"Hey, Butcher!"
It's the first thing anyone says to him after the mountain. He hasn't heard it in some time but he can't even bring himself to be surprised. Everything else that could go wrong has.
In the end he gets off lightly. The man may apparently know him as a murderer but he has a job for him. And money. Both halves of the contract go off without a hitch and no one gives him trouble at the tavern afterward, though he regrets staying when he finds out that Jaskier has been through already and apparently his new tune is both catchy enough people are still singing it and about Geralt, Butcher of Dragons. Also the butcher of turncoat dragon-slayers, because in Jaskier's version Geralt had to follow up slaying the now-silver dragon with saving his friendly and hard-working dwarf allies from the villainous band of Reavers bent on stealing the credit. He's not sure why Yennefer's missing from the tale but perhaps Jaskier is still concerned about that time she threatened his dick. Or she might be the dragon. Geralt often struggles with the more plausibly deniable implications in Jaskier's songs, and Jaskier'd definitely want that to be deniable.
He has time to contemplate all that because people just keep singing it. It's what Geralt gets for wandering around the back roads, putting off heading into town just because he didn't want to deal with people for a while. He should have put as much distance between him and this cursed place as he could.
Geralt discovers in the next few towns that in the time they've been apart Jaskier has already written several other new songs and reworked older ones. For some reason, Jaskier has suddenly decided the phrase "Butcher of" is very dramatic, or else rhymable, since those seem to be the only things Jaskier ever concerns himself with, and it crops up again and again. Exactly what Geralt the Butcher is actually butchering in a given song varies. Kikimoras, devils, basilisks, harpies, selkimores, wolves, giant wolves, giant frost-breathing ghost wolves, and "man-eating unicorns". (...They're called kelpies. Why is Jaskier like this.)
"They're called kelpies," he tells Jaskier when their paths cross next and he's finally given a chance to voice the complaint.
"You don't understand poetry," Jaskier says loftily. Geralt can't argue with that. "It's the juxtaposition. The noble unicorn, clad in virginal white, clambering from the clear waters...and with such a big, hard horn." And yet, for all Jaskier's voice is light, the man is staring at him with an intensity to his eyes not unlike a kelpie staring down a victim. "Come now, surely I've earned more than three words of criticism by now, after such a long friendship? Perhaps nine even, three each for those extra two decades we've known each other?"
Geralt considers and gives him seven more: "There's no such thing as silver dragons."
"I seem to recall you being quite certain that there was no such thing as gold dragons, so I am afraid, Geralt, afraid that I have entirely lost my trust in your professional knowledge, at least when it comes to anything draconic. You say there is no such thing. I say there is! Who's to say which of us is correct?"
Geralt glowers. Jaskier hadn't even believed dragons existed.
"You're right, you're right, I don't know why I'm even talking as if we're on equal terms here. I said gold dragons were real. And who was proven right then? So clearly, of the two of us, I am the expert on the colors dragons come in."
Geralt glowers harder. He puts a frown into it.
Jaskier only claps his hands with the delight of a child seeing a dancing bear. "At any rate, I'm unspeakably glad to hear that's all you can find fault in about my otherwise flawless ballads," he says, still with that unnerving kelpie glitter in his eye. "How there's nothing else, not a thing, you think should be changed, and so not a thing I will change. Yes. Why would I? They've been so terribly popular. So terribly. Why, I wonder how long people will keep singing them after I've passed through? Just ages, I'm sure."
"Hm," Geralt manages as that sinks in.
"Ages and ages," Jaskier continues blithely. "Really puts a spring in my step, makes me want to go everywhere, sing everywhere. Spread them as far and wide as possible. You'll have to tell me when our paths cross next just how often you hear them. Perhaps they'll outlive me. Even outlive you! Wouldn't that be wonderful? To be immortalized in song? To spend the rest of your life, your very long life let's hope, hearing the people sing when they see you?"
And as if to underscore the absolute shit time Geralt is having, one of the men in the tavern looks over and calls, "Oy, Butcher!"
x
He runs across Yennefer and ends up on the floor, then a portal, then a bed.
Geralt has certainly learned his lesson about what a terrible idea talking is, but he's also learned Yennefer is, on a deep and philosophical level, opposed to learning any kind of lesson. If something doesn't work, she thinks the universe didn't hear her properly and does it again but louder and with a glare. So she decides to chat.
It's because he is so, so tired that he mutters about how everyone's calling him Butcher again.
"Of course," Yennefer tells him.
"Hm?"
"Jaskier," Yennefer tells him.
"Hm?"
"It's his songs," Yennefer tells him.
"Hm."
"He's going write even more," Yennefer tells him.
"Hm," Geralt says, giving up and falling asleep.
He doesn't know why Yennefer sounds so ominous when she mentions Jaskier writing more. New songs would be an improvement, Geralt thinks. It's not like there can be that many words that rhyme with "butcher".
x
It turns out there are so many words that rhyme with "butcher".
Geralt doesn't recognize all of them. He's not sure if that's yet another piece of his ever-growing disconnection from humanity as the passage of time takes him further and further from the days when he was an ordinary child and not a mutated nigh-immortal witcher or if Jaskier has just begun making words up.
Three people pat him on his way through the tavern and each feels like he's a cat getting its fur rubbed the wrong way. "Butcher!" they say like it's some sort of cheer. He wants to punch them so much. Jaskier is singing. It's a version of the very first song, but redone so he's alternating the chorus about tossing a coin to your witcher with tossing a coin to your butcher.
And Geralt gives in and mentions it.
Jaskier talks about the balance of light and dark, order and chaos, epic battles and rarer than a blue moon witchers contrasted with humble down to earth people everyone's familiar with, like the town butcher. Geralt finishes his ale. Jaskier calls for another before he can get up. Jaskier is still talking. It gives a dynamism to the tale. Geralt chugs the second ale. Jaskier orders another. Butchers are a profession. Words. Words. It's another way of looking at it. Helps humanize it all. No matter how fast Geralt drinks Jaskier just keeps getting more. Thought it might be good to de-mystify the whole thing, make it more about an honest day's work.
Geralt manages to get in, "Giant frost-breathing ghost wolves."
"Are a lot more impressive when you're established as a down to earth hero, a humble if terrifically skilled butcher," Jaskier says in a tone that sounds like whatever he just said is an explanation, and then he's on about verisimilitude. It may be a tangent. It may be a continuation. Jaskier may actually be speaking in circles. Isn't it amazing, Jaskier tells him, how some songs can completely change how people look at the world. Change what they think of people. How they talk about, and to, people. Has Geralt ever noticed that? In his day to day life? Jaskier is staring at him like Jaskier is a kelpie and Geralt is the idiot who mistook it for a horse and whose hand is now sinking inexorably into its side.
He finishes another ale. There is another ale. Butchers are an important part of society. He considers that Jaskier, being human, has a far more limited alcohol capacity and Geralt can just wait him out. He realizes Jaskier is still nursing his first one, more to keep his voice from drying out than anything, and that he has seen Jaskier drink far more than that without his words so much as slowing.
Jaskier is explaining how much people like sausage.
He is pretty sure he understands less by the next morning than before he brought it up. Jaskier inquires over breakfast what Geralt's been killing lately, badgers for details, and then begins to compose, without breaking eye contact, a song about the white-haired Bruxa Butcher.
x
"If I was a robber, I'd be taking their belongings, Butcher."
This is Geralt's life now.
People on tumblr noted that the episode after fighting with Jaskier he's back to getting called "Butcher" again, but I couldn't buy the idea Jaskier went so far as to tell everyone that never mind, Geralt actually is a horrible murdering monster who you should lynch if you get half the chance or at least refuse to pay until he dies in a ditch, ooooh that'll teach him to shout at me. It makes sense to me that Jaskier would want some sort of revenge but it would be the kind of revenge that is annoying (and self-aggrandizing, ideally) rather than harmful or cruel. And the guy calling him a butcher actually seems to have one of the most positive views of Geralt's character even before Geralt saves him, to the point he thinks Geralt will be moved by compassion to help him with the dead bodies.
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