#it finally comes to a head bc geralt is convinced jaskier has either been cursed or is a shape shifter

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

Marked with first words spoken type of Soulmate AU

mwahahah yes good This is.  More than five points. I got a little carried away. (added a readmore bc.. yeah)

1) Geralt has two sentences on him, and neither of them are useful.  On the inside of his wrist is a single, small, cramped word: “Sorry.”  Over his heart is, larger and loopier: “Did you kill that?”  Neither of them are particularly helpful, as he hears them over and over again.  

By the time he’s been on the Path for a decade or so, tipping into his 30s, he stops thinking about it, stops hoping, because there’s no way to know, especially when everyone who says them is scared of him and he wouldn’t want to inflict himself on anyone. He’s a witcher. He’s a monster. No one wants to be a witcher’s soulmate.  

Anyway, it’s likely they’ll both live and die before he does. one might fully live and die before the other is even born.  Neither of them deserve to deal with the horror of being a witcher’s soulmate. He just has to bury that part of himself that hopes hopes hopes that maybe he can be worth loving.

2) When he’s 42, he’s passing through Vengerberg and a little girl with a twisted spine crashes into him as he leads Roach through the streets.  He catches her shoulders instinctively to keep her from falling.  

“Watch yourself,” he rumbles.  

“Sorry,” she whispers, and she won’t look up at him, she’s scared of him - large and strange and menacing - but she looks over her shoulder at the slightly older children clustered a few yards away who’d clearly been bullying her, and she seems to be equally scared of them.  

Geralt hums, then says, “I’ll walk you home.”  It’s not far, and it may not help, but at least she got a reprieve. He’s forgotten the incident entirely by the time he finishes his next contract.

3) When he’s 67, he’s somewhere in Kerack, waiting for the Earl of wherever he is to come and verify the sack of vodyanoi heads Geralt had, from the creatures that had been raiding the coastal area near the Earl’s keep.  He’s not quite surprised by the approach of the little boy, but he’s surprised by his lack of fear.  He couldn’t be more than five or six, probably, dressed in simple but well-made clothes, and before Geralt can really process what’s happening, he’s opening the sack and looking down at the decapitated heads of terrifying fish creatures that had been attacking and raiding the docks. 

“Wow,” he whispers, appearing to be both fascinated and grossed out.  He turns wide blue eyes up at Geralt and asks, “Did you kill that?”  

“I did,” Geralt answers, awkward and uncomfortable and a little confused that this child is so close to both him and dead monster heads and doesn’t smell even a little bit of fear. 

“Wow!” the boy repeats, a grin spreading on his face, and then a woman comes in and makes a strangled, panicked noise and races forward to grab the boy and pull him back from Geralt (naturally, of course, rightly so). 

“Lord Julian, you can’t run off like that!” she hisses, dragging him off and scolding him, and Geralt is struck by the fact that the little boy looks back at him and his sack of heads longingly until he’s out of sight.  He’s forgotten the incident by the time he crosses the border out of Kerack.

4) His wish to the djinn doesn’t really do much of anything.  He makes it but he didn’t think it through. All that happens after he makes it is that he and Yen are drawn to each other in a way that even soulmates couldn’t do.  Only physically. It changes nothing about their emotions or how attracted they are to each other.  

Geralt doesn’t know this.  Geralt feels guilty.  He feels guilty that both Yen and Jaskier have soulmates that he almost hopes they don’t find. He feels guilty for loving them both instead of just one of them. He feels guilty for loving them at all. He knows the words below Jaskier’s collarbone that say simply “I did.”, the sharp lines of “Watch yourself.” that curl along Yennefer’s ribs like a challenge. 

He doesn’t know about the tiny script on the nape of Jaskier’s neck, just along his hairline, hidden by his hair, that says “Be still, bard.” or the curling words cut by scars and glamoured away on Yen’s wrist that say “Please, please.” Perhaps it would make sense if he did.  Perhaps it would make sense if they all did.

5) After the dragon hunt, everyone is taut and tense and Borch Three Jackdaws tells Yennefer she’ll never regain her womb, but that she’s seeking something else entirely.  They all are. And if they share their words, perhaps they’ll all find what they’re looking for. Geralt grimaces. Yennefer rolls her eyes. Jaskier sits frowning thoughtfully as Borch and Tea and Vea walk away, because his trade is in words, how could he not already share them?  

Except he’s smart.  You share your thoughts.  You share your feelings.  You don’t share your words, unless... “I have two marks,” he says after a few minutes, causing Geralt and Yen to stop needling each other to near anger again and look at him in tandem, baffled. “Borch said share your words.  Not use your words or share your thoughts.  There’s only one time words are talked about like that.  I have two marks.” 

And Geralt says “No you don’t” and Yen’s like “Oh, you’ve seen that much of him, then?” and Jaskier just firmly plows forward and holds his hair up and turns his back to these terrifying people on the top of a mountain and there it is.

6) And Geralt’s like “well that seems a common thing to say” but it’s only been six years, and the entirety of that first night is burned into Yennefer’s memory for a number of reasons, but she remembers sending Geralt out of the room so she could heal Jaskier, and he was thrashing, in pain, and she’d told him sharply “Be still, bard!” and Jaskier had just been pleading, wheezing and barely able to speak but he was pleading, “Please, please,” and she curses softly and she’s not so stupid as to think they are soulmates unless some other things are true, so she whirls Jaskier around.  

“Had you ever met a witcher before you and Geralt met and you wrote that ridiculous song?” and he’s confused, but manages to stammer out that he thinks maybe once?  When he was really little? He knows an old man came and killed some giant fish and brought the bits in a bag but his nanny wouldn’t let him talk to him even though he really really wanted to. 

She knows who Julian Alfred Pankratz is, of course she does, she made a point to know once she found out that was his full name, and she turns on Geralt and asks if he’d ever done a job for the Earl of Lettenhove and Geralt’s like “..maybe, I don’t know where that is?” and she snaps “Kerack” and he frowns and he remembers the vodyanoi and the little boy with wide blue eyes and not a hint of fear, and Yen’s seen both of their marks, now, saw Geralt’s so many times and saw Jaskier’s second one once.  

“’Did you kill that?’ ‘I did.’” she recites. “The sort of thing a curious little boy named Julian might ask a white-haired adult who looked like an old man to him.”  

And she remembers being young, and she never properly looked at the kind man with the rough voice who’d walked her home, but he’d had a chestnut horse and white hair and dark leather armor, and she presses a hand to her ribs because she hadn’t thought of it in so long and she grabs Geralt’s wrist even though it can’t be seen. “’Watch yourself.’ ‘Sorry.’ And then you walked me home.” 

Then she removes the glamour from her own wrist and shows Jaskier.  “’Be still, bard.’ ‘Please, please’ and then I had to make you sleep, because you were in too much pain and I couldn’t heal you if you weren’t still.”

7) And part of her hates it, and she leaves them staring in shock at her and stalks down the hill and portals away and doesn’t see either of them for three weeks, but she knows now.  She knows.  And they’re left standing there in shocked silence and finally Jaskier lets out a long breath and says, “Well, I guess it makes sense why I love you so much.” and Geralt just stares at him now, because Jaskier believes this?  And loves him? 

And Geralt takes a while to convince, but eventually Yen comes back and declares they’re going to take a trip to the coast and figure themselves out, she has just the place, and they spend three months living in a large coastal manor that neither man asks where she got it, and they have their own rooms, but within a few weeks, there were more and more nights when one or the other of them would sleep in Geralt’s room.

And finally two months in Geralt wakes up alone for the first time, and he worries, and their rooms are both cold and empty, but he gets downstairs and there they still are on the far-too-comfortable sofa by the dying fire, Jaskier sprawled on his back and Yen curled on his chest, and Geralt feels like his heart might burst, and thinks maybe they’re right, and they really are soulmates after all.

8) And then they go to Cintra and rescue Ciri and live happily ever fucking after. 

#the witcher #geralt #yennefer #jaskier #geraskefer #ot3 #askbox meme #soulmates au #Anonymous #audience with the gods