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Hours That Float Idly Down

Summary:

Having taken his leave from Dandelion, Geralt finds himself abandoned and dying in a wintery wasteland. As his life flees his body, he reflects on what he might like to have done with his remains after he has departed them.

Meanwhile, Dandelion watches midnight come and go.

Notes:

The title for this piece is taken from "Blizzard" by William Carlos Williams, and was written to incorporate several different prompts from the Whumpay 2021 list on Tumblr, to be written in three parts.

I promise, things do get better.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The sun was long past setting, for what little good it would have done. Even at its zenith, it had been nothing more than a light, reflecting off the icy particles and making Geralt’s eyes ache ferociously. It offered no warmth, no protection from the barren wasteland in which he had found himself. Though, he had been offered little choice when it came to being here in the first place. They were bereft of coin; Dandelion’s fingers being too numb to pluck at his lute and his voice still cracking from the fever and cold that had caught up with him in the wilds. The poet was able to do little more than rest, tucked away in an inn back in the village, though he was much stronger now, Geralt was loathe to drag him back out into the icy winter air before he had completely recovered his strength. Inns, however, did not come for free, and without the bard’s playing to subsidize their income, Geralt had been forced to spend nearly all his days in this thrice-damned town hauling himself through waist-deep snow. The contracts had begun with simply hunting drowners and wraiths, and, as though the universe simply wanted him to suffer, elevated to a displeased water spirit that had poisoned the village’s wells. Which brought Geralt to his current predicament, lying next to shards of ice that impaled the snow beside his body. There was blood beneath him, melting the stinging snow, and there were shards of ice protruding from his chest, slowly melting thanks to his dwindling body heat. The water spirit was dead, what remained of her scattered in a bloody smear across the white ice of the lake. But Geralt was dying. He could feel it with each birdlike pulse of his failing heart. There was a shard of ice pressed against it, and it was stuttering against the foreign invasion, fighting a losing battle to pump blood through his icy limbs, only for it to end up in the snow beneath his cooling body. He had long ago lost the ability to shiver; the trembling made his muscles burn and scream, and his body had given up on trying to keep him alive anyways. It was a matter of time now, and Geralt had always been patient.

 

This was always the way he had expected to die. Impaled by a hideous creature on the banks of a lake too far removed from society to even be given a name. Perhaps without ice melting into his veins, and without snow beneath his back to soak up the blood, but Geralt had been born in the snows of Kaer Morhen. It seemed almost poetic to die in them. Briefly, he wished he had told Dandelion where the witchers’ keep was located. Surely, the poet would have been delighted amidst his grief to learn that Geralt had exited this world the same way he had entered it, icy and broken and with foreign substances flooding his veins. Though, from what he could recall, he had cried out during his trials. Now, he hadn’t the energy left to groan in pain, let alone shout. He was slipping away, gently being carried away by the land and the silence, to slowly become a part of it. Perhaps Dandelion would leave his body here, where he had fallen. It would only be right. It was so rare for witchers to leave enough of a body behind to bury, and even rarer for their contractors to do them such a courtesy. Left to become one with the land, to sink away into it and allow the birds and beasts to feast on his remains, to let himself fertilize the earth come spring, that seemed like the truest way to bring himself closer to his brothers in his final moments. Though it was likely, unfortunately, that Dandelion would demand a hero’s funeral for him instead. Something with music and drinking and overwrought emotions. Geralt was glad he wouldn’t be there to see it. Funerals were for the living. Decomposition was for the dead.

 

After a while, snowflakes began to fall. The moon was high in the sky, what Geralt could make out of it, anyways. His vision shifted and split, sometime double, sometimes too blurry to make out more than a faraway light shining down coldly onto the snow, unforgiving of the fact that he had yet to die. What snow did fall, strange in that it came from a cloudless sky, stopped melting on his face after a while. It crystalized over his skin, only fading away a bit where stuttering breaths still made their way past cracked and bloody lips. The snow became one with the ground, and one with his body, even the ice impaled in his flesh slowing its melting to barely more than a trickle. In a detached way, it occurred to Geralt that he was freezing. His body becoming one with the snow, instead of the other way around. He wondered why he wasn’t cold. Death had always seemed frozen to him, something that took you as you shivered and quaked. But he could barely feel his mind’s connection to his body anymore, let alone any pain or cold in his limbs. It was as though he was floating above himself, staring down as his blood painted the snow, fanning out from a broken body. His legs were crooked and bent sideways, one arm reaching out towards his blade, which had fallen several paces away from his body when he and the spirit had broken the surface of the icy lake. At one point, he must have tried to reach for it. Even the thought of such a thing was long past his comprehension now. The weight of the air and the snow was incomprehensively heavy, settling above his lungs and making each breath more and more difficult to draw in. There was ice congealing about his lashes, nose, and mouth. Soon, he would be nothing more than a frozen part of the land, blanketed with snow and covered in ice. It was a comforting thought.

 

The stars began winking out next. That was when Geralt truly knew he did not have long. The sky was bright between the pine trees obscuring his view, but he could no longer make out the pinpoints that lit it up. The shadowy figures of the trees danced above him, and he heard voices. Nenneke’s, and Vesemir’s, and Visenna’s. Renfri’s as well, mocking him. He was cold, now, as she had once been. Cold with no one to hold him as he died. It was oddly fitting, and she whispered as much, her dead breath dancing over his failing ears and mouth. Her lips fit to his in a kiss, as they had once shared beside a stream on the morning of the day that he had rent her throat in two. Her lips felt warm, though he knew they would have been cold had he not been freezing himself. The shadows continued to dance. Geralt found himself wishing to hear Dandelion’s voice one more time. The poet had sung to him several times, on nights when the horrors were too near, when he had been torn from his sleep gasping and shaking and drenched in sweat, hands clenching at the blankets and bloodless with fear. The poet had never mentioned it in the morning, and neither had Geralt, but it had been comforting and familiar. If there was anyone he would want by his side as he took his final breaths, it was Dandelion.

 

Suddenly, the shadows began shifting more energetically above him. There were no longer just the trees that slipped dizzily in and out of focus, but something else as well. Geralt thought it was the spirit, or perhaps a different creature attracted to the scent of his death. He couldn’t bring himself to care. Perhaps his medallion would still be found after this new abomination tore his flesh from his bones. There would be something by which to memorialize him, at least. For those who cared.

 

However, the pain of being torn apart never came. At first, Geralt wondered if it was simply because he had lost the ability to feel any part of his body. But then he realized he could still feel pressure, the pressure of his wounds and the ice digging into the muscles around his heart. And there was no pressure from the tearing of skin. Just something softer, something gentle accompanied by a musical voice that made him want to close his eyes and fall asleep. Dandelion.

 

Geralt tried to form some sort of sound, something to warn the poet to turn tail and run. Surely, scavengers would be convening to feast on his corpse. He didn’t think he could bear his final moments if they involved witnessing the death of his dear friend. However, no words passed through his frozen lips. He couldn’t even move, could barely blink his eyes when a hand that was burning hot passed over his face, coming to rest gently on his cheek. By the Gods, it hurt. That hand was burning him alive, stinging and aching and all too painful. He must have made a small keening sound, because it pulled away and he felt his vocal cords rasping painfully against each other.

 

“Hush now,” the voice sing-songed, as though it were lulling him off to sleep, not holding him as he died, “You’ll be well soon enough. We’ve just to get you warmed a bit.”

 

How could Geralt tell him that warmth, at this point, was pointless? There was more ice water than blood flowing through his veins, and the snow and ice on his body had stopped melting altogether. He hadn’t the heart, nor the energy, to explain this. Instead, he allowed himself to go limp, wondering how much longer he had to endure the painful heat of Dandelion’s warm body so close to his own before he slipped away.

 

The bard picked him up, cradling the top of his torso like that of a small child. There was a piercing whistle, one that burned at Geralt’s ears and caused him to flinch violently, or as violently as he was able. The shard of ice by his heart shifted uncomfortably, scraping against the inside of his body, painful and raw and suddenly far colder than he was capable of enduring, having tasted warmth after so many hours. He wanted to scream in pain, at the discomfort of his fluttering pulse pushing against a foreign object that was so very cold. He could feel a pricking at the back of his eyes, and he was so damnably uncomfortable that for a moment he considered giving in and letting himself sob at the pain of it all. His heart ached. There was ice in his blood. He could feel every shard of it shifting with the slow movements he was being guided through.

 

Next, a sudden jolting movement nearly sent Geralt hurtling towards the unconsciousness that he had felt lurking at the edges of his mind for what must have been hours now. He could feel himself being sat upright, legs swung over something that was far too hot and shifted dizzyingly beneath him. Roach, the small, reasonable voice in his head supplied. Though why Dandelion would bother to saddle up Roach in these conditions, to go plowing through the droves of snow in the farmers’ fields, was beyond him. Surely, though the troubadour was no horse man, he knew better. Perhaps the fever was still addling his friend’s brain. Geralt couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed he was not being left where he had fallen. Surely, Dandelion had known him well enough suspect he would have preferred to lie here, becoming one with the very nature that had once sustained him when he had been nothing more than a little lost boy at the side of the road. He did not need or want to have his body taken for some grand memorial full of crocodile tears and highborn ladies hiding their dry faces behind handkerchiefs, staring pityingly at one another as they discussed the musician who had held vigil for a monster.

 

Dandelion didn’t appear to be nearly as despairing as Geralt had suspected he would be. Granted, he was not gone yet, but by now, it was all but a sure thing. The witcher’s eyesight was also almost gone, the bard’s shining brown head little more than a dark blur against the lighter blur of the starless sky. He blinked, trying to clear his eyelids of their stinging dryness. His vision flickered some more.

 

“Ah, there you are. We really must stop meeting like this.”

 

Geralt wanted to argue that this was hardly true; he had never been truly dying before, and furthermore, they were hardly meeting, considering he had left Dandelion at the inn this very morning, not months ago. One only met another person after a prolonged absence from one another, not just a few hours. However, his stuttering heart and weakened breaths couldn’t form the words, nor could his mind comprehend how he might go about this. And underneath it all was the strong assurance: he was dying. It was only a matter of hours now, if not minutes. And Dandelion mustn’t have realized that. The bard was still carrying on as though he expected Geralt to rally and get to his feet after a good night’s rest. This, above all else, haunted the witcher. He would let Dandelion take his body, if it only meant that his friend was offered some sort of solace that he had not realized sooner that Geralt’s wounds were fatal. Geralt knew he would blame himself. He wanted to offer some sort of comfort, a reassurance that he would have died all the same, by ice or by blade or by claw made no difference to him. And that Dandelion mustn’t blame himself for what had happened. It was the way of the world.

 

“Do you hurt? You aren’t trembling the way you normally do when something is causing you pain and you hope I don’t notice. It certainly looks bad enough, though.”

 

Geralt couldn’t do so much as grunt. His energy had left his body, leeching out through the icy cuts along with the red blood that had once flowed within him. His hands felt heavier than lead.

 

“…silly of me, I know. To expect you to answer when you look as though you can barely keep your eyes open. Just try to relax, lean back against me. I don’t want you falling off and hurting yourself more. And I haven’t the strength to pick you up for a second time. Recovering from illness and whatnot has taken a frankly alarming amount of my strength.”

 

Dying has taken all of mine, Geralt thought wryly, thinking that he still had the ability, he would have smiled a bit. His head lolled back against Dandelion’s shoulder, which was still burning hot. Geralt wanted to tremble from the heat, but he was too tired. He could only slump bonelessly against it as it ripped through him, rending his icy body and frozen veins in two. He hurt so terribly, while also feeling no pain. It was most alarming, as though his dying mind was doing its best to construct a reality of what it might have felt like, had he survived. The pain he would be enduring now, atop Roach and burning alive against Jaskier’s skin as the bard carted him off to some dingy inn room to heal. He couldn’t bear the idea, suddenly, of his mind trying to fool him into not panicking. Geralt was a witcher. He would not panic or cower in the face of death.

 

However, unbidding, Geralt’s heart sped up, forcing the last of his blood through his atrophying veins. His breath began to come faster as well, shallow pants issuing forth from dry lips as he failed to calm himself. For he was dying. Really and truly, permanently and irreversibly. He had a few more moments left before the lights of the world winked out, as did his soul, his essence, the very centre of him. Geralt was not so prideful as to believe that the world was better with him in it. But suddenly, in the final moments before his entry into a vast emptiness of not being, he couldn’t bear to leave his life here behind. Couldn’t bear the thought of not existing anymore, of not feeling or seeing or hearing or thinking ever again, to lie and freeze and thaw and rot amongst the corpses of forest flora and fauna. It was all too much. He trembled vigorously, heart thudding wildly and fearfully against his breast. It was his final gasp, the last attempt at life before the doors to the world of the living shut permanently.

 

He struggled. His heart beat. And then it ceased, and the very last lights in Geralt’s mind winked out.


Dandelion had woken early that morning, in time to see Geralt going through his things and removing those necessary to take on yet another contract. He sat up in bed, rubbing at his eyes to alleviate the painful pounding that had yet to be ousted from its temporary residence in his forehead. He snuffled tiredly, and Geralt looked up, seemingly caught unawares by the bard’s wakefulness.

 

“Morning,” Dandelion muttered sleepily, swallowing back a burgeoning yawn, “No chance I’ll get to keep you to myself today, hmm?”

 

Geralt’s cheeks did not redden, but the gruffness in his mannerisms told Jaskier everything he needed to know. Though the last few weeks in the icy snow had done little to help their failing friendship and burgeoning romance. He missed the feeling of waking to Geralt’s arm nestled in the curvature of his waist, even when he had been too chilled and sick to register it. The witcher had not laid a hand on him other than when it had been necessary since they had come to stay at the inn. Though it was probably nothing more than a simple case of fear of persecution by local people, it had still worried Dandelion beyond measure. His hands twisted in the sheets as Geralt grumbled at him now, endearingly flustered.

 

“Rooms don’t come for free. One of us needs to be making some sort of a living. And my trade is the more lucrative.”

 

“Ha. Wait until I break out on the Oxenfurt stages. They’ll be singing my praises from dusk ‘til dawn.”

 

“And I’ll share a drink with you when they do.”

 

Grimacing at how quickly the conversation had turned against his favour, Dandelion fell back dramatically against the pillows, placing one hand atop his still-aching, sweaty brow. Geralt raised one of his own, and did nothing other than poke at one of the bard’s feet that had escaped the bed linens, as though examining for signs of life. Dandelion made an irate noise when his finger connected with particular force to a sensitive blister on the sole of the musician’s foot.

 

“Hmm. Fever broke yesterday. Don’t play the fool with me, bard. I’ve been laid out by fevers more often than you’ve celebrated namedays.”

 

Dandelion shot him an unconvincing glare through a baleful, half-closed lid.

 

“Don’t mock the ill. It’s in poor taste.”

 

“Indeed.”

 

Calmly, Geralt seated himself at the head of the bed and took out his whetstone, drawing long lines up the blade with a metallic shuffling that pierced Dandelion’s sensitive ears. He glared harder, knowing that the witcher was more than aware of how the sound grated on his nerves.

 

“Haven’t you a contract? You know, since I’ve been too ill and weak to do more than piss in the chamber pot and lie here like a sweating invalid whilst you bathed my fevered brow and spoon-fed me broth?”

 

“Wasn’t here. I was taking contracts, so we wouldn’t be kicked out into the blizzard, as you’ve so kindly elucidated.”

“Come now, Geralt, don’t be offended. It was partly in jest. Though I would feel in more of a joking mood if you’d stop that infernal noise.”

 

The shrieking of the whetstone against the blade stopped abruptly. The witcher leaned forwards, the palm of one hand braced against his knee and a wicked glitter in his eye that only ever appeared when he was feeling in the mood for banter.

 

“Perhaps you’d rather do it yourself. Take on the contracts, sharpen the swords. I can stay here, swigging ale and bemoaning my deplorable condition to the locals so they buy me food and drink and keep me propped up with a blanket before the fire.”

 

Dandelion swatted at him, knowing he was jesting. Though there was an undertone of truth to his words, in that the poet would gladly fight several men if it meant Geralt didn’t have to fear being turned away and mistreated while wounded. He had seen one too many examples of humanity’s cruelty towards those they perceived as different. Geralt just leaned back, easily dodging the blow, a smile twisting at his lips.

 

“You’ll be well, Dandelion. Take the day and rest. Curl your hair with those ridiculous tongs you insist on carrying with us everywhere. I’ll be back before midnight, and the night promises to be chill. I should like to come back to a warm bed.”

 

Dandelion tried his best not to wiggle seductively under the sheets, and failed, though Geralt didn’t appear to notice anyways. He harnessed both swords to his back, tightening the belt that crossed his chest, and slid a small blade into a sheath strapped to his leg. Then, shaking out the great fur-lined cloak that had rested on a chair, he buckled the thing about his neck, looking for all the world like an irate wolf peering out from its depths, yellow eyes glinting in the candlelight.

 

“Do be careful, Geralt. I shouldn’t like to have to go out hunting for you in this cold. Dry air and chill winds are terrors on the throat.”

 

“You won’t have to,” the witcher stepped over to him and palmed his forehead, seemingly checking for a fever once more before he departed, “Like I said, I’ll be back before midnight. The lake is barely two miles outside town, and even without Roach, I’ll make good time.”

 

“Lake? You never said anything about a lake. Geralt, what is it that you’re going to hunt?”

 

“Water spirit. Not sure what type. They’re rarely dangerous, though, in more than the conventional sense. I’ll be back before midnight.”

 

Dandelion might have said more, the idea of Geralt traipsing about a lake in weather cold enough to freeze the mucous on the inside of your nose being less than appealing to him, but the witcher withdrew abruptly, turned in a dramatic swirl of black cloak and furs, and vanished. He shut the door softly behind him, which the bard appreciated. He was feeling anxious enough without sudden loud noises setting him further on edge.

 

The rest of the day he spent in a distracted monotony. He tried strumming his lute, but it held little appeal in the chill of the room. He stoked the fire, tried to read some, and found himself nodding off shortly after a maid brought in a bowl of stew that Geralt had apparently paid for before leaving in the morning. He slept for an hour or so, waking up refreshed and with new anxieties. There was snow swirling outside the window, enough to confuse even Geralt’s excellent sense of direction. Drawing the curtains, he went downstairs to read and visit with the barkeep, determined not to spend his afternoon pining after Geralt, who was both exceptionally capable and most likely fine. There was no point in worrying himself before there was cause for worry. So his mother had always said.

 

The evening dragged on, though, and there was still no sign of the witcher. Dandelion kept count of the hours, and asked a rich-looking fellow to see his pocket watch at what he estimated was about an hour after midnight. Sure enough, it was nearing on thirty minutes past the first hour of the morning. The curling anxiety that had sat in the poet’s stomach all day suddenly became a ravenous beast, twisting his guts into knots and conjuring dark images to his mind. He winced, tried to turn away, only to remember that there was no turning away from the fears that lurk inside you.

 

“I shall have to go after him,” he muttered under his breath, “He was most clear he would be back before midnight, and I’ve given him more than enough time. Something must have happened out there.”

 

Geralt had said not to take Roach out in this snow. But Dandelion was still weak from his sickness, and whatever the witcher had encountered by the lake must have wounded him badly enough that he could not make it back to the village under his own power. So, Dandelion saddled her all the same, led her out into the cold and breathed soft, soothing words onto her velvety nose when she tossed her head in complaint. Geralt would never treat her so poorly. The poet only hoped that his friend would be well enough to be wrathful about it.

 

Strangely enough, when Dandelion stepped outside, the howling winds and swirling snows of earlier were gone. In their place was a distinct absence of noise, the blanket of peaceful silence that one only finds directly after a storm, when all the earth is covered in snow and the sky is starry and cold. The moon’s watery light glinted on an endless plain of white that stretched all the way to a bank of trees, standing like sentinels in the distance. Dandelion cursed. The snow was abominably deep, for all its beauty. A few snowflakes were still falling, fat and lazy, as though they had simply been too slow to wreak havoc with the storm. They plopped on his swiftly reddening nose and melted there. Behind him, Roach whuffed and pawed at the impassible ground.

 

“I know, Roach. But we can’t just stay here if something’s happened to him. I know you love him too much to abandon him to such a fate.”

 

She blinked, warm brown eyes appraising him with the quiet wisdom that Dandelion had learned was an acquired trait of being a witcher’s travelling companion. Her nostrils flared, breath steaming warmly before her, and he breathed in the sweet scent of straw and dry sweat that came with it. It was familiar in a land where everything was icy and impersonal. Not even the welcome sounds of the inn could perforate the silence.

 

They took their first step together, Dandelion’s boot resting for a moment on the surface of the snow before it cracked beneath him and sent him tumbling up to his knees. Roach plowed ahead, and he ended up trailing by her side, making his way along the tracks she forged. He could see a break in the forest about two miles away, where the mountains opened into a basin where there was most likely a lake. Having not had the wherewithal to ask for directions before he left, and with the snow having covered any tracks Geralt might have left, Dandelion knew his best bet was to navigate towards it. There weren’t many lakes hereabouts; the sheer mountain faces and cirques rising high above them made sure of that. It was likely one of the only sources for the river that ran through this valley. No wonder the locals had been so desperate to get rid of whatever spirit had taken up residence there.

 

The going got a bit easier once they reached the forest. The trees were mainly old pines, with branches up high enough that Dandelion and Roach had no problems passing under them. The snow had not managed to penetrate the needles, so only a thick blanket of detritus and the occasional patch of melting ice barred their way. The whole place smelled of earthy decay mixed with burning cold snow, and the ground crackled beneath them, echoing into the empty space. Old man’s beard grew and dangled from the trees, swaying ominously in the wind like so many scalps, wizened and dried with age. Dandelion suppressed a shudder and pressed on.

 

Occasionally, the poet thought he heard a cry or growl in the distance. He dismissed them as a mere figment of his imagination, trying to focus on the more imminent problem of his frozen hands and feet. Geralt had warned him against going out in the cold before he was fully well again, and he was beginning to wonder if he ought to have listened, to have summoned a search party from the village instead. Every inch of him was trembling, and his toes felt numb and strangely disconnected as they bent in his boots. His nailbeds were blue, and his teeth chattered even when he buried his head in Roach’s mane, trying to escape into her sweet smell and pervasive warmth for even a moment. Hardly bothering to watch where he was stepping any longer, he trusted Geralt’s mount to lead the way. She had an uncanny sixth sense when it came to the whereabouts of her master, and Dandelion knew she would not fail to find the safest trail up to the lake. He nuzzled into her mane, putting one clumsy foot before the other, clinging to her to warm his frozen hands. When she stopped, he kept going for another several paces before jerking upright, realizing that his support had abandoned him.

 

Opening his tired eyes, the bard looked ahead. They were still surrounded by trees, but there was a murky blackness beyond them to the left; a clearing. In these parts, where no loggers dared venture, it could only mean they had reached the lake.

 

“Oh, good girl,” he crooned softly, scratching between Roach’s ears, and wishing he had something better to offer her besides the frozen air and the good likelihood that something terrible had befallen her rider, “Leading us here all by yourself. Geralt will be so pleased with you.”

 

He chose not to include the thought that was echoing far too loudly in his frozen head. If he’s alive was always questionable with Geralt, such was the nature of his profession. But as Dandelion stepped away from Roach, the silence in the air was so heavy and fraught he felt that he could have sliced through it like a side of raw meat. His heart pounded loudly in the vacancy where there should have the snarls of a wraith, or Geralt’s sword singing through the air. Even the sound of the other man drawing breath would have been preferrable to this awful emptiness. Dandelion tottered forwards on legs so frozen they no longer even caused him pain.

 

“Geralt? Are you there? It’s just me, come to see if you’re alright after you didn’t deign to come back to the inn at the appointed time. And while I’m sure you’re fine…”

 

Whatever Dandelion might have wanted to say next died in his throat, words perched on his tongue, where they mingled with the foul flavour of dread. As he stepped out of the forest and into the clearing, a scene that could only be described as bloody carnage met his eyes. The moon shone its watery light over a small lake, mostly covered in ice. However, on the side nearest to Dandelion and furthest from the backing of several high mountains, the ice cover had been shattered and spewed up over the shoreline in great shards. It left a dark, gaping hole in the snow-covered peace of the lake. And in the midst of it all lay two dark shapes, no more than amorphous figures in the shivering light of the pale stars. But Dandelion would have known one of them anywhere, evens surrounded by blood, arms splayed out beside him as though he had been grasping for something.