Jaskier ♫ The Sandpiper (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rollstoseduce) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
victory_road2021-05-21 07:41 pm
rollstoseduce) wrote in victory_road2021-05-21 07:41 pm
[Closed]
Who: A metaphorical wolf, an actual wolf, a bard, a swordcat, a rat king, a poison king, a horse with wings, a horse with a bug fish name and a wyvern eta and now a second horse
Where: National Park
When: Some time during 4th wall
Summary: Sparring! Powers! Potions! Animals! Secrets revealed, oh my!
Rating: let's give it an R for naughty jokes and references in narration
So you want to fight a witcher?
>Yes
>No
>Gwent
Where: National Park
When: Some time during 4th wall
Summary: Sparring! Powers! Potions! Animals! Secrets revealed, oh my!
Rating: let's give it an R for naughty jokes and references in narration
So you want to fight a witcher?
>Yes
>No
>Gwent
oops all talking
I do actually believe you weren't sleeping with me and Geralt at the same time - but before, that faith would have come from my never dreaming you'd try to pull something that underhanded on me. I mean, we'd always talked things through and kept each other on the same page about our arrangement up until now, right? Like reasonable adults who talk to each other, and know something about how to manage a sexual relationship? But now that I know you would go behind my back like that, I don't actually know what I can trust about you anymore. It's not the outburst; it's you having shown my understanding of you as wrong, and now I don't know what knowledge of you and instincts of mine actually hold any weight. Once you've been catastrophically wrong once, you're going to second-guess a lot of things you never questioned believing before.
All I really know - the one thing I still completely trust - is that you would never jerk Geralt around like that.
[And, as Jaskier continues, Claude actually finds his mouth falling open. It's not shocked outrage; it's just...bafflement. What he's hearing doesn't even seem to make sense.] Using it against - Jaskier, what does using something against you actually mean to you? Please tell me it's more than just pointing out parallels you don't want to think about, because - I mean, you've been at court. I'd like to think you're extremely aware of what a person really using something against someone else looks like, and it's not friendly encouragement - no matter how smug or overbearing it is.
When I ended up with men I hadn't allowed myself to believe were into me - men you encouraged me to believe I had a chance with - I pointed out that maybe the same thing might be true of you. That's it! I said "hey, maybe if my chances were evidently way better than I thought, then you shouldn't write off your chances either!" Frankly, I would've thought if our positions were reversed - if you'd gotten together with Geralt while I was still pining for Dimitri and Felix and Sylvain, thinking they'd never have feelings for me because they were all too hung up on someone else - that you'd have done the exact same thing. To point out that we're extremely similar men, in not exactly dissimilar situations, and maybe if there was hope for one of us then there could be a chance for the other, too.
I'm not saying you have to like that I did that. If you hated it, or resented it, if it really bothered you, you can feel however you want about it no matter how good my intentions were, and I'll readily apologize for making you feel ways I never wanted you to feel - but to call that some kind of acting against you? Making it sound like I was ever trying to do anything but support you? You're not just overstating your case, you're practically fabricating it.
Pointing out how long it's been, and how little it's come up, doesn't make your case any stronger, either! Doesn't that just mean it was a lot less of this ever-present, overbearing issue than you're treating it? I wasn't pushing you about it. I don't even think I've brought it up all that often! But you make it sound like any whiff of Geralt in my presence invited some kind of - verbal assault.
I'll apologize for any amount of discomfort I've caused you, but you're treating those moments like they were the rule when they were rare exceptions. Do you think you need to over-exaggerate that much to get me to take how much it upset you seriously? Because it's going to have the opposite effect. I can respect that even a few instances of being too overbearing on a too-sensitive subject could have a big impact, but I can't - and won't - accept you painting some narrative that this was some huge, constant, inescapable problem when I know that isn't what happened. You can't say "it's been nothing but preaching and scolding since then" and also "we haven't talked about this in months" in the same breath!
As for wanting my trust - Jaskier, you've had it. I don't know what you were expecting it to look like, but you had it, and then you decided to be 'patient' - [Claude makes the air quotes with his fingers.] - with me, waiting for me to become something other than who I am and give you whatever you think my trust actually looks like, to the point where you sat on the problems you had with me without talking to me about them until they boiled over. And when they boiled over, the very first things to burn were the things I trusted you with. My company, my secrets, my boyfriends. [He gestures toward where the others are standing, not far off.] You used something I told you in confidence about Felix as an excuse to insult him, in front of me, over how he behaved months ago! To call him a bitch in front of me and Dimitri! You couldn't just say he was jealous; you had to dig at him, and you used me to do it. Even if you didn't think that revealing things I said to you in confidence was a big deal, what were you aiming for by saying those things, Jaskier?
And the fact is that you were trying to cause problems for my relationships. Not consciously, maybe, but that was the motive. It wasn't to make things better between me and them. I don't see how insulting Felix would have played into that. But more than that - the fact that you threatened me with spilling those details says everything it needs to. It was a threat because you knew they were secrets of mine you had, and you knew there were people there I might not want to hear them. If you want to talk about having the upper hand over someone, how about we discuss an attempt to blackmail me into silence with my confidences as leverage? Holding my relationships with my boyfriends and how you could potentially affect them over my head?
It doesn't matter what the secrets actually were, or whether I minded having them revealed. What matters is how low of a thing that was to do. And then you have the nerve to say you didn't mean to drag the others into this - that was explicitly what you did! It wasn't some accidental collateral damage, that was the entire point of your actions! If you want to apologize for making a bad decision you regret, that's one thing, but don't pretend their getting involved wasn't the direct result of a conscious decision you made where their being dragged in was the only possible result.
[Claude - who's been gesturing to some degree himself - lets his hands fall to his sides.] Is that really what this has all been about at the bottom of it, Jaskier? You resenting my controlling nature? You hating the thought of me having been right, even if the outcome is positive for you, to the point that you can't stomach it? Of course I don't know everything, but for you to be so caught up in wanting to show that, to hide things that might make me think my conclusions had been correct...is that really what it boils down to? Even though I've only ever tried to use that nature to your benefit?
Because if it is, I don't think you understand the way I am, much less why, at all. You've had the luxury of having someone at your back looking out for you almost as long as I've been alive. You've had the good luck not to be a nationally hated public figure. You've had the privilege of being able to run away from things I've had to live my entire life - and you've got some idea of how horrible they can be, but I wonder if even you have enough of an idea. It's not just the way I think. The way I eat, the way I sleep, the way I look and walk and talk - every part of me down to the bones has been warped with needing to be right just so I can avoid being dead. And you say - you think - you understand? You think it's just some veil I can and should drop if people matter enough to me? Do you even think I'd begin to know how?
If you're judging your relative importance based on whether or not I try to understand my friends well enough to give them accurate, helpful advice - whether or not they necessarily want to hear it - then you're never going to believe I care about anyone. If your patience has been in service of waiting for me to become someone else with a more favorable personality, then it's no wonder you ran out of it.
As for today...I wasn't scolding you, Jaskier. I was teasing. I was so happy for you. And I thought you'd be happy, too, finally being with Geralt. I thought some good-natured ribbing was totally justified, especially after something so momentous had happened and you hadn't told your friends. I thought your hiding it had been some kind of prank, so some mock indignation was kind of the reaction you were looking for. [His voice gets quieter.] But it wasn't a prank. And...happiness hasn't been the dominant emotion since you got together with Geralt, has it? Whatever I've done, it's bad enough that your wanting to avoid me and whatever it is you fear from me takes precedence even over your delight at having finally, unexpectedly ended up with the love of your life. Enough to outweigh everything else...even things like being the hopeless romantic you are, and showing off.
I don't know how I can apologize enough, if that's been the result of my actions. But...Geralt deserves better than having his relationship with you overshadowed by whatever resentment I've bred in you. If you can't stand the person I am, and I can do this much harm while only trying to help, you're better off without me.
sorry he says so little in return
Claude does have some good points, he must admit, points that Jaskier would be willing to concede if they weren't surrounded by some much bullshit. There are so many misunderstandings he wants to clarify, so much erroneous judgment he wants to snap at, but he doesn't know where to even begin to untangle this web of-- whatever this is. He doesn't know anymore.
Two things stick out, however. One, Claude's mention of his "controlling personality", which brings back Jaskier's previous conclusion - the answer to Dimitri's question. There's no point in even trying to reply when neither of them is trusting each other's words, now is there? They're running in circles and only one thing -the inevitable- will stop it.
Two, that conclusion of Claude's at the end about Jaskier's feelings on his relationship with Geralt, which makes him stop pacing to stare at him with fury in his eyes.]
Who the fuck do you think you are? What kind of self-absorbed conclusion is that? You think that because I hid it from you I haven't been showing it off somewhere else? That my resentment towards you actually came up at all the last month outside very specific situations I could probably count with one hand? You aren't the center of my bloody world, Claude von Riegan. The pure bliss I've felt since prom is strong enough to move mountains.
[He suddenly shakes his head, throwing his hands in the air - a gesture of surrender.]
It matters not. You are right about one thing: I am obviously not the kind of person who can keep a controlling personality in his life. So...
[Fuck. No matter how angry he is, this is still hard as hell. Thinking it is abstract, actually pulling it off makes it real. He swallows back a sob.]
This is it, I suppose.
[Today has been hell, but it's only so because the beginning had been good. So he thinks that this end, at the very least, deserves him looking directly at Claude's eyes and put as much emotion in his own blues and voice as possible.]
Goodbye, Claude.
[He doesn't wait for an answer, though. He just turns around and walks away.]
no subject
[Claude, at least, had wanted to set the record straight that he hadn't just drawn his conclusion from Jaskier's hiding it from him, but hiding it from their entire group. That's admittedly a variable amount of effort, but that's still a lot of people to keep out of the loop just to avoid one person. And that Jaskier's reflexive reaction upon his relationship with Geralt being announced - upon being congratulated - was to focus in not on his happiness, or even on Geralt, but on getting worked up over what Claude said, or didn't say, or what Jaskier didn't want him to say...it had felt so bizarre. It still does. How can anything Claude's done, especially by accident, subsume Jaskier's happiness at being with Geralt, even within - as Jaskier indicates - one specific group of people?
He'd wanted to refute his self-centeredness before Jaskier left, because it's obvious they've reached the end.
He finds some small, bitter irony in it. Jaskier - who hates Claude's insight, his being right, so deeply - had nonetheless done more or less what Claude had predicted. He'd come over to apologize, and had in fact explained why Claude deserved it. He's accused Claude of being self-centered while making an apology to Claude almost solely about himself. He hasn't even acknowledged most of what Claude said, never mind how he felt or why he felt it. Presumably, if it's not about Jaskier, it doesn't actually matter.
No wonder this soured so quickly when Jaskier no longer needed him for sex.
Claude wonders just how long Jaskier had been riding this out because some fallback was better than none. Quite awhile, clearly; the man has been gritting his teeth through Claude's company, at his own admission, for months. Whether or not it was a conscious maneuver on the bard's part, the fact that Jaskier's 'patience' just happened to run out the moment he could formally drop Claude seems far too convenient to be entirely coincidence. Jaskier suddenly had less reason to hold back, and the dam broke.
His voice is still quiet at Jaskier's back.]
Farewell, Jaskier.