It puts it into perspective, seeing their companions fall down, and down, and down. The mist curls around their bodies like a living thing, welcomes them into oblivion, and then they're gone.

There's nothing beautiful about a death like that, no matter how peaceful it looks.

(But Jaskier has always been fascinated with Death.)

(Even as he enjoys the unexpected gift of Living.)

***

There's a reason behind the fact that Jaskier never really told Geralt of his time before Oxenfurt, why he never told him the stories of his brothers and sisters, of his mother and father.

Mostly, it's because "Julian Alfred Pankratz", the name he'd signed up with for university, never really meant anything to him. Not because he's not emotionally attached to it, but because, well, if the professor who taught his first lecture hadn't been left calling out that same name five times without anyone responding, Jaskier wouldn't have known it was meant to be his.

Jaskier hadn't known anything, in fact, other than that he was in Oxenfurt to study music and that he quite liked to sing.

There was no past, only now, and a possible future, and so Jaskier had decided not to mention anything and just accept his life as it was.

It had been disconcerting, at first, of course, and he felt like a fool more than once when people had called out to him and acted like they'd been his friends for a while, but he'd never even seen their face.

He got used to it, eventually.

He felt like he'd always been adaptable like that, though he couldn't be sure, of course, when his "always" only was a measure of days.

So Jaskier studied at Oxenfurt, and honed his voice, and learned to play the lute, learned all about the human customs that he seemed to have forgotten, and he found that he quite liked the life he'd built, and the many bedrooms he could flirt his way into.

Humans were delightful, and it never occurred to him that it was a strange thought for him to have. Not when he always felt a little distanced, a little like there might be something missing.

So it wasn't a difficult conclusion to come to, in the end, that a traveling troubadour might just be exactly what he was always meant to become.

Maybe he'd find what he was missing, out there, in the world.

He writes songs and poetry, about endings and beginnings, the first flower of spring and the last to wilt before autumn comes. He writes of the moon and starless nights, of the days when the sun is high in the sky and the blue's so bright it glows.

He writes of the farm girl's slender hands, calloused and streaked with dirt as they are, writes of the strength that lies in being soft, of the softness that hides beneath strong and enduring muscles.

The pitiful yowl of the cat in the street, its thankful purr when it nips food from gentle hands.

The nicker of a horse in the dark, the fog at dusk, the bird with the broken wing he'd found on his windowsill.

And eventually, he finds that he wants to write of Adventure. That, as much magic as there is hidden in the little everyday things, there must be so much more, so many grander things out there, stories that long to be told, that— that might make him famous.

(Maybe, even, famous enough for someone to recognize him, to try to find him and tell him of a past that he doesn't remember, a family that he hadn't ever known.)

(He never sings about the quiet comfort of sitting around a fire with the ones he loves most, never once mentions childhood experiences of scraped knees and falling from a tree, grass-stained clothes and sand in your mouth.)

(He doesn't know anything about these things, after all, and doesn't dare to presume that his new (old?) friends will actually stay.)

(But, oh, how he wants someone to remember him.)

***

Bread in his pockets, a certain kind of deep-reaching desperation in his heart, a deceptively casual smile on his lips; his pulse flutters, sure, but Jaskier doesn't think he's really afraid when he approaches a brooding man in the darkest corner of the tavern. He decides that it's just nervousness, the flutter and the excitement that makes his fingers tingle, and doesn't care to analyze that any closer.

And then it turns out to be the witcher, Geralt of Rivia, and somehow it feels like Destiny, right down to the bread in his pockets.

***

Their encounter with the Elves is terrifying, and it's exhilarating, and it all makes Jaskier feel alive in a way that he hasn't before, not ever.

It's still the sensationalist side of him that makes him stay, for those first few days, the first few months.

And then he gets to know Geralt, gets to crack his shell open, little by little, and then he stays for entirely different reasons.

And Geralt never asks about those.

(Of course he doesn't.)

(Why would he?)

***

So, you know, despite all the mystery of where Jaskier has come from, despite all the possible legends hiding behind that day when he blinked himself into existence in a dusty lecture hall, Jaskier never actually expected to learn the truth, not really, not truly.

Especially not like this.

Standing on a mountain top, as the wind whips around him, he wishes that he only imagined these words, that they were an echo of something else entirely, and not a sentence designed to destroy Jaskier's heart in one fell swoop.

He wishes that the wind was harsher, that it screamed in cosmic anger, a storm in the making; that it pulled at his hair and clothes like some kind of monster that Geralt would bother to rescue him from.

Jaskier wonders, absently, at how long it must have taken Geralt to come up with these damning words.

How often he turned them around on his tongue, sitting beside Jaskier at a campfire, burning with the urge to spit them out, but— what, stopping himself from doing so? Why?

What exactly was it that stopped Geralt from expressing his utter displeasure at Jaskier's presence before, and what changed?

What had Jaskier done to cause that disdain in Geralt's golden eyes, contempt and anger and every other synonym for this searingly cold emotion?

And how could he make it undone?

"If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands."

Jaskier shakes his head a little, numbly. His tongue feels fuzzy, his teeth hurt.

Surely the words are not supposed to echo like that, to make him dizzy like he's swallowed poison?

"R-right," he stutters out, eventually, a poor excuse for a word.

His voice shakes like the last time he's been choking on blood; only that this time, it's so much more painful, like it's not just his lungs collapsing in on themselves, but his entire chest cavity, squeezed until the pressure becomes too much, until he can barely breathe, until his ribs break one by one. His vision blurs, like the world is shaking to pieces around him.

"Of course." He takes a stumbling step back, but Geralt won't even turn to look at him. He doesn't move a single muscle even when Jaskier falls flat on his ass on the next step backwards, slides dangerously close to the precipice, and the long drop below.

"Take me off your hands," he laughs, still so shaky; doesn't dare to move, to glance down down down.

"I'm sure you didn't mean it quite so literally, right?"

Nothing.

"Right? ... Geralt?" His voice is properly choked now. He'll be lucky if he can sing tomorrow.

There are tears in his eyes and he doesn't even try to convince himself that they're just from the dust kicked up by his own scrabbling for purchase on the cliffside.

But Geralt still doesn't move, and the words still echo in his ears.

"If Life could give me one blessing," and all of a sudden Jaskier realizes that it's not just Geralt who doesn't move. The wind itself has stopped, weeds caught in the breeze, swayed to one side and staying that way, and that bird has been hovering motionlessly for far longer than should be possible.

"Geralt?!"

Jaskier's voice is shriller than he'll ever admit to, and it's certainly not him that produces such a high shriek when someone suddenly says, "oh, my sweet darling buttercup."

Gentle, loving, and far more familiar than he'd ever thought possible.

"Mother?" The word is out before he knows what he means to say, and then he freezes. 

What.

The woman that stands on the path between him and Geralt doesn't look like she should be anyone's mother, young and beautiful and glowing, and she doesn't look at Jaskier.

But still, he's sure that it's directed at him, when she says, almost absently, "He's never asked me for anything before, you know? All these years, all this pain, and he's never asked for anything."

Her voice is full of sorrow, unspoken grief, and for a moment, Jaskier doesn't understand.

And then, with a flash that hurts worse than lightning, he does, because he remembers.

And remembers.

And remembers.

This is his mother, and she is Life.

Geralt spoke his first Prayer, and Mother will grant him his wish.

(She has always been fond of witchers, he knows now. Has always liked the tragedy woven all the way through their stories, how they danced so closely with Destiny. Has made sure, for each and every one, that their very last moment would not be painful, no matter how they died. It's a fondness that even her brother didn't begrudge them, and he tried to take them to the gentlest places he could find for them, after, because violent beginnings and violent endings deserved a softer after.)

(But that is not what matters now. His mother has always been fond of witchers, and she'd always thought that her youngest son did not live up to all that he could be. She had allowed him to go, when he wanted to roam amongst the humans, but he'd always known there would be an end date to it.)

(Apparently that ending has come now.)

(Jaskier is pretty sure he's not ready for it.)

(He's pretty sure he'll never be ready.)

(Not when it means saying goodbye to Geralt, to not ever see him again.)

(But. His mother is Life, and she has Spoken. He cannot resist.)

***

At first, he cannot resist.

Then the memories start sorting themselves out, little by little.

He remembers sprawling fields of buttercups. Poison and beauty, youth and joy and death and a grief that doesn't feel real, surrounded by a sun-soaked ocean of yellow flowers.

His Mother is Life and his Uncle is Death, and he is not the in-between. He is not the balancing act between Life and Death, no, he's not that important.

He's an unknown variable, a bringer of hope and dread alike, and he remembers why he wanted to escape all this, and hide among the humans without any kind of magic.

He doesn't just remember, though, he lives it.

He's Julian Alfred Pankratz, a sad bard mourning the love story of someone else, damning her sweet and toxic kiss, when it happens for the first time.

A kid exclaims, points chubby fingers at the delicate yellow flowers that have sprouted around Jaskier's feet, where he's performing in a patch of grass at the town's square. It and two more children run forward, crowd around him to oohh and aahh at the flowers, like it's a party trick, and one of them grabs a handful and stuffs them in her mouth.

She grins a toothy grin.

Another one does the same thing, plucks a single petal off a flower, bites down on it — it takes only three hours, in the end, for Death to claim them.

Jaskier's Uncle gives him an unreadable smile, kind and sad and knowing, like this has happened before (it has), like he wants to help Jaskier but can't — or maybe like he enjoys watching Jaskier suffer. Death is unreadable.

Whichever one it is, he stays, holding the child's ghost (soul?) by the hand, and watches as Jaskier burns at the stake.

It's strangely comforting, the old familiarity of this.

***

After this, he can resist, a little bit.

There's still a compulsion, written into his very soul, to stay away from Geralt and everything he represents, but he's able to work around it, a little bit.

He thinks the fire cleansed him, maybe. Maybe the agony he felt, as his flesh sizzled and burnt, as his beloved lute refused to go up in flames alongside him, maybe all the grief and anger and heart-wrenching sorrow at knowing that Geralt probably felt exactly like this, when Yennefer walked away from him — maybe all this somehow loosened his shackles.

(Or maybe his Uncle talked to his Mother; maybe he was just as unsettled by the smile on Jaskier's lips when the fire finally consumed him as he himself and the entire watching crowd had been.)

So, either way, Jaskier still tries to do his best to stay away, to not grow bitter.

It's easier said than done.

Geralt seems to magically draw him in, and Jaskier develops an uncanny ability to know where he is — where he should stay away from.

He doesn't always manage the staying-away part.

But Geralt does not know he's not human (just as Jaskier didn't know, until a few weeks, months, years ago) and he doesn't know about Jaskier's abilities, or what he smells like now that there's magic thrumming in his blood.

So Jaskier is a mouse, an owl, a wolf, and a stray horse. Is watching Geralt from far away or from way too close, and Geralt doesn't know.

Geralt can never know.

Jaskier doesn't want to imagine his mother's punishment, should she catch him straying over that blurring line of what's okay and what isn't, what exactly it means to take Jaskier off of Geralt's hands.

He thinks he's figured it out, a little bit, what about Jaskier it is that bothers Geralt so much.

The talking is one thing, of course, but as long as Jaskier is just watching in animal form, he cannot possibly talk, has no way to break that rule. The singing is another one, and that's similar — except for the one time he'd been a lark and just couldn't resist the melody of a lullaby.

Then there's the constant getting-in-Geralt's-way (whenever I find myself in a pile of shit), and that's a bit harder (it's you, shoveling it).

(It still hurts.)

But, Jaskier thinks, truly taking him off of Geralt's hands would mean killing him, one way or another, and he's pretty sure that even his mother's fondness for witchers doesn't outweigh her love for her son.

Pretty sure.

Maybe.

He hopes.

But he hasn't really been around the last few decades, and even for immortals a lot can change in that time.

It's a little ridiculous in hindsight, but, at first, Jaskier didn't even notice that he didn't age.

How could he, always on the road as he was, surrounded by people who also did not change, or people who he hadn't seen for years between.

How could he take their remarks for anything but thinly veiled compliments and point out his own skincare regime?

But then the years passed, and passed, and passed.

And still, Jaskier's joints didn't creak when he crouched, as so many of his old professors and colleagues at Oxenfurt liked to complain about; his back didn't ache when he had to lift heavy things, his muscles didn't weaken and fade.

Of course, he still liked to complain plenty about being dragged through the country as Geralt's companion and not once allowed up on Roach's back, but he grew resilient, and he liked seeing the face Geralt made when it came to this particular topic.

So, he might not have noticed it at first, with a reasonable excuse.

He did notice it, eventually, when Yennefer commented on the new crow's feet he was sporting and he could tell she was lying.

There weren't any new crow's feet, and Yennefer clearly expected there to be, and she had to work quickly to hide the surprise that gave her pause for just a moment too long.

And that was another thing.

Being able to tell if someone is telling the truth.

Until Geralt, Jaskier fully believed everyone could do it the same way he did, and never really understood people's need for lying.

It was only when Geralt muttered something about the smell of that particular alderman, the one who ended up paying double for what had turned out to be three, not one, water hags hidden in the swamps, and about how he should have known that there was something off about it, that Jaskier faltered.

He doesn't know how he can tell people's lies, but he knows it's not by smell, and that if witchers have to rely on smell surely it can't be something normal humans are able to do.

The lies and the aging might have been clues, if he'd ever thought to connect these particular dots.

But then he'd been pretty preoccupied with trudging up a mountain for a dragon hunt, and that had been that.

The truth behind it all hit harder than expected.

***

It's just as bad to realize that Geralt doesn't seem to miss him. Like, at all.

There might be a song floating by from a nearby tavern, speaking of the White Wolf's coins, and Geralt doesn't even twitch. Doesn't hum along, like Jaskier caught him doing more than once.

That's when Jaskier starts getting worried.

And he decides to say "fuck it all," flies his lark-form down from the tree outside Geralt's window; dusts his clothes off as he stalks into the tavern.

And then he goes to stand in front of the witcher, Geralt of Rivia, bread in his pants (for good luck), and Geralt doesn't recognize him at all.

Fuck.