nielub sit on the prepared stool - his legs bounce up and down, and he grips the wood of the seat hard enough for the color to leave his fingers. Wernund looks to his wife, who now stands together with Mojmira a few steps away. She nods, and Adan brings forward a jug of water, Jack walks behind him with shears in his hands.

"Nielub, my son, today, you become a man." Wernund gently tilts the boy's head back. With barely a trickle of water, he soaks Nielub's hair through and slicks them to his head before exchanging the jug for the shears. The sound of metal grazing on metal and hair being cut fills the sudden silence even the birds don't dare to disrupt. In the fields, cicadas sing.

Each lock shorn, a piece of childhood shed for the new responsibilities. Wernund works with gravity and care - and when he's finished, and Jack retrieves the shears, he stands in front of his son, urging him to stand up too.

"Today, you leave your child name behind. It has served its purpose and protected you. From now on, you are Woj, and you will be as strong as your name, you will be strong for your family, and no evil will ever best you."

Nielub - now Woj - smiles wide and throws his hands around Wernund's waist in an exuberant hug.

Jack thrusts the shears at Adan while giving him a determined look; Adan accepts them, rolls his eyes at Jack's back as he retreats towards the table in a hurry. Lila and Mojmira both take their turn to hold Woj close for a fleeting moment, whisper secret silent words to him.

This time, Gabriel's medallion stirs under the cloth of his shirt, the movement barely perceptible, but it's there: a relief, grounding him in the feeling of reality, the last vestiges of doubt dissipating like tendrils of morning mist blown away by the noonday breeze. Sombra notices, too, her face lighting up with well-hidden interest, and her arm shifting against his side - until the short reverie is broken by Jack planting the whole roast on a wooden board in the middle of the table before he unceremoniously forces himself between them.

Living. Breathing. Moving not unlike a drop of quicksilver in a juggled vial.

"Away with your bony elbows, ungulate," Sombra chastises him as she makes space. "One could cut jewels on your hips."

"I'm still growing!"

"The wrong way around."

"The right way," Jack pouts. His arm sneaks around Gabriel's neck, palm hanging loosely over his shoulder, fingertips brushing against the fabric. Gabriel covers Jack's hand with his own, his thumb pressing slow circles into warm skin. "You just wait, I'll show you."

"Surely, I am scared out of my wits."

"Of course, you are, you third-rate lute-ruining bard. After all, I am me," Jack pulls her close with his other hand and presses a heartfelt kiss to her temple, at which she laughs, pushing him jokingly away.

"Piss off, ungulate," Sombra murmurs with no malice, "or I'll have you stuffed and mounted.”

"The horror. Just promise you won't be fucking anyone on my back, I've heard stories, you know."

"Melitele's holy teats!" Sombra moans, looking to the sky, and Jack, taking the advantage of her indignation, turns to Gabriel to sneak a quick chaste kiss to his lips.

Gabriel smiles against his mouth, the whispered 'later, little cub' coiling warmly behind his ribs even as Jack backs off slightly, eyes cast down but not really, not a shy or proper bone in his body, nor in the toothy grin languishing on his face.

"So, who's hungry?"

In an answer, Gabriel's stomach rumbles with anticipation.

"Shouldn't we wait...?"

But Jack is up and hunched over the table with the knife in his hand, fingers pressing down on the roast as he masterfully carves out thick slices of the meat bleeding sweet-smelling juices. Just in time, too, for the whole family to approach - Woj led to the seat of honor at the head of the table, Wernund at his right and Lila on his left - Adan and Mojmira bring the bread and the wine before settling down, her giggling and him merely rolling his eyes in kind. They scuffle for a moment under the table, Mojmira emerging with a triumphant smirk and Adan giving up with a pained hiss, his palms raised in an admission of defeat - yet he still gives Jack a knowing look before Lord Murders-A-Lot scurries up the tablecloth to chitter at him. Almost swatted away in return, the weasel runs into Jack's waiting palm, and then up the length of his arm, to perch on Jack's shoulder shortly before it settles pressed against his neck.

"You dare to raise a hand to my cherished retainer?" Jack mock-challenges Adan.

"'Tis a foul beast you entertain at your court," Adan plays along, eyes narrowed with a smirk. "Good the vatt'ghern has arrived to slay the bloodthirsty creature."

"Only if you have the coin, good sir, half upfront." Gabriel chuckles, and Jack collapses into a fit of giggles. Mojmira shushes them and pointedly looks to the head of the table.

Woj, with his father's guidance, picks a loaf of bread and breaks it in half. The first piece he offers to Wernund, the other to Lila; repeats until every guest at the table has their own piece of bread.

"I'm hungry!" He declares with unbidden enthusiasm - Adan toasts to it with his cup and a holler of 'hear, hear'. Gabriel hardly notices the meat making its way to his bowl in the sudden boom of liveliness - Jack and Sombra argue loudly over some insignificant trifle. Adan takes sides and Mojmira laughs unbidden before dishing out a scathing remark Sombra takes with no grace whatsoever, sputtering and tongue-tied for once - but that might be the doing of Mojmira’s bodice inconspicuously slipping lower.

Life goes on, regardless.

"Little cub," Jack draws his attention with a whisper, his eyes almost black in the most human way, cheeks flush with rowanberry wine as are his lips - a droplet of it in the corner of his mouth; Gabriel wonders if it would be sweeter if tasted in a kiss, almost succumbs. Jack presses a cut morsel into his mouth; fingers brush against his teeth and tongue, slip out and trace his jaw, stop at his neck, press on the pulse of his heart in a deliberate caress. "Eat. And drink. You are a guest at my feast, too, cub."

Gabriel chews on the meat, slowly. The roast is surprisingly succulent, meat aged even if the game was caught yesterday, with a hint of bitterness broken by the juices, and chased by the tang of the wine.

"Good," Jack murmurs and offers another bite with his fingers.

The conversations flow around them as if no-one takes notice, Jack's eyes imperceptibly darker - a shadow clinging to his irises - his smile light and possessive, like nature reclaiming the once carved out of it domicile, embracing it back after the time of long separation. Which is, probably, the truth of it, on some level of an abstract interpretation. Gabriel does not mind, for it is the way Jack is and loves - and he wouldn't have it any other way, not since the moment he had asked a god to step out of his forest domain, foolish as he was then.

Banishing the traitorous doubting thoughts, he settles into the quiet comfort of being cared for, unfamiliar and foreign after being denied it for years. They will be back, he knows, the whispers of disbelief questioning his own sanity - but for now, Jack straddles his lap. And the wine Gabriel was right about. It is sweeter when drunk from the offered lips, the taste of it mingling with the living chaos.

Before she disappears from their side, Sombra glances fondly at him over Jack's shoulder. A shape of a magic-wrought creature hovers above her stretched-out palm. The light weaves into a dragonlike form that takes flight as soon as it's finished - joined soon by others of its ilk in a slow dance.

Woj chases after the illusions with laughter, enchanted both by the show and the wine flushing his face with a blush. Sombra smiles as she joins him in the play. A moment later, horseback knights woven with magic enter the fray.

Jack untangles his fingers from Gabriel's hair and slips into space she's left behind - his palm still rests on Gabriel's thigh, light and warm - and rejoins the conversation as if he's never abandoned it. Gabriel lets it flow around him, sipping on his drink. The sun starts to dip and the boy, tired out by the playtime, naps with his head on his mother's breast. Jack gives up his seat to Sombra and her lute, a fleeting touch sliding down Gabriel's back before he leaves.

Mojmira and Adan light the torches, Jack brings cold fish in a still crisp batter and, somehow, more of the wine. Gabriel wonders if Lila brews that much of it - or is it only for the festivities - or maybe there is an else thing afoot, and if Sombra might glean the secret to it.

The first notes of the lute sound over the cicada song that grows steadily in volume.

Jack unceremoniously deposits himself sideways in Gabriel's lap, with a full cup in his hand he tosses off as soon as Gabriel puts an arm around his waist to keep him stable and in place.

"I do think, the day calls for the most splendid songs," Sombra strikes a chord, a devilish smirk on her lips, and Jack almost lunges at her with a squawk - if not for Gabriel's grip over his stomach.

"Don't you dare, witch!" Jack sputters.

"Oh, but I do dare, ungulate, it’s the least you deserve!"

She continues the melody in spite of Jack spitting and hissing like a cat at a witcher. Gabriel chuckles over the comparison before he presses another cup into Jack's palm and feels him capitulate in time for Sombra to start the song not fit for any place other than a tavern, or a brothel.

"Please, just kill me," Jack whines with his face buried in the crook of Gabriel's neck when everyone at the table seems to know some semblance of the words that go with the tune, snorts angrily at the final chorus of 'Jack the Stag, he's never going to leave a lass unsatisfied'. "I demand reparations, for my slandered reputation."

"If you, maybe, had a reputation first, to slander," Sombra waves him off before starting on another song.

"See, the next time? I'll leave you hanging up there in some tree, just so you know, so you can reap what you sow."

"Cry me a river, ungulate."

Hiding under Gabriel's chin and with his fingers kneading into Gabriel's sides, Jack whines about ungrateful traitorous witches - it's all too familiar, as if nothing has ever broken this idyll up - and for this, Gabriel is thankful.

Soon, Lila retires, with Woj barely conscious in her arms mumbling sleepily as she carries him into the house, and Wernund follows, leaving the night to the youth, as he says, his old bones needing their full night's rest.

Sombra switches up her repertoire for an even raunchier one, perfectly happy to just entertain them all with a song between the sips of the wine Jack, despite his words, feeds to her to keep her throat wet. Her eyes follow Mojmira's silhouette with unbidden appreciation when she leaves - and then with pure adoration when she comes back with two more pitchers.

Somehow, Adan and Jack get into a drinking contest, each trying to drink the other one under the table in the shortest time possible, and, inexplicably, Gabriel finds his cup always full when he brings it to his lips, even after Jack bumps into it with his elbow and spills all. The effect is not a too-long wait away, Aden lies braced on the table, with his head buried in his arms, half-awake and clutching at the empty earthen jug.

"And don't ask me if I love you, don't you worry about what I think," Sombra hits low mournful notes on her lute.

Jack slips off his lap and Gabriel snatches his hand before he has a sliver of a chance to disappear; Jack meets his eyes with a demure look and fingers wrapping around Gabriel's own wrist as he pulls him off the bench.

"Just know I'm yours in my own way," Sombra sings. And Gabriel knows he's a sacrificial lamb led to its slaughter under the full moon - led past the dying torches - past the threshold of the barn he steps over out of his own unprompted volition. "But when I want to be your dream, I won't be satisfied with just your kisses."

[gyromitra-esculenta]

in theory, six sentence sunday. if i treat dialogue as one sentence. also, food porn murder-deer witcher au.

*

"Little cub," Jack draws his attention with a whisper, his eyes almost black in the most human way, cheeks flush with rowanberry wine as are his lips - a droplet of it in the corner of his mouth; Gabriel wonders if it would be sweeter if tasted in a kiss, almost succumbs.

Jack presses a cut morsel into his mouth; fingers brush against his teeth and tongue, slip out and trace his jaw, stop at his neck, press on the pulse of his heart in a deliberate caress. "Eat. And drink. You are a guest at my feast, too, cub."

He chews on the meat, slowly. The roast is surprisingly succulent, meat aged even if the game was caught yesterday, with a hint of bitterness tempered by the juices, and chased by the tang of the wine.

"Good," Jack murmurs and offers another bite with his fingers.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

this is slowly shaping to be a chapter as long as the whole rest of the fic, i guess slightly raunchy.

*

For a blink of an eye, the dark of the bottomless desert wells bleeds into the blue of a mid-day sky, lingers at its edges in swirling patterns and pulls at the thing inside Gabriel that weaves the seeping shadows in his skin - the thing he would best leave buried and forgotten. But Jack whispers 'me caen'd am te' and, even drenched in blood and with a name that strikes fear, Gabriel cannot bring himself to care. He moves, unhurried, claws tangled in Jack's hair, listening to all the little sounds Jack makes as he clings to his neck with his other hand.

It's only when the nails leave marks that will take time to fade on his back, that he pauses; feverishly, Jack calls out for him not to stop - shameless as he is on Gabriel's cock for a creature with no interest in the act itself but for a passing curiosity. Locked in his place and whining, he makes for a perfect picture of needy debauchery, and Gabriel notes absentmindedly to ask some other time - now he moves in slow deep strokes until the tension is almost unbearable and the legs around his waist try to drive his breath away.

Sharp teeth bite into his shoulder and draw blood when Jack comes untouched.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

ah, well, wip wednesday. so, witcher au.

*

It is true Jack belongs only to himself - there is no power in the world to force him to do naught but what he wants as long as he is what he is - and it is this fickle nature Gabriel had once dreaded, for no reason but his own concern.

"He isn't yours to give, but mine to take."

Lila smiles, her forehead bowed; under the lashes her dark eyes seem so much older, like they'd seen the world turn whichever way too many times.

The eyes of a sorceress.

He glances to the forest, no wonder she and hers were spared from the scourings.

"Come, witcher, sit, for today is time of revelry, and you are our honored guest."

[gyromitra-esculenta]

The penultimate chapter for Something Ends, Something Begins - still ‘Bad Witcher AU’. The song sung in the beginning is Lament of Orpheus by Darren Korb.

Warnings: none (unless you count friendly ribbing and calling names, weasels (one particular weasel)). 

Gabriel wakes up alone and with the aftertaste of the chaos on his tongue. From the outside, a melody plucked on lute's strings floats. Absentmindedly, he picks straw from his hair and rebinds it in a low-hanging ponytail. Custom calls for it to be shorn with the mourning ended but he is hesitant, not willing to make his mind up yet – what is the point of keeping the customs he does not know the true weight of?

He loosens the buckles and clasps of the armor, the particular feeling of having slept in it fading – the drops of dried blood on it reassuring. Soon, the brassards join the chest piece on the blankets, and Gabriel turns his attention to the bags showing obvious signs of having been tampered with, obviously so. A fresh shirt, although wrinkled, hangs above them, thrown haphazardly over the wooden wall of the box. He runs his fingers against the dyed cloth, the weave tight and simple, the stitching reinforced with strips of cured leather.

Outside, a distinct voice meandering between harmony and dissonance carries a maudlin melody.

"Hear, o gods, my desperate plea, to see my love beside me."

He changes, listening to the song and wondering over its rhyme, or maybe he's trying to look too deep into it, and the words of warning to not mistake the stars for their reflection on the surface of the water come to mind.

"Sunk below the mortal sea her anchor weighs upon me."

Still, it's one of those songs performed when drunks had either slipped under the tables or turned contemplative – and when the brawls and the boasts transformed into the philosophies discussed over the cups of mead and dirty tables.

"Fasten her tether unto me that she may rise to sail free."

Gabriel steps out into the open. The sun pleasantly warms his skin, the smell of meat roasted with juniper and rowanberry wine wafts on the air.

"Don't look back," Sombra holds the melody on her tongue, the words mingling fluidly together into one flowing utterance. She puts her palm across the strings of the lute held in her lap, a fleeting smile on her lips. By her side, with his legs crossed, sits Jack, looking up with an expression equal parts fond, apologetic, and the kind a mischievous kid caught stealing apples might wear.

"I was looking for clean clothes for you, and you had her crystal at the bottom of one bag, so I thought..."

"...you'd call me in the middle of the night?" Sombra snorts.

"It was an hour before noon, witch."

"The middle of the night, as I said, you incorrigible forest pest."

"Oh, excuse me, your witchness, I forgot about your never-ending moral hangover."

"Rich, coming from an ungulate," Sombra tries to sound offended but her face betrays her with how red-rimmed her eyes still are, and her hair curl around her cheek naturally, the coiffure forwent. The same with her garments, the frilly shirt with several laces undone and breeches more akin to something gathered at a moment's notice in a frantic hurry. Gabriel smiles, coming closer, beckoned with Jack's outstretched hand.

"It's not me with a weasel betwixt my tits."

"He likes it there because there is something he can lie betwixt, warm and soft, and voluminous."

"I'm still growing so that's uncalled for," Jack gives her a look full of almost genuine hurt as he pulls Gabriel down to the ground to rest between his now uncrossed legs.

Gabriel lets himself be guided and falls with his back against Jack's chest, different yet so familiar – arms circling his waist and the chin wedged over his shoulder as Jack laughs with a huff. "Oof, you're heavy now, cub."

"At least, we're past the puberty," Sombra smiles indulgently.

"Don't get me started, witch, the pimples were the least of my worries, the wenches are like bloodhounds after a wounded stag," Jack jests with a note of challenge in his tone. Sombra brushes her fingers against the strings, wresting a whimsical accord out of the lute.

"Forgive me for having no sympathy, ungulate. Now," she cocks her head, mischief in her gaze, "what are your plans?"

"I was thinking, I've never been to Skellige, little cub."

"Skellige?" Gabriel questions, shifting somewhat. "Why Skellige?"

"Oh," Jack moves one hand to his hair and picks at the stray blade of straw Gabriel must have missed earlier, "lots of druids to piss off, and we might still get there for the sirens’ nesting period, I hear they're testy and irritable then, more than usual."

"I'll give you two months and meet you at Bremervoord. I'm booking the passage because I absolutely do not trust you both not to choose a hole-ridden tub that will sink if the wave rides higher than a hem of priestess' skirt," Sombra clicks her tongue at the end.

"Three months."

She stares at Gabriel, at first incredulous, then her expression morphs into a sly look unbefitting her lousy appearance.

"Yes, yes, a vast quantity of time to make up for, indeed, I do feel a ballad calling to me."

"No," Gabriel sighs, closing his eyes. “No ballads..."

"Yes, absolutely no ballads, I am still very much traumatized by your appalling rhymester vagaries," Jack pitches in his two crowns and Sombra is opening her mouth to object already.

"We have to drop by the stronghold to pick something up."

"We do?" Jack sounds surprised and Gabriel feels his chin shifting on his shoulder – imagining the inquisitive tilt of the head he needs not to see to know well.

"Your swords."

"You kept them."

"Of course I did. They were-are good swords," he catches himself too late. Only now, Gabriel notices how profound the shift from 'was' to 'is' is - it's one thing to believe this reality, and another to accommodate it and let it redefine the pain and the loneliness, and finally the acceptance, in the years before – and some surprise resentment lingers.

He's reminded of how everything – and nothing at all – had changed after he had acquiesced to Jack's attentions for the first time.

"I need a leak." Sombra pulls herself up, leaving the lute on the ground. "Don't wait for me," she adds before briskly moving to the fence and vaulting over it. Strangely, no retort is coming from Jack, and Gabriel notices the tears when a brush of the lips on his cheek smears the moisture. How kind of her to leave.

"I'm sorry, cub. I am," Jack whispers, "truly, terribly, horribly sorry, for all. For everything. I could feel you, know that you are out there, but the knowledge of seeing you was beyond my grasp," he muses, his palm rising to Gabriel's other cheek. "The flower weaves its protections, even from me, so I could only wait for you to come to me until I could go to you myself."

"Your farewells."

"Today, the same as Nielub's hair-cutting, but it doesn't mean I have to leave in the evening," Jack sighs, fingers playing with Gabriel's hair again, twirling the loose strands with a doting tempo. "Tomorrow's not too late, and neither too early."

It strikes him that maybe Jack does not want to leave having known family life now, something he would have not experienced before. Something of the thought must reflect in him because Jack chuckles and nuzzles his cheek with his nose before speaking again.

"It's my time to leave, with you, cub. You're all I need, and want," he sighs. "It won't be the easiest, I did get used to this kind of existence, but... I didn't know better, it was wrong of me to take them from you."

"You're keeping them safe for me."

"Always will."

The irony of 'I didn't know better' does not elude Gabriel; having his own words turned against him in a strange twist brings comfort rather than uneasiness – two admissions of guilt neither of them faults the other for.

"It's enough, knowing they are with you."

He wants to add his own apology but the unexpected screech has him looking at the source: Sombra frantically trying to wriggle her hand into her shirt from the top.

"Watch the claws, you furry Nilfgaardian bastard! Out! Out!"

"I think that's our cue, hm, cub?"

"Did you...?"

"I'd never. He just got bored," Jack chuckles as Sombra turns twice on the spot unsuccessfully attempting to halt with her hands the bump moving under the cloth, the weasel each time squeezing under or between her palms.

"Your whore mother of..."

"Murder mother!" Jack quips, slipping away from behind Gabriel. "Just stand still."

"The demon has the claws in my belly," Sombra hisses, arms outstretched and held away from her sides. "Get it out. Now. Or there will be a fried weasel appetizer."

"You wouldn't," Jack puts a palm against his chest with a horrified gasp, stopping just before her and leaning down. "Lord Murders-A-Lot does not deserve such a barbaric end!"

"Or a ballad."

"Now, this is a fate worse than death."

He grabs Sombra's shirt and pulls the bottom out of her britches, catching the falling weasel with his other hand. Lord Murders-A-Lot scurries up his arm with a chirp and briefly nibbles on his ear.

"I'm scratched all over. Devil, not a weasel."

"All weasels are devils."

As Jack pets the Lord, Gabriel feels himself slipping and falling back into the rhythm of it, the equilibrium snapping into place like the last piece of an astrolabe tracking the movement of the spheres.

"Just don't get him started."

"You're just jealous of my wee murder ribbon."

"I don't get his obsession with weasels," Sombra mutters, stuffing her shirt back where it belongs before she leans down for her lute.

"Neither do I?" Gabriel chuckles looking to Jack who smiles softly - his gaze warm and content, and something more elusive swirling behind it.

"C'mon," he beckons with his head, offering his hand to Gabriel, "it's about to start, would be rude to keep everyone waiting, wouldn't it?"

"It would." Gabriel accepts and grips his palm, pulling himself up and stumbling Jack for a moment – at first trying to steal a quick kiss but losing himself in it amidst the laughter.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

wip wednesday, witcher au. yep, the unicorn joke won’t die, either.

*

This time, Gabriel's medallion stirs under the cloth of his shirt, the movement barely perceptible, but it's there: a relief, grounding him in the feeling of reality, the last vestiges of doubt dissipating like tendrils of morning mist blown away by the noonday breeze. Sombra notices, too, her face lighting up with well-hidden interest, and her arm shifting against his side - until the short reverie is broken by Jack planting the whole roast on a wooden board in the middle of the table before he unceremoniously forces himself between them.

Living. Breathing. Moving not unlike a drop of quicksilver in a juggled vial.

"Away with your bony elbows, ungulate," Sombra chastises him as she makes space. "One could cut jewels on your hips."

"I'm still growing!"

"The wrong way around."

"The right way," Jack pouts. His arm sneaks around Gabriel's neck, palm hanging loosely over his shoulder, fingertips brushing against the fabric. Gabriel covers Jack's hand with his own, his thumb pressing slow circles into warm skin. "You just wait, I'll show you."

"Surely, I am scared out of my wits."

"Of course, you are, you third-rate lute-ruining bard, after all I am me," Jack pulls her close and presses a heartfelt kiss to her temple, at which she laughs, pushing him jokingly away.

"Piss off, ungulate," Sombra murmurs with no malice, "or I'll have you stuffed and mounted.”

"The horror. Just promise you won't be fucking anyone on my back, I've heard stories, you know."

"Melitele's holy teats!" Sombra moans, looking to the sky, and Jack, taking the advantage of her indignation, turns to Gabriel to sneak a quick chaste kiss to his lips. Gabriel smiles against his mouth, the whispered 'later, little cub' coiling warmly behind his ribs even as Jack backs off slightly, eyes cast down but not really, not a shy or proper bone in his body, nor in the toothy grin languishing on his face.

"So, who's hungry?"

[gyromitra-esculenta]

‘Jack the Stag, and Other Works Penned by the Esteemed Songstress Sombra’. It’s an inside joke, probably. Kind of Part 4 tumblr edition. Mostly unedited. Personally, I’m liking this story more and more.

Otherwise: a bad Witcher AU but not because of the TV series (rest is somewhere here either under totally not witcher au or murder-deer tag)..

Warnings: I have no idea, sexy-times? Idiots? Lots of confusion?

*

It's only natural for Gabriel to tug on Jack's hair to pull him down until their lips meet and he coaxes the mouth open with his tongue, slow and unbothered - nothing to wax poetic about the kiss itself - but there is something zesty to the flavor, and he knows it's magic. He is not the one for flowery words - it's been always Jack's domain - but it's pure unbridled chaos burning bright he savors, and he wonders if what Jack tastes himself as his eyes flutter closed are bitter remnants of the tincture on his own tongue. Just a kiss, nothing special

He breaks it off, not really to breathe but rather to admire the content expression Jack sports.

"How's that for a proper kiss?"

"I think I should tire myself more often if that's what waiting for me then," Jack licks his lips, a meticulous and deliberate affair, almost teasing. Gabriel moves to repeat only to be stopped by the light but insistent press of the hand on his chest and he looks into now somber face. "Do not force yourself any more for my sake, little cub," Jack speaks with a note of melancholy. "You do not lie with menfolk."

If Gabriel had ever needed any proof of Jack honoring the privacy of his mind, this was it - or maybe the testament to Jack's presumed duplicitousness putting to shame any given scheme of the Lodge, if he weren't too impulsive for any plot of his to last for more than few days. So he just laughs, bumping his head against the ground, enjoying the confusion flitting across Jack's face as he stares him down.

"I didn't get the impression... it is a laughing matter, cub?" He asks in a strangely conflicted voice, at which Gabriel can only laugh more.

"No. No, it isn't," Gabriel chuckles. "But you know what's the laughing matter? Your face."

"Not very nice, little cub," Jack huffs, still obviously lost, and Gabriel raises his palm to his cheek to cup it - mindful of the cut.

"I don't fuck men because of you."

"I fail to see how that pertains to..."

"Bloede Arse," Gabriel grins and unbalances him with a push, easy with Jack only keeping his weight on one elbow, and rolls, landing on top of him - which doesn't go at all according to the plan judging first by the hiss, and then a squeal.

"Sorry. Forgot about the..."

"Nature's all fun and things," Jack shifts uncomfortably under him with his face scrunched in vexation, "until you've got a pinecone up your asscrack."

"What?"

"Just move, cub, now."

And Gabriel loses it again, laughing with his face buried in his neck

"I'm serious! Get off!" Jack swats at his head with the free hand. "I'll fucking bite you!"

"Sorry, sorry, just..."

Gabriel backs off and sits up, observing as Jack moves too -wincing and awkwardly leaning to the side, until he reaches back to dig out the offending pinecone.

Which is no pinecone at all, only the most curiously shaped stone, porous, full of holes and dimples, with surface strangely polished.

"Oh," Jack clicks his tongue, "it's starmetal."

Gabriel may as well embrace the fact the world itself, and all the powers that be, conspire against him in his moment of vulnerability - and that moment might be lost.

"How would you even know, you never paid any attention to those lessons?"

"Because you could use a new sword, so I'd been looking out for it." Jack turns the lump in his fingers.

Or not.

He catches Jack's wrist and pulls him close.

"N'te dice'en an me a'baethe, en'ca minne." Seeing the blue eyes widen for a heartbeat and a breath before Jack turns his face away...

"Thaess aep widenn an. Your pronunciation is still as bad as the first time you'd tried to speak."

"Me thaess aen a'baeth."

"Ire tedd, rhenaweddin."

Jack shies away, as if wanting and having are irreconcilable concepts suddenly, but Gabriel's not letting him go, not now, not yet. He tips Jack's chin up and brushes his thumb against the lower lip.

"Que tedd, allder nawr?"

Ever so slow and halting every other moment not unlike a wild animal waiting to be spooked and take off back into the woods, Jack leans in with his head tipped to the right. At first, it's a graze of his breath, just before he presses his lips to Gabriel's smiling mouth.

He allows Jack to take the charge, and the kiss is many small kisses gaining in conviction with each successive one until Jack is straddling Gabriel's legs with fingers threaded into his hair, trying to draw him closer into the embrace. The muscles under Gabriel's palms resting on his back shift and twist as pure want seeps into the kiss with each grain of quartz falling somewhere in an invisible hourglass.

This time it is the need for breath that makes Gabriel push back.

"Voe'rle, en'ca minne."

A flicker of confusion flits over Jack's flushed with blood face before he chuckles.

"I believe, little cub," he whispers, "that the word you're looking for is neén'le, because you told me to stop moving."

"Just need to breathe before I drown."

"Hush. Let me enjoy this."

He has a demure look to him, one Gabriel had only seen before on sorceresses, or strumpets seeing an absurdly generous pay in their immediate future - occasionally on Sombra when she was determined to get under some wench's skirts - but undercut with an edge of authority. He gives in to the insistent hand on his collarbone and lets himself fall back into the blankets. Jack, with his spine bending in a flowing curve, now straddling his hips, stares at him - there is a single-minded commitment in his eyes.

"Fuck," Gabriel utters.

"That's the idea." The voice he is not sure comes from Jack or the grove wraps around and curls in his ears as Jack leans in putting his lips just below his jaw, exactly where he feels the blood thumping under the skin, and bites lightly with teeth that feel too sharp to be human. It morphs into an open-mouthed kiss moving slowly down, and then another, and another, sometimes punctuated with a little nip - each prying a subdued hiss from Gabriel - and maybe he should have taken the chance to bathe, the overly curious dryads notwithstanding. At least, as a basic courtesy, even if Jack does not seem to give a damn about it leaving a trail of kisses on his stomach as Gabriel's palms slip from his shoulders to comb through his hair. 'Fuck' is an understatement, but that's more or less the only comment he has.

The reality of the situation sinks in with fingers tugging at the hem of his pants, and the thought that maybe this isn't the best idea he's ever had filters in, which - in the grander scheme of things - somehow fits neatly into the whole puzzle of whatever this is. Because the worst of it was that not only Jack had always been full of bad ideas himself, but he also enthusiastically went along with any bad ideas Gabriel ever had on his own - and even before he goes anywhere with those deliberations the belt is off, and gone. The same goes for the laces, figuratively, and he tenses, probably pulling too hard on the hair he grips between his fingers, curiously angry over the question where and when - and from whom - did Jack learn that particular thing? But then there's too much to feel and not enough to think about, and there's only so little Gabriel can focus on with Jack's mouth on him.

Later, Jack drapes all over him, nosing at his neck, and Gabriel knows the things will change, they have to, and he dreads it. But Jack turns his head to the side with a palm on his cheek, and, Melitele, his eyes are as blue as the mid-day sky. His lips, red and swollen, part with a smile and a whisper.

"Me esseath."

Again, Gabriel traces their graceful arch with his thumb before he takes the plunge.

"Eich'en a'bleth essea."

[gyromitra-esculenta]

WIP bad witcher AU, or Something Begins :D for Wednesday.

Gabriel wakes up alone and with the tingling of the chaos on his tongue. From the outside, a melody plucked on lute's strings floats.

Absentmindedly, he picks straw from his head, rebinds his hair in a low-hanging ponytail. The custom calls for it to be shorn with the mourning ended. He is hesitant, not willing to make his mind up on it yet - what is the point of keeping the customs he does not know the true weight of?

He loosens the buckles and clasps of the armor, the particular feeling of having slept in it fading, and drops of dried blood on it reassuring. Soon, the brassards join the chest piece on the blankets, and Gabriel turns his attention to the bags that show signs of having been tampered with, quite obviously so even. A fresh shirt, although wrinkled, hangs above them - thrown haphazardly over the wooden wall of the box. He slides his fingers over the dyed cloth, the weave tight and simple, the stitching reinforced with cured leather.

Outside, a distinct voice meandering between harmony and dissonance carries a maudlin melody.

"Hear, o gods, my desperate plea, to see my love beside me."

He changes, listening to the song and wondering over its rhyme - or maybe he's trying to look too deep into it, and the words warning of mistaking the stars for their reflection on the surface of the water come to mind.

"Sunk below the mortal sea her anchor weighs upon me."

Still, it's one of those songs performed when drunks either slipped under the benches or turned contemplative, and when brawls and boasts transformed into philosophies discussed over the cups of mead and dirty tables in the small hours of the morning.

"Fasten her tether unto me that she may rise to sail free."

Gabriel steps out into the open. The sun pleasantly warms his skin, the smell of meat roasted with juniper and rowanberry wine wafts on the air.

"Don't look back," Sombra holds the melody on her tongue, the words mingling fluidly together into one flowing utterance. She puts her palm across the strings of the lute held in her lap with a smile on her lips.

The song Sombra sings:

[gyromitra-esculenta]

‘Jack the Stag, and Other Works Penned by the Esteemed Songstress Sombra’. It’s an inside joke, probably. Kind of Part 3. Unedited. Personally, I’m liking this story more and more.

Otherwise: a bad Witcher AU but not because of the TV series (rest is somewhere here either under totally not witcher au or murder-deer tag)..

Warnings: blood, animal death (implied but not really), Jack has a thing against dryads only he does not, discussions of the price. Bad puns. (also, we are nearing towards one of the resolutions \o/)

*

Gabriel broods foregoing any further attempts at having a conversation and this time he's thankful for Jack ignoring him - until the brief vibration of the medallion when they pass through the boundary of the dryad grove brings him out of the dark reverie.

The air Gabriel inhales is rich with the smell of berries and coniferous trees, the light comes from no obvious source, and in front of him Jack suddenly whips back as an arrow flies past him.

"Oi! You stupid bitches," he screams in retaliation, "at least hit or miss proper!"

True to his words, some blood trickles down from the gash on his arm, and Jack almost dives forward to evade the other arrows fired at him while still shouting profanities, at least until a sort of a reverent whisper carries on the breeze as dryads emerge from their hiding spots.

"Wasn't that hard, was it now? I want to speak to your tree-mother." Jack strides forward, ignoring the way the dryads congregate around and try to touch him in passing - which absolutely has nothing to do with the patch of blooming flowers springing up from the bloodied stone.

Only it does have everything to do with it, and Gabriel pauses on the way to pick two of the cornflowers not sure what he intends them for. When he catches up, Jack sits in the grass surrounded by a circle of the adoring dryads responding to his every question.

He finds a spot away from them but close enough to hear the indistinct chatter, some of Jack's words carrying over the murmur of the other voices.

Gabriel turns the flowers in his hand, a gesture to keep himself busy paying only the nominal attention to his surroundings.

The touch sliding over his shoulder and fingers wedging below the hardened leather comes as a surprise. He glances at the dryad tilting her head now at him, her eyes half-lidded and parted lips stretching in a little smile. Gabriel just raises his eyebrows as she moves closer.

Soon, her arms circle his neck and she almost sits on his legs.

"Hands off and where I can see them, you tree harlot," Jack almost snarls from where he stands above her and the dryad shies away with haste, coy and supplicant, stealing glances and them both. "Scram! Now!"

"Fucking tree whores thinking they can touch anything they want only because they want to!"

Gabriel slips the flowers behind the pack as Jack sinks to the ground next to him, still ranting, keeping his eyes steady on the visibly pouting dryad slinking back to her sisters.

"The pond is there, you need to clean yourself so I can dress your back properly."

This grabs Jack's attention and he tries for the same sultry expression the offending dryad wore on her face. It's ridiculous, even without the dried insect viscera in his hair.

"I remember someone offering to wash my back in exchange for his sword?"

"Not like this. I'm serious," Gabriel adds seeing Jack bat his eyes, adding whole layers of absurdity to his attempt to act seductive. "Stop it, you look about as captivating as Sombra put in a gown."

"There's really no making you happy, is there?"

"I'll be happy when your back is taken care of." He nudges Jack's arm with his hand. "C'mon. You can tell me all in the meantime."

"All?" There's a flicker of darkness swiping over the blue and white of his eyes and Jack smiles.

Gabriel doesn't deign to answer and points in the direction of the pond, watching Jack get up with a groan and plod to the bank where he proceeds to make a spectacle out of losing his boots and pants. Several of the dryads hiding in the reeds are certainly appreciative of it.

"Get into the water, no stalling," Gabriel mutters gutting the bag to find everything he needs. Truth be told, he could use a bath too but he's not going to risk it, especially not with the same dryad slowly inching closer. "Vatt'ghern. Infertile," he tells her in low voice.

Any pretense of interest she might have carried is immediately extinguished by an expression bordering on offended. The scoff coming from her is drowned by the sound of water splashing and a scream.

"Melitele's tits, it stings!"

"And if you don't do it, it will get worse!"

"I'd rather sleep in an ant nest!" Jack sputters between dunking himself under surface and vigorously rubbing his hair to get the crusted remnants of the centipede out of it. "Or have my mouth stung by a bee!"

"Do I want to know?"

"No. It was embarrassing, the honey didn't help."

The image of Jack with his lips all swollen and puffy is enough to elicit a snort out of him. When he looks up, Jack's staring back at him from the water with an amused tilt to his head.

"Made you laugh, little cub."

"Are you done?"

"Oh, I don't know about that."

"You're crazy if you think I'm going to look." Gabriel turns his head back down to the preparations, mixing the crushed herbs with the lard.

"Fine, be this way," Jack huffs, splashing some more before he decides it's enough, and he marches out of the pond.

Without any additional prodding he sits in front of Gabriel with his back turned to him. Droplets of water and some duckweed stick to his skin and Gabriel brushes them off with the cloth before he starts applying the ointment.

"So why did they let the bugs run off the leash?"

"Tree-mother's been asleep for generations, and now she's dying, so their control over the grove is slipping."

"They're not true, are they?"

"Mixed. They have a cozy agreement with the men in the village, once a year they get a kid or three out of it, some other in-between."

"You'd think there would be more of them." Gabriel puts finishing touches to the burn and moves to the graze on the arm.

"Do you see any boys here, cub?"

"This much, I've guessed. They're not going to keep this place for much longer."

Jack turns around and shifts to his knees.

"I could give them time. A lot of it, to last for generations more."

"Could, not would," Gabriel notes while slicking back blond hair from Jack's face to inspect the wound on his cheek, reddened and hot but bleeding no more.

"They have nothing to offer in return that I'd want."

"You could ask some to lie with you, they'd probably fight one another for it."

"The key is want. But," Jack looks at him expectantly, and his palm covers Gabriel's fingers resting on his cheek, "I could do it for you, little cub. Do you call upon the Covenant and pay the price?"

"I do," Gabriel answers after a moment of hesitation, remembering the last time Jack had asked him the same. "Wait."

He reaches for the cornflowers and fits them behind Jack's ear - making sure the stems hold in place. The smile he is given in return is full of unspoken words.

"You'll make me think you care, cub," Jack drawls in content tones. He moves closer and splays his fingers on Gabriel's thighs, their noses almost touching.

"Pants."

"Do I have..."

"Yes, you do," Gabriel cuts short the petulant whine by thrusting the bundle of cloth in his face.

"Since when do you always have a spare pair?" Jack grumbles under his breath - backing off and getting his feet into the pant legs.

"Since you insist on promenading buck naked all the time."

Jack freezes with the trousers around his knees and stumbles a bit.

"Was that a pun?"

"Maybe."

"Commit to it, then, so I can hate you proper for it."

"No." Gabriel raises his eyebrows.

"Careful, cub, you're like a spring's fawn on November’s ice." Jack pulls up the pants, ties the strap, and stretches before turning on his heel. "Coming?"

"Wait," Gabriel calls out after him, following closely behind, "you didn't name the price."

"And you had not asked before agreeing," Jack flashes him a wry smile over his shoulder. "I'm trusting you to keep the word given and pay back what is owed, little cub."

"I can't do that if..."

"Hush, little cub."

Jack leans down and picks up a broken stone barely breaking his stride. The dryads flock to the sides but keep their distance as he stops in front of a wilted tree, looking at it attentively with his head tilted back.

The gnarled branches spread in canopy above the clearing, the aged roots pierce the ground around the massive trunk except for the path free of any growth on which Jack stands with his bare feet braced on dirt and stones. His left palm smooths over the cracked bark.

The impression Gabriel has that Jack in his vindictiveness aims to teach him a lesson evaporates when he begins to speak.

"You're so old that you remember the time before them. You've earned your peaceful sleep, many times over. But you left the children alone without guidance."

He grips the stone in his left hand and with a wince cuts the inside of his right palm with it, slow and deep.

"So sleep longer and dream, and from those dreams let the seed come that will grow a sapling to continue in your stead so the children are taken care of."

Fingers smear the blood on the trunk before Jack presses his hand to it. Into it.

Gabriel's medallion jumps violently straining against the cloth of his shirt and the chain - trying to break free before it falls slack as suddenly as it had started to react to the magic.

Gabriel finds himself moving even before the bloodied stone slipping loose from the grip Jack had on it registers fully in his mind. He almost slides, ending in a crouch with his arms outstretched and catching Jack's full weight before he hits the ground in a dead faint.

He's cold, so cold, wracked by shivers, and his breath burns Gabriel's cheek.

"I need something to warm him up," Gabriel barks an order at the surrounding dryads, undoing the buckles of his armor with one hand while he cradles Jack to himself with his other arm.

He throws the chestpiece awkwardly to the side and strips his shirt - hands are holding out furs and worn out blankets. Gabriel grabs as many as he can and wraps them around himself and Jack, pulling him closer, tangling their legs together before he lies back on the ground.

Jack, with his face cradled in the nook of his neck, is still running hot and cold, skin frigid to the touch and each exhale scorching, trembling with no respite in sight.

"Fuck." Gabriel purses his lips unsure if anything he does, and could do, is even helping.

Above them, the dead branches sprout green leaves and flowers bloom filling the air with sweet aroma but he can only think about running his hands over the hair on the neck of a great old stag gasping painfully for its breath, of curling his fingers around the arrow shafts.

He remembers the weight of the knife he had plunged into its flesh, no, not the swiftest of deaths, and the blood pooling beneath them - seeping into the ground to give birth to a miracle - and it is the knife he feels between his fingers twined into blond locks.

Where he sat at the edge of the river, Jack had laid with his head in Gabriel's lap unaware of the attentions of rusalkas and nymphs focused on him as he trembled with the same kind of chill clinging to his skin, lips blue at the edges and warmed on the inside by his breath.

Gabriel had asked then, bound by the curiosity, and the one with the crown of water lilies in her damp hair almost laughed at his question.

"Silly man," she whispered with the shimmer of a stream spilling over the rocks, her dark eyes glinting, "it is no fun when he sleeps."

As enigmatic answer as ever, and no less he came to expect from creatures of her ilk - speaking in riddles unless they want something - but one that explained enough. He had spent the rest of the night with fingers tracing the jagged grey scar under which a steady pulse ran.

And in the same fashion Jack's skin slowly warms as his breath cools and shiver subside. Soon, the hand resting on his chest shifts slowly to touch the leather pouch on the string.

"Never take it off," the voice in which Jack speaks is barely audible. "Never tell anyone."

"I won't. I wouldn't." Gabriel looks at his face where under the lashes only a sliver of blue glimmers. "What did you take for it?"

"I wanted you to catch me," Jack murmurs against his skin.

"You couldn't have..."

"I trusted you to catch me, little cub. And you did."

"That's fucking ridiculous, you twat," Gabriel laughs - it's strained and leaves his throat raw and hurting. "And I was asking about the flower. What was the price for the flower?"

"A kiss."

"A kiss," Gabriel repeats after him because it is even more preposterous than anticipated

"Now," Jack puts a finger against Gabriel's lips, stopping whatever he might say, "a kiss had been asked, and a kiss had been given. It is not for you to decide what makes a kiss."

"A kiss. Was it worth all of that?"

Jack shifts and moves so that his elbows rest on the sides of Gabriel's head, and he looks down at him.

"Why do you want me to tell you it was not?"

"Because when you get what you want..." Gabriel swallows past the dryness in his throat. "You will leave, won't you?"

Jack chuckles with his lashes lowered and his head inclined curiously to the side, lips pushed forward almost in a pout.

"My foolish little Gabriel, why, oh, why would I leave if the only thing I want is you? Have I not made myself known?"

[gyromitra-esculenta]

So, generally, I couldn’t leave this stuff on ending 1. So, ‘Something Begins’, or so called Ending 2, part kind of 1. Mostly unedited, still ‘a bad Witcher AU’. So it would seem it gets to be made into a proper thing.

Warnings: none (unless you count general creepiness or mention of hunting/hunting practices or personal angst).

*

It takes him closer to two decades to return even if he swore he wouldn't come back. The horse plods slowly along the road, the dirt muffling the sound of its shoes. Only the jingling of the harness and gear rises above the song of the cicadas in the dead summer air. The trail takes him through the fields of wheat just about losing their grayish-green tint to dirty yellow of fresh straw. Clusters of red and blue in the grain provide welcome relief from the monotony, as do small birds on a hunt, flitting in and out of the wheat.

For the whole day Gabriel barely passes or sees anyone, people probably busy with the festivities preceding the hard work of the harvest, not that he is bothered by it. Far from it, he's rather comfortable with drawing no attention even if the region is favorable to his kin. The voice calling him comes from behind and Gabriel looks over his shoulder to a man awkwardly chasing him, a big pack on his back and a walking stick in hand. He turns the horse around, waiting for him to catch up.

"Master witcher," the man stops to regain his breath.

"A noonwraith?" The fact the general populace is less likely to call him a mutant or devilspawn doesn't mean anyone's going to stop him for a chat. The season's right for the wraiths, too.

"No, no, not a thing like that, doesn't keep around, master witcher." The man has a skin like leather weathered by sun, grey peeking from under his cap, wrinkles around his mouth and eyes. "Have you come for you pay, master witcher?"

Ah. He hadn't really intended to check back on that, mostly forgot about it. Gabriel shakes his head. Nothing about it stirs his interest.

"No. Keep it."

The man nods, as if thinking something over, humming to himself.

"Then come with me, master witcher, spend the night, and the feast. Tomorrow's my youngest hair-cutting, and Mikheil's farewells, the boy's leaving the homestead."

"Your oldest?" Gabriel asks on a whim.

"No, no, the third oldest, the boy got into his head he's better off finding his luck on the road. Well-spoken too, didn't get that from me and my girl," the man explains with enthusiasm. "Family's farm's not for him."

"That's how kids are. He will come around."

"No, no, master witcher, there's no talking him out of anything, always does what he wants. Me and Lila, we thought of giving him to the druids. Some choice words he had, and the druids, they just said no, but Mikheil's got talent."

The man - Wernund, as Gabriel’s memory suddenly reminds him after almost eighteen years, curious what little tidbits emerge when not expected - continues on about his family, and, whether wanting or not, he learns ins and outs of the familial life on the farm. Stranger still, Wernund keeps to the horse's side, and Gabriel feels no need to hurry the mount out of its complacent tempo.

"...I know the naming is mine but Lila chose the name for Nielub, it's a good name, strong name. Woj. That boy will fight a bear barehanded if allowed."

"And the woods, how are they?"

The treeline, closer and definite, sways on the afternoon wind, greener than Gabriel recalls it to have been when he paid it a visit with Jack.

"Never better. I don't know what you did in there, master witcher, but a month, and it was like before."

"Only returned what had been taken from it. Gabriel," he adds. "It's my given name."

With a glance, he observes the plethora of mixed emotions on Wernund's face, waits for the offer of the stay to be rescinded, but to his surprise the man again nods to himself.

"So it would be you, master witcher. Must've had your reasons."

"Gabriel."

"Would be improper, master witcher." Gabriel chuckles at his headstrong resolution and the refusal to feel fright at being in the presence of the one hailed the Reaper. "And there, there is my home."

Wernund points at the buildings at the edge of the forest, almost directly on the no-one's land between the trees looming over the road and the swaying wheat. The farmyard, as a whole, is too big and ample for him to travel on foot - a house, a shed, and a stable, all separate. With the diminishing distance the activity in front of the house becomes obvious: two women sitting on the wooden bench - both plucking chickens, some down floating freely - one man chopping the wood, and a boy running with a stick with several colorful ribbons tied to it.

As they get closer, one of the women notices them - quickly says something - the rest of the way they pass under the scrutiny, and the boy, must be Nielub, running towards his father, the ribbons fluttering behind him. The boy is blond, as is the man leaning now on the axe.

The women, on the other hand, both have rich brown hair, though the older one is visibly greying in front and on her temples - where her locks are woven around polished copper rings glinting in the sun.

Gabriel reins in the horse and dismounts while the boy asks after the gifts.

"Lila!" Wernund sends the boy back to play, placating him with a wooden sword from his backpack propped against the wall. "Lila, we have a guest."

"I noticed," she huffs, returning to her work after giving her husband a lingering look. "Mojmira. Bring the pitcher."

Being observed - regarded with suspicion - never something he grew accustomed to even if it'd always been present in the background of his life, but now back of Gabriel's neck prickles with the question unasked and the weight of her eyes on him.

"I have no intention of taking..."

"Not important," Lila cuts him off, fingers deftly tearing out the feathers, her head tilted to the side hawkishly. "You must be the witcher, the one who rescued idiot husband of mine, I've seen you in my ken." Ah, one of those. Gabriel nods, smiling with the corner of his lips. "You have my thanks, for everything. There's place for you, and the horse, in the stable, clean, and tomorrow, the feast. You'll be staying."

Mojmira comes back from the house with a clay jug held in one hand, and a wooden cup she hands him, dark eyes flicking to his face.

"I see," Gabriel chuckles, raising the cup to his lips - the smell and the taste slightly sour, water with vinegar. "A counteroffer."

"Maybe." Lila throws feathers to the ground. "Fate allows for bargains, but it won't be scorned, not even by the likes of you, witcher."

He glances to Wernund standing several feet away, talking with his oldest, Adan, as he came to know on the way.

"Is your daughter the same?"

Mojmira, sitting again by the side of her mother, and back at work, giggles.

"All women in my line have their gifts."

"And your husband said you're not well-spoken."

"My husband, as much as I love him, is many things, but he had not been born and raised here. He doesn't need to know."

"I see. I'll be going to the forest but I commit myself to be back for the night."

"Fine by me," Lila nods and Gabriel leaves the cup on the bench. "And if you find Mikheil hunting rabbits there, send him home."

"You let your son..."

"You should know, witcher, better than anyone, that if the forest wants to give, it does, and if it doesn't want to, it doesn't."

"It also has a way of punishing those that take what they shouldn't," his tone is sharper than he intends it to, and Gabriel sighs, closing his eyes for a moment.

"That is why we never take what is not offered. If the rabbit springs from under your feet, is it not a gift?"

Gabriel prefers not to answer her knowing smile, instead he turns and leaves the horse grazing in the yard. With a heavy heart, he crosses the road and walks into the forest's shade, feeling her gaze on his back.

The woods are nothing like he remembers them, lush and green now. Neither a desolate and twisted place overgrown with thorns and full of bones, nor a dark nightmare of a child full of monsters. There is life in the trees, birds and insects singing. He spots a fox deeper in - it idly considers him before turning and disappearing in the bushes. Gabriel lets himself wander, a ghost of a smile on his lips, and fingers brushing against the spot under which the flower rests.

Maybe he should have visited years earlier, but it had never felt like a thing to do, the current situation more of an accident than anything else.

It's the smell of fresh blood that pulls him out of his thoughts, and he approaches carefully the small clearing. Two rabbits being bled hang by their hind legs from a low branch, next to them several fish with twine threaded under their gills, a bow and a quiver on the ground. A young man, judging by the posture, sits on the grass with his back to him, occupied with something in his lap. Blond, like the other sons of Wernund.

"Mikheil?"

"You're the worst at collecting your pay, you know?" The boy, springing to his feet, chuckles, and turns. "I was about to go look for you myself."

Gabriel freezes, faced with the impossibility of the image before him, his eyes drifting to the weasel swinging freely from the hands holding it.

"You hate..."

"Oh, yeah, I still do, I guess," Jack mutters, "but this is Lord Murders-A-Lot."

Younger, with places still left to fill out, awkward posture - the legs and arms a bit too long and bony, bits of baby fat waiting to disappear, hair not short enough, dissonances like a vision superimposed on something real.

"...and he murders a lot," slips from Gabriel's lips.

"Mostly chicks. I'm trying to wane him off murder," Jack moves his hands - the weasel appears to be content with being swung around, "and teach him to go after the eggs, but it's not working out. At least, the eggs don't scream at him they're being murdered, like the chicks do."

Gabriel takes a tentative step forward as Jack continues to speak.

"Voles, too. I've even seen him take down a rabbit once, he's an exceptional murder ribbon."

"I miss you," words barely a whisper.

"Well, you certainly didn't hurry then," Jack scoffs, before his eyes widen a bit. He crosses the distance between them - Gabriel cannot shift his gaze away from the weasel for some reason - and stops in front of him. "You're still thinking I'm not here."

"No, you're here, just..." A memory, an apparition, a vision? Not real, not physical, because Jack is dead.

"I sure hope I'm not whatever it is you're imagining me to be, Rhenaweddin." Jack moves, quick, his lips warm and chapped at the edges, with an elusive taste of something sweet and green between them. Gabriel grabs onto his arms to keep him in place before he slips away, again. "I'm really counting on that last growth spurt. Standing on my toes to kiss you, cub, it's going to get old fast."

"That's," Gabriel laughs, almost silent, contained - maybe the emotion has a hysterical flavor to it, "that's what you're worried about?"

"Small things to worry about are good things. Now," Jack puts Lord Murders-A-Lot on his shoulder and the weasel with no delay flattens itself around his neck, "what has my mother managed to rope you into?"

"A bargain. I might have traded..."

"Then you weren't listening, cub."

"Told to send you home." The tightness in his throat is making it hard for him to speak.

"Sneaky woman," Jack clicks his tongue with appreciation, stretching his neck out for a quick peck. "Well, best not to keep her waiting too long, then, she can be really bitchy at times."

Gabriel watches him turn, gather the bow and the quiver, pick the rabbits and the fish from the branch, as if it's the most common - the most reasonable - thing to do. His medallion remains motionless, the thought of having missed its movement earlier in the day troubles him.

"Are you coming, little cub?" Jack laughs, passing him, the weasel still on its perch, its eyes closed and nose twitching. "It feels somewhat strange calling you that when I'm shorter than you."

At that age, yes, Jack hadn't been the tallest, rapidly gaining height only later.

They both did, but it took more time for Jack to grow into his body - his agility strangely mismatched with his disproportionate limbs and bony hips. All paired up with a little cheeky grin like the one he wears now when he looks over his shoulder at Gabriel.

"I'm coming."

Rabbits and fish. Out hunting when they should be training, returning to the keep with the spoils they had not roasted already over the fire hidden in the cove, stomachs full, ready for the reprimand coming from Reinhardt.

It's a memory playing out again in front of Gabriel.

He should, probably, thank the forest for that glimpse, or hate it, deeply, for forcing him to remember and dwell on happier times, uncomplicated, when the only worry had been doing something stupid - which they both were good at, exceptionally so - and suffering the consequences. Broken bones would mend, and scrapes and cuts, sometimes burns and bites, they would heal.

Jack, leading the way, moves with the same kind of disjointed grace he had observed so many times then. Maybe, it is a chance to say proper goodbyes, and to put the ghosts to rest.

"Wait," Gabriel calls after him as Jack is about to cross the invisible boundary of the forest and walk onto the road - the homestead and the fields visible in glimpses between the trees - and the moment has to end.

"You really won't like mother when she's angry."

And just like that, he steps outside the woods, leaving Gabriel with his hand outstretched behind.

He waits for Jack to vanish, for the illusion to fall away from the boy - yet nothing happens, it's still the same painfully familiar silhouette cut against the darkening sky.

The fact he doesn't remember there being any houses this close to the forest does not assuage his uneasiness. Respect it, trust it, revere it, but do not come too close if not needed. The medallion lies dormant. Gabriel draws in a deep breath and follows Jack - not Jack.

The table is set - bread, butter, and white cheese, a pitcher in the centre, probably more water - lit by two torches on poles sticking out of the ground. Lila combs her fingers through Jack's hair but her eyes are on Gabriel.

"Rabbits and fish, as promised."

"Go inside and welcome your father, he's back from the town."

"Yes, mother."

Jack leaves the catch hanging on the hook by the door and disappears inside the house. Lila waits before speaking again.

"Did you find what you were looking for, witcher?"

"No." Gabriel holds her gaze.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Sequellish to Fern Flower (it’s somewhere here either under totally not witcher au or murder-deer tag) - a bad Witcher AU but not because of the TV series. I just wanted to, originally, try my hand at semi-Slavic mythos and rituals. Kind of part 1 since the thread is ongoing, when I find time.

Warnings: Violence, giant bugs, and I think that’s it for the moment.

The woman in her chemise leaning over the brim of the wooden tub struggles to her feet with fright when Jack barges into the room.

"You didn't pay for the other one," she mutters and runs past Jack with the skirts under her arm as if hell itself is on her heels.

"She took off with the lace," Jack observes, stripping off his shirt and throwing it promptly on the ground, fingers undoing the strings of his pants.

"That's what I carry it for." Gabriel leans back in the water.

"Maybe I should try it myself, one day."

"Maybe you should."

"Tempting," Jack grins, slipping into the tub and sending water sloshing over the brim. For the briefest of moments, his eyes flash the black of bottomless desert wells and he leans forward brushing the tips of his fingers against the leather pouch Gabriel wears by his medallion.

"For all the wrong reasons." Gabriel mutters, and Jack snorts, spraying him idly with water with a flick of his wrist.

"While you were getting entertained, I'd been gathering information, now I don't know if I should tell you anything at all."

"Are you pouting?"

"Am not, little cub."

"You are," Gabriel laughs, throwing his head back.

"Hush. Or I'll bite you. And, am not."

"Whatever you say. What's the story?"

"So, it's a big bug, and I hate bugs," Jack rolls his eyes. "From the woods."

"Did it escape, or the dryads let it go?"

"Either way, I haggled up to three hundred, so you owe me." Jack rubs absentmindedly the scar on his neck. "You could wash my back."

"Does it still hurt?" Gabriel straightens and covers his fingers with his own, mindful of Jack's amused stare.

"This one is here to stay, cub."

"So you're saying."

"I'm also saying you could wash my back," Jack retorts, watching him get up and out of the tub. "It's a big centipede, as I gathered, so it's venomous, and so far it got cows, a dog, though I think the mutt just run away, and a horse from under a local guard."

"From under?"

"Well, it got the poor sod too, left him half-digested when it vomited on him, but first, it got the horse. According to the witnesses because there were some, apparently. They ran away with utmost bravery."

"Anything else?" Gabriel dries himself with the cloth.

"I think they were lying about the number of the cows, but that's to be expected," Jack stretches in the tub, getting more comfortable. "And also, wash my back," he adds when he hears Gabriel moving behind him, and for a moment Gabriel considers the request in the earnest.

At least, until he puts his palms on Jack's shoulders and pushes, dunking him under the surface of the water, cutting short the beginnings of a shrill shriek amidst flailing hands.

"Washed."

"You asshole!" Jack spits out the water, almost snorting. "Stop smirking!"

"No."

"I'm going to bite you, that's a promise!"

*

"You could help me," Gabriel mutters through gritted teeth while kneeling over the slightly bloated goat with a drawn dagger.

"No. Suffer. You're baiting the bug, and I'm going to stand here, upwind."

"Asshole."

"Only as much as you are." Jack flicks a fly off his sleeve. "Now, hurry up, I want this over so we can go talk with the dryads about keeping their pets on shorter leash. Besides, that was your idea."

"Because you're being an ass and refusing to find it."

"I hate bugs therefore I'm not going to talk to it."

"Sombra's rubbing off on you." Gabriel starts to carve the goat and the stench coming from its guts is nigh unbearable.

"I can feel my eyes watering from here. My condolences," Jack quips, too entertained by the whole ordeal.

"I'm far from being inclined to believe it's honest."

"It's not." Jack settles down in a spot under a tree trunk, sheltered from the side by brush and fallen branches. He rummages through his sack in search of something as Gabriel finishes preparing the bait. "Come here."

Gabriel wipes his hands on his pants ignoring Jack's empathetic sounds of disgust and slowly walks to him.

"Shit. You stink now," Jack extends his arms to pull him closer and let him nestle back between his legs. "Here," he presses a handkerchief to his nose and Gabriel inhales.

It's moss, resin, and musk, drowning out the reek of the carrion. Fingers in his hair trace whirling shapes and he closes his eyes, one hand resting on the hilt of the sword lying across his thighs - until his senses curl and fold in rhythm with the forest breathing.

Only the hand moving away from his eyes - fingertips brushing over his eyelids - and a small flask pressed to his lips bring him to the present. Jack indicates the direction with a slight shift of his shoulder and Gabriel nods, the liquid burning in his throat and veins.

There will be a price to pay. There is always a price to be paid, sometimes in advance.

The forest speaks as he raises with the hand on the hilt of his sword, listening to the sounds of the disturbed undergrowth. The bait had worked, too well even.

Gabriel leans back.

"Two."

"I noticed," Jack hisses back.

"You could've talked to them."

"Excuse me for not wanting to feel like something's crawling all over my thoughts for the next month or so."

"Tell me that after it eats me."

"Now I'm hoping one of them does eat you for real."

"You don't."

"Well, I'll settle for a nibble and a bite now."

Jack moves behind, and Gabriel takes off in the opposing direction while the both centipedes start to hiss and butt their carapaces over the goat's carcass. As long as they're busy, the odds are favorable.

Which, of course, means shit, because as soon as he moves into the position, the one closest to him starts to slowly back off, maneuvering its segmented body with meticulousness of something that cannot simply reverse. Even as he tries to still, it gives out another kind of hiss.

There is a certain pitch to the whizz of pressurized air, the pattern to the clicks, and the tone to chitin plates scraping against one another. A male, and that would make the other one, now moving over the bait in his direction, a female. A breeding pair, together.

"Distract the noisy one!" Gabriel, running, shouts over the hiss.

"Me and what army?" Jack screams back from the other side, actually managing to nail one of the creature's eyes twice with an improvised pinecone - and Gabriel would sympathize, if not for the fact it's a centipede

And Jack always had a penchant for throwing objects, especially at other sentient creatures, but that was a thought better left to explore when not being charged by a giant bug steadily gaining in speed. At least he managed to gain the attention of the male.

"I hate bugs!"

"I know, you don't have to repeat yourself all the time!" Gabriel forms Aard around the hilt - aiming at the ground, and giving himself more momentum for the jump as the female bears down on him - to land on its back just behind the head.

Also, to slip on the smooth carapace.

The centipede is slow to react but it still twists after him, leaving him thrusting the blade between the segments to keep himself from falling, not even upright but awkwardly leaning sideways, almost half-sitting with one leg curled up.

"You good?" Jack sounds breathless.

"Yes," Gabriel screams over the loud clacking and hissing, pushing the blade deeper into the tissues. He's missing all the vital organs at this angle, but with any luck he might nick one of the sacks holding the digestive acids. The centipede bucks and swings back under him.

He lowers himself - almost lying flat against the carapace - when the mandibles flap above him, the interlocking segments of hard chitin preventing the female from actually reaching him.

Until it does something seemingly too clever to be intentional.

Its whole body smashes against the tree trunks, and Gabriel barely avoids having his arm pulverized between the wood and the centipedes bulk - the impact itself sending waves of aftershocks along his nerves and loosening his grip on the sword.

He can only let go, pushing with his feet against the carapace to give himself more momentum and gain distance as he lands, rolling immediately away from the female's legs hitting the ground in a frenzied rage.

He's at disadvantage with his sword lost, the daggers useless now.

"Coming through!" Jack calls from much closer than before, and only a second later Gabriel feels another body crashing into him, sending both of them flying from the path of the male barreling straight into the other centipede as it fails to correct its course after its prey.

Gabriel spares a glance at Jack springing back to his feet. His chest heaves with the exertion and his lips are parted with the beginnings of an excited grin, the tongue slightly pushed forward and nostrils flaring, as if he is a wild animal scenting the forest air.

And it's captivating each and every time, this feral abandonment Reinhardt tried hard to subdue and extinguish with training even when Ana told him not to bother with it.

"I get your sword back, you wash my back for real this time?"

"Deal," Gabriel mutters under his breath.

"Deal." Jack smirks at him. Under the moonlight his eyes appear to run black but it's only the pupils blown as wide as the irises are, and Jack takes off towards the centipedes swiping and biting at each other as they fail to disentangle without becoming more and more aggravated.

Cautiously, Gabriel moves back, fingers ready to form a sign if it comes to this, and Jack weaves between the swinging legs, his palm finally curling around the hilt. He pulls hard, but the angle is wrong, and the female notices the tug, hissing in distress. The male reacts.

"Fuck!" Jack evades the first strike still keeping his grip on the sword, almost thrown over to the other side of the female but loses his balance and shrieks in pain when a mandible catches him in the face spraying blood on the bark. Gabriel finishes forming the sign.

The resulting blast of magic is enough to throw Jack back and confuse the centipedes. Still, the idiot refuses to let go of the hilt even when hurt, and, luckily, this time the blade dislodges. He hits the ground with a crunch of breaking branches and another shout of pain.

It doesn't stop him from getting up and lobbing the sword in an arc over the beasts. It embeds in the undergrowth in front of Gabriel.

"See, I got it," Jack calls from the other side. "We have a deal. So let's finish this."

"You're a goddamn fucking moron!"

[gyromitra-esculenta]

So, generally, I couldn’t leave this stuff on ending 1. So, ‘Something Begins’, or so called Ending 2, part kind of 2. Mostly unedited, still ‘a bad Witcher AU’. 

Warnings: none (unless you count general creepiness, talk of ploughing, weasels, a little bit of blood, Reginald the cock).

*

"More's the pity, then," she points to the table with her palm upturned. "You still have the night, and tomorrow. Let's eat, now."

Gabriel seats himself on the bench, the swords he puts on his right - ready to be drawn at moment's notice. The message is clear. Lila raises her chin taking her place on the other side of the table, hand reaching for the cloth covering the jug, and, one by one, the other inhabitants join them as she pours the water into the cups.

"Two?" Adan nudges Jack with his elbow.

"We have guests tomorrow."

"I see one, not counting the Lord. Are you inviting some of your forest friends?"

"You'll have to wait and see for yourself." Jack tears off a handful of bread for himself.

"Any friend on your mind?" Mojmira smiles at Adan who now looks at his hands placed awkwardly on the table.

"I would ne..."

"Children," Lila speaks over them, placing a piece of bread in front of Gabriel, the next one she gives to Wernund. "Behave."

"If he's thinking about ploughing the nymphs..." Jack winces after a scuffle under the table. "Yes, mother, no talk of ploughing. Not like they'd be unwilling," he adds under his breath, visibly moving his legs out of the way. "Better than bruxa for tylwyth wife."

"I didn't know she was one!" Adan looks to Lila for help, receiving only a pointed look in return.

"Boys shouldn't wander past the sundown."

The discussion continues with the occasional 'yes, mother' thrown in, the banter not unlike any other heard during a meal shared by a family - if not for the subjects implied that somehow, miraculously, fly over Wernund's head as he partakes in the conversation himself. Gabriel observes, the dissonance jarring in its unremarkable presentation. He barely touches the food and the drink, and excuses himself with the need to wake in the morning.

The stable is clean, his horse taken care of, and on fresh dried grass a couple of blankets are spread. As a precaution, he spills silver dust across the threshold and the small windowsill before he lies down on the blankets in his armor with the hilt of his unsheathed sword under his palm, ready to spend the night in vigil, waiting for the veneers of the illusion to come apart.

It's at night, under the full moon, that the creatures of the ilk that could set a trap so sweetly painful it cannot be evaded are at the height of their power, shamelessly bold and unafraid, and whatever comes - if it does - Gabriel will face it head on. Time passes and the voices coming from the outside fade. Someone - something - crosses the line of poured silver, the silhouette distinct and familiar.

"Mother does not approve of you," Jack laughs, stripping his shirt off, letting it fall to the ground before he strides closer. The blankets dip under his weight, the imaginary heat radiating off him felt through fabric and hardened leather in anticipation even before he slots his frame to Gabriel's and drapes over him with the nose buried in his neck. "Or, rather, she disapproves of your manner."

His fingers curl around the hilt of the sword as Jack's find the spot on his chest where under the armor the small pouch tied securely lies hidden from the sight.

"You still wear it." The tone is changed and Gabriel knows that that the next words will command him to tear it off. But Jack laughs instead, whimsical and rolling sound vibrating in his chest. "Oh, little cub, if I were what you're thinking me to be, would I simply not ask for this gift of mine to be returned rightfully? Or maybe I'd just tell you it is all but ground to dust, powerless now?"

Gabriel slowly lifts the blade, just so the creature cannot see it. Above him, Jack shifts.

"Or assure you that if anything has ever protected you from harm, it had been me, not the flower you carry."

His palm covers Gabriel's hand and guides the sword between them. The angled blade turns and Jack puts his neck to the edge. The reflected moonlight illuminates the blemish running across his throat, a long line of paler flesh no wider than the nail on a little finger.

"Maybe even take it by force since you let me this close, witcher."

The skin parts open on the starmetal steel with each discrete movement of Jack’s neck. Droplets of blood trickle along the length of the blade - and down the line of his neck, to pool in the dip between the collarbones. Gabriel's breath dies in his chest, the sound of his heart deafening.

"Never tell anyone. Never take it off, not even if it is me asking, en'ca minne aep Hen Ichaer," the melancholy smile has his grip faltering under Jack's fingers. "There are those who would kill for it, and there are those who would use you, if not for it, a lesson hard-learned."

He has to blink the tears away, the sword lying forgotten in the straw, trembling hands cupping Jack's face.

"You are real."

The words are like a first breath of air taken in years.

"You gave me gifts I can never repay you for. You gifted me death, and you offered me life. You are my home, for a part of me is a part of you, and a part of you is a part of me," Jack continues, leaning over Gabriel, fingers tracing his cheekbones. "The songs of your mother and the stories of your father, I keep them for you, and I'll continue to do so, forevermore. Once, you had asked me to come with you, and I had accepted then, and so, I would accept it now, again. Eich'en a'bleth essea, Rhenaweddin."

To believe is the hardest thing, but with Jack gently brushing away his tears, Gabriel finds the strength to do just that.

With his head cradled to Jack's breast, and the quiet voice singing songs he knows but does not remember, he finally sleeps peacefully in forever stretching like a dark mourning shroud over the years - until a cockcrow announces the new morn and fingers combing his hair stop.

"You grew it out long."

A new day, finally, with the sun climbing over the horizon, the spot of light crawling down the wall, and a rooster that could use some shutting up.

"It can be cut now."

"It fits you, cub, you have the face for it. I looked like a haystack."

The emptiness floats inside him, the indescribable void bereft of any emotion Gabriel has a name for, refreshing and aching - he lets himself be carried on its calm surface.

"Did you have the whole deal? The hair-cutting?"

"It was awkward. I went from Strach to Mikheil."

"Strach?"

"Tearth."

"She didn't have high hopes for you, then," Gabriel chuckles as the rooster goes for umpteenth repetition, suddenly interrupted by wild squawking and the sound of wings beating frantically.

"What?" Jack feigns innocence for a moment before laughing.

"Lord Murders-A-Lot happens to be useful. Not very often, but it happens."

"You sent a weasel after a cock."

"Truth be told, Reginald isn't a very brave cock. The hens are fearless, though, and they do like to cuddle, did you know?"

"No," Gabriel sighs, closing his eyes again.

Nothing changes yet everything does, and he's simply tired - so tired - the exhaustion of the sort that seeps inside and settles heavy and sluggish at the very core of one's being for so long it remains unnoticeable.

"You should sleep more and I need to help with preparations." His arms tighten around Jack's waist upon hearing the words, loathe as he is to let go of him even for a second, and Jack curls around him, to place a kiss on his forehead. "I'll be back with you soon, little cub. There are things to be done for the feast. So, sleep and dream."

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Short stop from the cheery stuff - mostly unedited, still ‘a bad Witcher AU’. What I mean by the short stop is, this is pretty much angst/hurt no comfort. If I were to make it as a proper thing, it would be titled ‘Something Ends’, and depending on your familiarity with the canon (or, not-canon), that’s either bad or maybe not so bad.

Warnings: character death, angst, lots and lots of purple prose - nothing but purple prose.

The trip takes almost a month. There is nothing to hurry towards, and Gabriel had refused Sombra's offer of help - she had not offered again, and neither had she asked for his reasons.

Delaying the inevitable would be his best guess but that is a lie he feels in his bones. The truth welters, turbulent but weary and tired, for he wants the forest to remain what it is: a mystery - the place where it all began, and the place where it will end. Something of his own. Because there is no-one that needs to know and remember where Jack came from, save for Gabriel - and he will remember it the same way Jack remembered the songs Gabriel's mother sang for him.

And Jack... is long gone, already.

What is left is an empty shell with no will of its own bearing only a passing resemblance to whom it had been before Tor Zvaere, following orders given to the word.

The forest too, had succumbed to the same twisted sickness, Gabriel thinks, leading the horse through the brambles. The thorns had grown long and thick, hardened into blades, claimed the trees - choked them - stole the light. The smell of decaying plants cloys the air. Blackened bones of woodland creatures and humans alike dot the way he traverses.

Something follows but keeps its distance.

He finds the tree between the roots of which he had sought the refugee from the brigands, the monsters he had seen them, and the monsters they had been indeed.

Their bodies still litter the ground, wrapped in the remnants of cloth and armor, blades scattered and rusted. For those who had offended the forest, no burial would be provided: their flesh left to sustain it, and the spoils of their death left to rot, this much Gabriel remembers from his brief stay at the neighboring village before both of them were whisked away by Reinhardt.

The devastation laid out before him is merely the reflection of what had been done to Jack, of all the ways he had been destroyed and killed, his very nature violated in one act of narcissistic conceit of deluded and self-appointed kingmaker. One of his regrets, that it had not been his doing to put the end to the man's life - something he might resent Sombra for even if her fury mirrored his own.

The forest, it had been alive and verdant once, now nothing more than a gaping sarcophagus waiting for the body to be interred within its confines.

Gabriel turns around and takes hold of Jack's pale hand, guiding him to dismount the horse with careful touch. It's still an order. Wretched knowledge, he reflects, laying him down on the ground, how such a small and insignificant action still renders Jack only a tool. He moves aside the blindfold covering the eyes red with the color of watered down wine - the gloom should lessen the discomfort of the light.

"I'm... sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to come with me," Gabriel whispers, leaning over the unresponsive body, touching his forehead to Jack's, "but I didn't know better. I couldn't have known better. And you, you accepted, and came with me. You should have stayed here."

The knife is nothing fancy, just a proper tool for hunting and working both, with the handle wrapped in weathered leather. One would think that for an occasion such as this the blade should commemorate - but no, Gabriel will keep it, and use it, because it is no more than a simple tool.

He props the tip angled between the ribs.

"I'm sorry," he repeats, and gives the knife a shove. One movement, swift and kind, and loving. The body under him shudders briefly but Gabriel only sees a little smile and feels the gentle touch on his cheek.

Red bleeds black, and then black bleeds blue.

"D'olch essea, en'ca minne aep Hen Ichaer," the forest speaks as if it's the first breath it takes in however long the eternity lasts, and the hand falls away from his face. "Va fáill."

He leaves Jack there, to sustain the forest.

Past the edge of the woods, Gabriel  finds a man beset by an alghoul, the necrophage the one he had sensed following earlier - the beast just old and smart enough to resist the lure of the flesh of a witcher finding another victim - still proving to be no challenge to him.

The man, Wernund as he calls himself, insists on compensation, pursues after the horse, and Gabriel relents, eventually, staring him down.

"I'll take what you have already, and know not of it, to be paid the next time we meet."

It is, after all, the best course of action.

He will never come back here, to this grave that holds the songs of his mother, and the stories of his father, and his birth day - for there is no-one left to hold those memories safe and treasured for him - and there is no-one left for Gabriel to love.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

It’s got a name now~~! ‘Jack the Stag, and Other Works Penned by the Esteemed Songstress Sombra’. It’s an inside joke, probably.

Otherwise: a bad Witcher AU but not because of the TV series (rest is somewhere here either under totally not witcher au or murder-deer tag). Part 2. Unedited, at the moment, but getting close to that since I hit 5k.

Warnings: Violence, giant bugs, idiots, weasels, and flying pigs.

*

"That's why you love me," Jack sing-songs, unsheathing his own sword, twirling it around once in his hand with an added flourish - grinning like a madman with half his face soaked in blood.

"I tolerate you, that's different!"

"And that's why I love you too!"

As always, a discussion best saved for a time they're not having it over two giant insects that had managed to separate one from the other just now, and preferably to be undertaken at some nebulous future moment when Gabriel feels like being philosophical and questioning.

And shitfaced drunk.

"Take the..." Before he can finish, the male centipede hisses and lurches at Jack, probably seeing him as the immediate threat - and Jack dances out of the way, visibly leading it away from the female. "...yeah."

"I'll get the first kill," Jack taunts him.

"As if."

It's on, and regardless of the circumstances Gabriel smiles, moving into the female's field of view, noting how there is a kink where the chitin segments curl around the wound his sword had inflicted, and along with the smell of the carrion wafts acrid aroma of the burn.

With the centipedes, and the majority of other giant insectoids, there were only four strategies viable: wolf pits where it impaled itself under its own weight, severing the nervous cord behind its head, doing enough damage from below, or magic. The fifth method, though...

They were certainly one disposable angry peasant mob short for it to work.

Gabriel keeps from the female's range - circling it as it turns after him, considering his approach, and in the end deciding to utilize the same maneuver as previously, fingers forming the sign again.

Mid-jump, he slips a dagger into his left hand, and wedges it behind a plate without delay to gain support as he lands - a bit too far from the centipede's head. Not a problem as he's still a little out of the reach of its maw but he needs to move further on its back.

He jams the sword sideways under the next plate and shifts, sliding forward - alternates with the dagger until the centipede looks about ready to roll over to get him off its back. The short blade breaks under the pressure the segments he has it forced between put on it.

But Gabriel's already bracing with the sword raised and pushes it down below the edge of the looser plate the female has over its head with all his strength, more feeling than hearing things snapping and crunching under the steel.

Then, he twists the blade from side to side.

The centipede crumples to the ground with the grace of a flying pig that just got disenchanted even though the impetus carries it few meters along its path.

It starts spasming the length of its body erratically as its scant nervous systems tries to make sense of the damage done.

Gabriel repeats the twist and cut again, to be sure, and rips the sword back - now jumping off the centipede and putting some distance between himself and its death throes - to the litany of 'fucks' screamed from the side with the varying volume, the most more muffled than not.

Which is fair because Jack, smeared from head to toe in brownish green blood and some dirty yellow remains of the other insect insides, is just about crawling from under the other centipede successfully. Also, frantically ripping his slowly blackening in places shirt off.

"Do you need any help?"

"Fuck you! There's bug guts all over me!" Jack tosses the smoldering now fabric to the ground. "That was my favorite shirt!"

Gabriel only rolls his eyes withholding any scathing remark and walks to him with a small detour to retrieve the pack on the way.

"Sit, and get at least some of it off," he throws Jack a cloth. "And give me a minute, I need to clean your cheek."

"Needn't bother, little cub."

"It's still open. You're not healing properly, so don't 'little cub' me, you horned dolt, am I clear?"

Jack at first opens his mouth but then there's only an angry snort coming from him, and he dutifully starts to wipe with the provided cloth, letting Gabriel sit in front of him and rummage in the pack for the supplies he needs.

"Okay, but the horned dolt was actually good."

It's Gabriel's turn to snort, and then laugh, as he tries to glare at Jack.

"You are a horned dolt, after all. Get down." He points to the ground. As soon as Jack complies, Gabriel rubs his face with the antiseptic - ignoring the hissing. The wound is still open and bleeding.

"See. It's healing."

"Not as it's supposed to. There should be stitches."

"If I see you with the needle, I'm kicking you in the face!"

"You were thrashing all around then." Gabriel finishes cleaning the cut. "Did you get burned anywhere?"

"I should be asking how's your arm."

"It's fine, don't try to change the subject, turn around," Gabriel orders Jack in spite of the comically annoyed face he pulls as he complies to show the extensive swath of blistered skin below his shoulder. "That's it. You're wearing armor until this thing gets sorted out."

"It's constraining."

Gabriel dabs the wound with more force than necessary, maliciously enjoying the resulting yelp.

"It's keeping you from getting your dumb ass hurt," he punctuates each word with another swab, noting how the destroyed layer of the skin does not peel off. The last time Jack got splashed with a corrosive fluid, the dead skin had been already flaking off by itself in the span of minutes, and the scar tissue had faded after a week or two. "Shut up," Gabriel adds preemptively and shifts to lean his forehead against Jack's shoulder. "I don't... You're in more pain than you should be because something's not right and you're not telling me."

"So you do care," Jack responds with a note of triumph in his voice and Gabriel sighs deeply as he curbs the overwhelming urge to punch him out of sheer frustration.

"Yes. Yes, I do care, you dumb fucking moron, so what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing's wrong, little cub. I just need to recuperate, and that takes time."

"What time exactly?"

"I don't know, a few months, maybe a year." Jack shrugs.

"You're not weaseling out of proper armor now."

"I'm not 'weaseling' out of anything, they're damn chirpy murderous anklebiters and I resent the comparison."

"Of course you object to that one, out of everything," Gabriel laughs, patting Jack's other shoulder lightly.

"You know what's in those little heads non-stop? Murder!"

"You made your point."

"It's like they wake up and ask: 'hey, what's for breakfast?', and the answer is always 'bloody murder'."

"I think I get it."

"And then, 'hey, let's do something fun', and other weasels are 'what?', and the answer is 'bloody murder', and they all cheer!"

"Yeah. I see absolutely no similarities, at all. None whatsoever." Gabriel chuckles to himself, still staying with his forehead pressed against the warm shoulder as Jack leans back a bit. "You're still not getting out of properly gearing up."

"Well, fuck."

"We should get to the grove before the morning breaks because you need to wash all this off, you stink worse than the goat now."

Jack sniffs loudly, his whole frame moving with the action.

"I think I've lost my sense of smell. Weird."

"No, that's the antiseptic."

"Really? It can do that?" Jack huffs the air with a renewed interest.

"Because your whole cheek is covered in it. Get used to it until we get you sorted out." Gabriel shifts back with reluctance and climbs to his feet. "C'mon. We should get going."

"Whatever you say, little cub."

"Bug guts. All over you. You hate..." Gabriel loses the line reasoning when Jack, with the cloth thrown over his shoulder and the sword in hand, passes him - stalking towards the corpse of the female centipede. "We can leave that for after we..." And Jack takes a swinging kick that connects with the underside of the insectoid, sending its whole frame wobbling. "Bugs. You hate bugs."

Jack takes to looking attentively at the centipede while pacing down the length of its body, ultimately squatting in a chosen specific spot. He slits the belly and waits as the insides start to spill through the cut, between them fall slightly misshapen spheres, milky, partially translucent.

"They're fertilized, and they usually keep only one adult pair around." Jack brushes his fingertips over the surface of the eggs He pauses only to pick some out and puts them all on the soiled cloth, ready to bundle them up.

"Feeling gracious?" Gabriel muses over the unpacked supplies he's gathering.

"Maybe. Because there will be a gap they won't be able to fill, and that could kill the whole population."

"I didn't think you'd see a problem with this."

"They're controlling the numbers, or at least they were, until those slipped the leash. I find them icky and disagreeable but there's a need for them."

"Ecology at its finest and most murderous." Gabriel shakes his head.

"Oi!" Jack turns and sticks his tongue out at him.

It's easy to forget things Jack is - or isn't, for that matter - but then he slips. He always slips. He is vain and pernicious, but no more than the nature itself is; demanding and unreasonable, yet caring when no-one expects it.

A strange thought it is, this question that nowadays rears its ugly head more than ever, and Gabriel can't help wondering how much of what Jack is, is Gabriel's own doing? Wouldn't he be better off away from here, never having taken pity on a child in the woods?

But then, he is selfish. Even daring to imagine the constant of Jack's presence being gone is something he dreads - and now it's a possibility it may happen not because he's bound to grow bored and leave, but because whatever's wrong with him will kill him.

"What, the bugbear's got your tongue?" Jack looks at him quizzically, the bundled in the cloth eggs held in hand, the sword sheathed already. "I'll toss a coin for your thoughts."

"Nothing." Gabriel shakes his head and shoulders the pack. "Let's get going, you look dreadful."

"I look great, always. Majestic, even."

"Yeah, not right now," Gabriel turns, trying not to dwell on his now foul mood as he marches, Jack fast on his heels keeping quiet - and this again is unsettling because the banter, the jabs and the barbs, leaves an absence of distraction.

And without the distraction, his thoughts run in circles of worry and anger, and something else he cannot put the name to - or the other way around, he knows what it is and still refuses to name it.

"Just fucking say something," he grinds out without looking back.

"So you could be more vexed with me?" The tone is level, and maybe curious.

"Don't..."

"I don't need to be in your head to see it. You're really angry with me, then," Jack continues with a note of dejection in his voice, "if you think I'd seek your thoughts on my own."

"That's not what... I trust you not to." The strangest of it all is, he truly does, but it's something easy to fall back on when angry.

"You're still accusing me of it," Jack points out.

"Because you're fucking lying to me, so maybe you're lying about this too."

"I had never lied to you, why would I start doing it now?"

"Omission is a lie." Gabriel refuses to look at Jack who know keeps to his side, and with no answer incoming he only grows angrier.

"Then you should ask," Jack responds with a click of his tongue as he overtakes him. Gives him a hard lingering look paired with a crooked half-smile, too, before he turns and skips forward. "You wanted to hurry, cub."

"This is not over."

"Of course it is, cub, because you never ask, do you?" The remark itself is full of reproach and disappointment.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

Because I’m actually working on something :> (trying to work out backwards the grammar of elder speech and filling out missing words with the same ‘influences’ is a pain)

*

He catches Jack's wrist and pulls him close.

"N'te dice'en an me a'baethe, en'ca minne." Seeing the blue eyes widen for a heartbeat and a breath before Jack turns his face away...

"Thaess aep, weddin an. Your pronunciation is still as bad as the first time you'd tried to speak."

"Me thaess aen a'baeth."

"Ire tedd, rhenaweddin."

Jack shies away, as if wanting and having are irreconcilable concepts suddenly, but Gabriel's not letting him go, not now, not yet. He tips Jack's chin up and brushes his thumb against the lower lip.

"Que tedd, allder nawr?"

Ever so slow, and halting every other moment not unlike a wild animal waiting to be spooked and take off back into the woods, Jack leans in with his head tipped to the right. At first, it's a mere graze of his breath, just before he presses his lips to Gabriel's smiling mouth. He allows Jack to take the charge, and the kiss is many small kisses gaining in conviction with each successive one until Jack is straddling Gabriel's legs with fingers threaded into his hair, trying to draw him closer into the embrace. The muscles under Gabriel's palms resting on the small of his back shift and twist as pure want seeps into the kiss with each grain of quartz falling somewhere in an invisible hourglass.

[gyromitra-esculenta]

In the dark forest, Gabriel – huddled between the tangled mossy roots of an ancient tree – is not alone. He still hears the screams of his parents and the howls of the creatures coming in the night, the creatures with yellow eyes. He still hears the clash and rattle of steel.

He still hears his mother ordering him to run and hide. But the monsters, they came after him, and he whimpers looking at their cold metallic fangs glinting in the light of the fire slipping between the tree trunks.

It is then the sound of thunder comes, the ear-splitting cacophony of hooves and braying and snorts, the wet tearing sounds and screams of fear and pain and death, and Gabriel can only stare at the shape and know he is in the presence of a god from his father’s stories and his mother’s songs, yet different from those that guard the oases, ride with the poisonous winds of the deserts and dance in the palaces built out of the clouds and adorned with the jewels.

The creature, its form cut from the darkness, its fur slick with blood dripping from antlers gnarled and branching – entangled in garlands of moss and vines – it raises its head to the sky with a wail beckoning the rain.

Gabriel forgets his breath when the first drops make their way through the canopy of leaves – for the god turns towards him.

“Do not be fearful, little cub,” the forest whispers in the hum of the rain and the wind, and Gabriel is not afraid anymore when he slips his hand into the bloodied one held out for him by a boy his age, his father’s words warning him to never accept a gift he had not asked for from a god fading from his memory. “I’ll show you the way to the edge of the farmlands.”

The fingers curled around his hand are warm and comforting, and leave cold absence when the boy lets go of him.

“They will take you in, they take all the lost cubs in, even strange ones like you.” But Gabriel stops before he leaves the woods and looks back, at the boy with hair like the golden sands, eyes as dark as bottomless wells hidden below the rocks and lips like the silks dyed with beetle carapaces. There is longing in his gaze for something irrevocably lost that is now a part of the other boy. “Do you want me to come with you, little cub?”

“Yes.” The boy sits with him and a shade of mid-day sky bleeds into his eyes. “You’re… Jack.”

“And you’re Gabriel,” Jack smiles and leans on him as they wait on the edge of the woods.