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We start in the middle, as we do everything. The damned, damned middle, of not only this story, but also a nest of manticores.
Geralt’s silver sword is soaked, dare he say, caked in blackish-green gore as it dries and sizzles on everything it touches (which might as well be everything he has, but that can hardly matter when he is significantly more preoccupied with the blood oozing from his side). His hand, pressed into the dull throb beneath his ribs, draws away with a smattering of crimson and the tell-tale burn of manticore venom, which lets him know he’s well and truly fucked (a little different from completely fucked, because if he hurries back to camp quickly enough and slams a potion or two down his gullet while curled up in silent, writhing agony on his bedroll, he’ll be lucky enough to live with another scar and maybe not a hastily-dug grave. Yet).
Always a man of deadly punctuality, Geralt grits his teeth, holds fast, and drags his blood-soaked boots back to camp. The bard should be asleep by now, he thinks, and is thankfully a heavy sleeper (out like a log and wakes like one too; no survival instincts, and yet he clings, he nearly thinks fondly if he would allow himself to, as fondly as he can with the stabbing pain in his gut slowly creeping up through his ribs like a fever). The sizzle of the blood, slowly, slowly, on his leathery skin feels like it's eating away at his barely-beating heart, and the stench (like mold and bile, iron-copper-stinking-fish tang) makes his nose wrinkle. Geralt wants to throw off the myriad sensations overtaking his body. His potion-enhanced senses, already quick to irritate from his time in the Trials, feel like shredded meat on the verge of deliquescing into pulp, but he merely grinds his teeth together a bit more, contents himself with the thought of a speedy death, and stumbles onto the bedroll.
Jaskier is not asleep as he originally thought.
Jaskier is not asleep, which means when the sound of branches snapping and the lack of usual Witchery coordination sounds through camp, Jaskier notices. Jaskier is not asleep, and Jaskier notices that Geralt has come back much later than he said he would, so Jaskier immediately rushes over to his side. Jaskier is not asleep, and Jaskier notices that Geralt has come back, and Jaskier rushes over to his side, Geralt repeats to himself deliriously as the inky-tasting potion slides down his throat, which means he can see the blood and the venom and the way his face twists and, perhaps, the worst of all, the chalky paleness of his skin, the blackness of his eyes, and the spiderwebbed veins that branch out from underneath like tree roots accustomed to the poison of a bad land.
“Geralt!”
Jaskier is not asleep, he notices Geralt, he rushes over, he sees all of this, and yet (against all self-preservation) his hands still scramble to peel Geralt’s gristly-damp armor from his body. There’s a sickeningly wet noise as brigandine cleaves from linen cleaves from bare, dissolving skin and the tangled, clotted mess of lacerations and exposed muscle beneath. The bard dry heaves, holds fast, heaves again, and rushes over to the other side of camp to grab a pail of warm water that had been chilling by the fireside, sloshing and creaking on its way back over to the Witcher’s supine form.
At the very least, while the potion (poison, everything Geralt puts in his body is poison— potions to consolidate his flesh and corrode his insides, ale to stutter his heart and calm his mind) scorches through his veins, Geralt is offered the simple mercy of a warm-soaked rag to his wounds. He can smell the worry rolling off in thick, pungent waves from Jaskier; it makes his nose wrinkle further. There’s chamomile oil on the cloth though, that’s nice, and as the bard carefully splashes the water over his bare, mangled flesh and wipes it away with the rag, the manticore venom pains a little less. There’s nothing to be said about the frissons of desperate energy that each accidental brush of Jaskier’s fingers bring to his potion-high skin; it almost burns worse than everything else.
Once Geralt’s flesh is no longer fighting to heal and escape the venom’s influence at the same time, the bard turns a critical eye upon the rest of him. His hair is so thoroughly matted with dirt and manticore blood that none of its original color is discernible, instead a disgustingly muddy scarlet that could be chestnut if one squints hard enough, and the fact that Geralt’s hair looks anywhere near chestnut is an observation that deeply unsettles Jaskier. He makes some comment or another; the Witcher is too focused on trying not to let his guts squeeze out between his fingers like liniment through a tube to pay attention or respond. Geralt grunts as he feels his flesh slowly trying to repair itself, gristle and sinew and disposable parts knitting back together as his skin steams from the potion. His head spins.
Jaskier dips a callused hand (lute strings and not swords, life and not inimitable death) into the pail now to clean it, making a minorly disgusted noise before tugging Geralt’s head off of the bedroll and awkwardly attempting to lean his upper body against the trunk of a nearby oak tree. “Melitele’s tits, Geralt, this fucking harpy blood can’t possibly be good for your hair—“
”Manticore,” Geralt corrects him with a pained grunt. Jaskier’s fingers were digging into his shoulders for the twenty-some seconds it took to reposition him, and his skin still trembles with the aftershocks.
”I don’t care if it’s my bloody mother’s, Geralt, you can’t just—“ the bard splutters, face going steadily more crimson by the second. He dips his cupped hand into the pail again, but instead of letting it run through his fingers, he scoops it over Geralt’s hair. The water is somehow still a little warm, and between this and Jaskier’s left arm holding him in place as he crouches and cleans, Geralt feels his eyes grow heavy-lidded.
There’s the sudden scent of lavender, too, the sharp sweetness of it on the bard’s hands the next time he dips his hand into the water. Soap. A beat later, and that lute-string-callused, lavender-soap-smelling hand cards through his bloodied hair. Mmph, he says in his mind instead of out loud, and maybe he does let out that low sound of surprise mingled with pleasure, because the stench of Jaskier’s worry is quickly overcome by cautious happiness like dandelion nectar. Fingers press against his scalp to untangle it, and lightning shoots through Geralt’s veins. His eyes lid further, and the determined scritch-scritch of the bard’s fingers as he mutters under his breath about ‘fucking manticores’ and ’stupid, harebrained Witchers,’ and ‘you don’t even know how hard it is to rinse acidic blood out of hair, Geralt’ makes him sag against the tree bark.
Once Jaskier has deemed his hair sufficiently alabaster-clean, he squeezes the rag (now bloody and foaming pink) in the pail. His hand pats Geralt’s shoulder indiscriminately and his voice is strangely soft, but trembles with a note of defiance like he’s expecting the Witcher to resist what comes out of his mouth next. ”Up with you, now,” the bard sniffs, “have to dry your hair by the fire or else you’ll catch a cold.” Nevermind that his body isn’t so susceptible to the trifles of the common cold, or that he’s used to more usurous treatment. Irony notwithstanding, Geralt feels oddly, concerningly boneless, and his eyes blink sluggishly at the bard before he quietly gets up and follows him over to a log by the fire. Jaskier smells a little sharply of surprise, and then it fades into something softer when Geralt lets him stroke through his sopping wet hair once again. The world grows vignetted as Jaskier presses and presses and water drip-drips into a small, chamomile-lavender smelling puddle on the hard earth.
The only mark of time’s passage between the two souls is the slow smoldering of the fire. It burns down into a red-hot pile of coals, glittering like the kinds of gold-leafed rubies Geralt would see in a noble court, a shade of corundum that Jaskier would certainly pine after in doublets and decoration if given the chance. His hair is dry, and the pretense of continuing to dry it has withered away with the kindling. It makes sense, then, that Jaskier’s fingers stop their combing and plucking and withdraw from Geralt’s head, weary as it is.
Geralt is ready to watch the coals burn down to stinking blackness as Jaskier shuffles back to his bedroll.
And yet.
Jaskier lingers, a hair’s breadth away from Geralt’s back. Geralt can smell the question on his tongue, mingled curiosity and apprehension. Bullshit, he’s never known Jaskier to be apprehensive before— why start now, especially when concerning him? “Would you like some oil?” Soft enough to be dismissed as the breeze, loud enough for a Witcher’s ears to pick up and for said Witcher’s brain to stop functioning at being offered such a delicate, frivolous thing.
It’s hardly apropos.
(Geralt has never tasted poppy seeds for his pain).
“Hmm.” Geralt stays still, though, and Jaskier takes that as an invitation. Some rustling, and the faint pop of a cork from a glass vial before Jaskier coats his palms generously with the oil and then…
And then.
He sinks his fingers into the very crown of Geralt’s hair, blunt nails poised to scratch but never quite digging in, and then he drags them down through his scalp, and Geralt can’t help the strangled groan that claws through his throat. Sorcery, there’s magic in the bard’s skin, there must be (the Witcher, for once in his life, has no idea what to make of this situation), the way his fingers press languidly behind Geralt’s ears and relieve aches he didn’t even know he had, the way he— There’s so much burning poison potion in Geralt’s veins he can’t even finish the thought.
Jaskier only hums happily behind him, completely unaware as to the mental turmoil simmering beneath his fingers. He only admires the way the oiled strands of Geralt’s hair gleam bronze and orange-silver in the firelight, running his fingers through them to prolong the effect, and all of this carelessly heightens the Witcher’s confusion. Geralt has gone from ripped-open-crimson to raw-flesh-pink. He’s so pale that every scar stands out sorely, white hair, golden eyes, alabaster skin with the grit of the mountains and a lifetime of poison behind them. The bard doesn’t seem to care, but then again, Geralt thinks as his brows fight not to knit together, he never does.
When he does stumble into his bedroll that night, warmed by the fire and the grace of the bard’s fingers (though he’d never admit it; Geralt has some secrets after all), he can’t help but stare unblinkingly at the vast sky, incomprehensible in its inky denizens and yet…strangely familiar. He’s never been much for stargazing, but the pockmarked vastitude of the universe, that perfect fallibility in what would be a pitch cloak of darkness…Well, he muses as his eyes grow heavy and he’s lulled into a doze (never true sleep; after all, his swords are mere feet away), he can’t deny the pleasantness of that strange dream.
Yes. He’s a little delirious maybe, but he can’t help but think about it. Perhaps there’s divinity in the world after all. It gives itinerant creatures like him a chance to rest their weary bones from the fray and go back to the beginning.
Ah, yes. The beginning. That blighted, benighted beginning, of not only this story, but also a nest of manticores.