Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters of the witcher. Those are property of Mr Sapkowski and I using Netflix series canon mixed with the books and my twisted version of the lore.

Warnings : suggested suicide attempt

Notes :

Thx TX136313 for the fav and follow :)

This is a very short chapter here, transitioning from the first act to the second. Jaskier will obviously not be in this second act as an active character but we will learn from him and Geralt has some work to do to get over him too, so yeah... he is still there a lot. Same with Yennefer. But she will be more present later in this part.

This is the first "story" that doesn't follow a short story from the book per se and that is more a connection with the series events.

Destiny - part 1

Roach

###

Geralt drove south blindly for the first week. Anger and sadness were all that he knew but he couldn't cry despite the pain. He couldn't process this level of emotions. This was simply too much for him. Driving was almost the only thing that helped. He had to focus on the road, not himself. His nights were strangely full. He slept all the way - didn't dream - but he always woke up tired, as if his body was trying to heal from a nasty wound. In a way it felt like it. His heart was damaged.

Yennefer break up was painful and already overwhelming but it was a clean stab - a nasty wound but with clear borders - and Geralt knew he could heal and scar from that. Jaskier's one was like a gangrene. He felt like pushing him away was like cutting a part of him that had festered. Now he was missing something important but doing it was the only way to save his life.

Sometimes, when anger diminished a bit, he wasn't sure of himself, but there was no coming back from it. He had to learn to manage how to function without that missing part of him and that deep wound that was taking time to heal.

He reached south Temeria in ten days, Toussaint within two weeks. Time for the flower perfume to disappear from his car. He felt a little bit better after that. He could erase more of… everyone.

###

No frontiers were closed, no country seemed to prepare for war there, despite what the news were saying in the northern kingdoms. He passed the mountains by the Theodula channel and entered the empty lands of the Nilfgaard empire. The geolocalisation didn't work there, he had to travel the old way. His memory was a bit rusty but he had some maps and a compass. It did the job while the road signilisation was very poor.

He kept the direction South East and followed the road to Metina. That city was indicated. He arrived there after another week. This was his last stop to fill his oil tank and reserves before Ebbing if his calculations were correct.

He followed the river patiently. There was something really satisfying to drive on Nilfgaardian's roads. The wild was wilder here. The empire was an empire of emptiness and dust. For the north part, they had the benefit of the northern soft weather and abundant rains, so they had green lands and a lot of food, but as soon as you went inland the climate turned to be quite arid. People live in cities that were almost like oasis in the desert, or flourishing around the rivers.

But that emptiness was all that Geralt needed to focus on his own emptiness. Those long linear roads, almost indistinguishable from the land sometimes - when the wind was pushing the dust in the air and clouding the horizon - were giving him peace of mind.

But he knew from experience that it was temporary. Soon enough the emotional toll of his existence would rush back in his life to drown him. But he hoped that, with a calmer mindset, he would be able to face it better.

###

He was somewhere in the great lakes region just before the mountains in between Metina and Ebbing when he received a call he didn't expect. Vesemir was trying to reach him. This was not the best place to have a conversation as the network was poor here, but he answered.

- "Son ?"

- "Yes. You are breaking a little bit, but I hear you."

- "Are you ok ?"

- "Yeah." He was lying but his mentor's tone suggested he was afraid he was wounded. Emotional pain didn't count in this case. "Why are you asking ?"

- "It is everywhere on the news, doggo. Your human almost died two days ago, in Posada."

Geralt's blood turned ice. His hopes of facing any emotional trigger with a calmer mindset just blew away in an instant. The pain inside was stronger than ever. He couldn't erase twenty years with Jaskier in a few weeks only. The healing process would be long and with that news Vesemir just reopened the wound fresh.

- "Badly hurt ? What happened ?" He asked, controlling his voice to show no emotion.

- "Well, bad enough. He got into a bar fight apparently and got stabbed. They say he lost a lot of blood. He's been transferred to the hospital of Ban Glean by portal. So it seemed quite urgent."

- "Good. Vespula lives there. She can take care of him. Is that all ?"

Geralt was trying to let go - he had to cut it short to stay strong - but Vesemir had an instinct and knew he was hiding something already.

- "Well, knowing how you usually protect him, if he was that badly hurt, I was afraid you were worse."

- "I am ok. I am not with him." He said calmly.

- "Really ? Why's that ?"

He really didn't want to speak about that but he had to be clear enough so he wouldn't have more questions to answer.

- "We parted ways, like you suggested so long ago."

- "Ok… Are you sure everything is alright ?"

- "I am working on it. I think I will come back this winter."

- "Oh !?" The old man was surprised. "That's a good thing then. See you soon, son. Take care of you."

- "Same to you."

Despite the news that dug a hole back in his heart, this phone call was greatly appreciated. He didn't speak so calmly with his mentor for years. This was to add to the pile of shit Jaskier shoveled around him through the years.

He looked at his phone and briefly checked the news. This was everywhere indeed. The titles would go from simple information to sensational. Suicide attempt ? Drugs ? Alcohol ?

Geralt knew there was a bit of truth in all of that but Posada was very symbolique. His heart twisted painfully again.

- "You went there to end it where it began…" He said to the picture illustrating the article he had opened. This was a beautiful portrait… "You are alive now buddy. This is time to get a new start. You are free. You have time to heal. While I am crawling back to the darkness I shouldn't have left… Don't be stupid. Let Vespula take care of you or find yourself another nice human as a muse and get over it…"

He closed the tab and the internet connection. He was feeling all over the place. He will be ok. Forget about it. He told himself. He is not alone. Vespula will take care of him. Or anyone…

###

There was a road going around the mountains but Geralt felt the need to go there, even if he could be short on his reserves of oil for the trip back. It was perhaps Destiny that made him choose the mountains or the nostalgia of his life in Kaer Morhen, but from that road his whole perspective on the Continent affairs changed brutally.

He had left Roach at the end of a path and went hunting in the mountains to get some food and get some water to a nearby cascade. He went quite high and killed a wild mountain goat. He had made some fire to cook and dry the meat, and while the slow process was going, he went to the top of his pike.

He had an incredible view for miles and miles around. The landscape was flattening quite fast around these mounts that seemed an anomaly - an oasis of vegetation and life, nursed by the great lake area, overlooking an almost desertic and dusty land. But it was a movement that caught his attention.

At first, he thought that he was looking at the Lette river. There was that long dark ribbon splitting the land for miles and that was coming from the mountains here. But from his observation point he could see the forest underneath running down to the valley and the dark ribbon was moving… upwards.

He took his phone and tried to take a picture. His device was clearly not powerful enough to take a clear shot of what it was from that far but he had a bad feeling. If he could detect movement with his own eyes, it meant that what was moving was big or nearer than he thought. This was the second option with a bit of the first.

He zoomed and pointed at the valley. Looking through the screen, his blood ran cold. The dark ribbon was an army. There were no vehicles like cars or trucks, but there were some machines built on wheels and they were pulled up through the desert, through the mountains, by men. He never saw machines like that before.

He took some photos to have proof and returned to his camp. While he was taking all his smoked meat and destroying the best he could the evidence of his passage, he remembered what Yarpen said during the Dragon hunt. The dwarf was right. What was coming from Ebbing was an army like no-one had seen before, and if the vague news he remembered were also correct, then it meant that Cintra was the target.

Destiny wants me to protect that child from the war then. This was the obvious answer to all of his internal questions. The objectif was clear in his mind now and everything started to make sense.

He returned to Roach, loaded the food and drove North without hesitation. He would reach Nazair and reach the mountains separating the Cintrian lands from Nilfgaard. From there he would improvise, but this was the fastest way to the capital.

That army would probably not take this way, because with the machines they had, they couldn't go through mountains as high as the Gory Amell's. Toussaint and Sodden was the only valid way, and this could give him perhaps some weeks, maybe months, for a preventive action.

###

The mountains proved themselves a real obstacle and Roach found its limits there. He had pushed the vehicle too far too quickly on his way up, the desert had already damaged more than he thought the machinery. He could push to the other side but his pick up died, in the garage of a small town.

- "I'm sorry witcher, that car ain't going anywhere." Said the garagist, with a bad voice, lungs presumably the same colors as his hands covered in mechanical grease.

He looked at his vehicle with a contained sadness. This was worth almost two decades of memories, full of laughs and discussions. He could almost see Jaskier on the platform waving at him with a big smile on his face. This was the last link. The ghost of his friend disappeared and he felt empty again.

- "How much for what's left of it ?" He said coldly, hiding that his heart was tearing apart.

He sold it for a ridiculous price to the man who worked on it and asked where he could buy a new car. There was none here, he was said. So he did what he hadn't done in decades : buy a horse. This was the weirdest deal of his life. He gave way too much, including his shotgun and all the spare material he couldn't carry, for an old working animal.

###

He was now traveling at horse walking speed towards the capital - his swords on his back, his cowboy hat on his head and his last belongings in two big bags on the flanks of the animal. This felt right. Like the witchers of the old time. He patted the neck of the horse - a nice brown old mare built for work not race. He will go far.

- "Nice to meet you. Roach." He said.

New beginning for Geralt who tries very hard to let go of the last twenty years...

Just to warn you. Next chapter is installing something new and perhaps weird to you, but that will connect the last dots from the very star to the next stage.

See you soon !