[ He curves forward, letting Jaskier soap him up and wash as he will. He cannot say when this began (he can), but after two decades and change, it's become an ordinary task between them. Jaskier takes care of him, and he allows it. He doesn't feel exposed as he would with another. Habit and time can work miracles. (And he trusts him.)

But the conversation is a different matter. Geralt raised the topic. He knows. It still tenses his shoulders, tightens his grip.

It's not any one thing, any one moment. It's all of it. The sunless pit, buried beneath the earth. His senses out of control, sometimes muted and sometimes too much just as it was when he first awoke from the Trials. The thick smell of sickly sweet rot and herbs. The scorching fever.

His body, mutating.

He had not stopped to reflect down there. His focus was on living, looking after Ciri and the rest, making it home. Now he suddenly has time to think again. ]

When I saw you in the Horizon, [ he begins slowly, ] it was day or two after the ritual. The days following, I can't recall much. Ciri tells me I was rarely awake. But I remember hearing them dying around me in the dark. Things that grew inside of us.

[ Has saying it helped? Not exactly. But Jaskier has gotten it out of him; it's too fucking late to retract the words. They hang heavy in the air. ]