These Birds You Cannot Cage
A piece for FebuWhump 2021, day 3: Imprisonment. 3549 Words. Can also be read here on ao3! Rated T! Tags for violence, broken bones, vomiting, and Nilfgaard being the fuckin’ worst.
Sodden burns and Yennefer runs. Staggers, really, though it’s hard to tell the difference in her state. She can hear nothing but white noise like a distant blaze roaring. Occasionally her vision blacks out and when she comes to she’s somewhere completely different and has not stopped moving. She can’t. She tries to reach inside herself to draw from her well of power, but—
For the first time since learning of its existence, of putting a name to the fire inside her, her chaos is depleted. It’s worse than worn out, it’s so empty a part of her begins to assume it’s gone forever. If she had time to feel an emotion— dread, rage, fear, hopelessness— she might. But all she has is her body pushing her forward, strength and speed she didn’t know she could muster after this level of exertion, towards something shaped vaguely like freedom. Safety.
Honestly, she wasn’t really sure what freedom was anymore. Once, it had been a young man who watched her grow into herself, made her feel like anything was possible. Another time, it had been an academy that promised it could help her craft her chaos. Later, it had been proximity to wealth, riches, royalty. After that, it had been her, alone, making her own rules on her own terms.
And then, of course, freedom had come to her in the form of a world-weary witcher, amber eyes, and the unspoken promise to never tie one another down. Never clip the other’s wings.
Freedom was meant to be choice.
Freedom, Yennefer thought, was a beautiful, wretched lie.
When she finally stumbles, she crashes on the ground in an unceremonious heap. Her head swims and when she tries to rise up, push on, she finds her arms shake too fiercely and betray her. The white noise in her ears begins to fade and as she tries to focus on the ground in front of her she sees them. Boots, surrounding her. Shadows, looming.
They stand stock still. Someone is yelling, “Now is your chance, you idiots—” and then “She’s empty. Poor little mage used up her powers… but she’s still useful to us. Grab her, now.”
Freedom may have been a lie but actual imprisonment… that was something else entirely. Yennefer pushes herself away, bumping into what’s either a tree or somebody's legs, and hears laughter dribble out from the guards. She nearly wretches in disgust.
Next is the feeling of hands (she thinks it’s dozens, must be, but it may only be four,) gruff and far too tight. They wrench her off the ground and her vision is too blurred to make out any of their faces.
And just when she tries to steady her head and meet her captors face on, her vision swims again and consciousness slips away.
x
Yennefer wakes and immediately wretches what little she has in her stomach into a bucket next to her.
She’s cuffed in dimitrium, and everything feels so wrong. The floor is grimy, and as soon as she has a moment to breathe she heaves, pulls against her binds like she has even a chance of escaping.
“Thank fuck.”
Of all the voices she had to hear right now—
Yennefer lifts her head, tosses some hair out of her face to see better and there, directly across from her, is the continent’s most irritating bard. She groans.
“Mmmmm, yeah, not my choice of company either, but thank you for that,” he says. She gives him a stare. He looks… messy. Hair grown out a bit, stubble on his face, dark circles under his eyes. His shirt, which may have once been a cream color but was now a rather unfortunate motley of filth, is opened low enough to see a few dark bruises peeking out. There's a long scar on his neck, healed, but concerning nonetheless.
“But you were… really out there for a while. You alright? Relatively, I mean.”
Yennefer rolls her eyes.
“I’m in a prison cell. Actually, I’m in a prison cell with you, which is worse. There not much relatively to it.”
“Listen Yennefer, I don’t like you either but so long as we’re here together we might as well not be at each other’s throats. I love a good drama as much as the next bard but I don’t have the energy to fight both you and them.”
He’s not bouncing his leg as he so often does, and she wonders if there are bruises there too. Wonders how deep they run.
“Fine,” she says. “Only so long as we’re stuck. How long have you been here?”
Without the use of his hands, Jaskier’s taken to using his head to gesticulate. It looks absolutely nonsensical. “Oh,” he says after a few moments, “Three of four months?” Yennefer’s eyes bulge. “What month is it now?”
She tells him, and his head tips back in laughter. “Oh, okay, lovely. More like 6, then. Ah, how time flies when you’re being held against your will!”
Yennefer frowns. “And he hasn’t… come for you?”
Jaskier’s expression darkens, and he shakes his head. “Can you do that mind thing?” He whispers. She shakes her head.
“Not with dimitrium on me.”
Jaskier sighs. “I’m not saying anything about him, not out loud, not in here. Though, they said their mage will be seeing me next, so I don’t know how long that will matter for.”
Yennefer frowns, and thinks. They should be able to communicate this quietly without the guard's understanding. They’re not nearby, at least, and there are none likely smart enough to realize what they’re doing if they’re smart about it. “The mountain?”
“What? I— Oh, I see: Yes.” He catches on quickly.
“And then the two of you…?”
He shakes his head. “Just me.”
“Just you?” He'd left the mountain alone?
He hums in agreement. “And nothing since.” That'd been over a year ago now, and he hadn't seen Geralt in all that time?
“Idiot,” she mutters. “He tore his whole life to shreds.”
Jaskier shrugs, and looks… truly downtrodden, for the first time. She could see the months of wear against him. “I’m far from his whole life. That’s more of your specialty.”
Yennefer snorts. “Not really. And not by choice, apparently.”
“Would you be?” He asks and seems genuinely curious. There’s no bite to it. Like he really wants to hear her opinion. “If you had the choice?”
It’s an honest question, and she realizes she’s never stopped to think about an honest answer to it without being clouded by anger. She doesn’t like what this bard is doing to her already— what right did he have to make her feel important?
“Maybe if he’d given it,” Yennefer says after a second. She doesn’t like that it took even that long to consider it. “Taking away my choice takes away any goodwill we had, though.”
Jaskier nods. “Makes sense,” he says. “Can’t imagine an eagle likes its wings being clipped.” He sits back against the wall and closes his eyes. It strikes her that he doesn’t sound pleased. Of anyone, shouldn’t he be happy for her misfortune in love with the witcher? His witcher?
Well. Their witcher, she supposed. She hated the implications.
There’s silence. There’s silence, with Jaskier. As if things didn’t already feel dismal and strange enough. It was like a stream suddenly going silent. It was supposed to make noise. She stares at the scar on his neck and wonders.
It feels like the walls are going to fall down around her as she lets the reality sink in. There’s likely no getting out of this, she’s just here, they’re both just here, and unless someone on the outside does something, they’re likely to be there until her chaos eats her alive, or one of them is otherwise killed.
She wants to hear the steady stream of his voice. She wonders where his lute is. She tries to picture something to take her out of the place she’s stuck, the four walls that may end up as her casket.
“You’re not going to… sing something? Or whatever it is you do?” What had stopped the bird from singing? (Was that a worse fate than clipped wings, or the same?)
Jaskier opens his eyes to look at her and it feels like he’s seeing something she doesn’t even see in herself. It’s uncomfortable. He closes his eyes again.
“I haven’t sung,” he says softly, “in nearly 6 months.”
They’re there for weeks.
“Do you have any way to get out of here?” Jaskier asks late one evening when they both can’t sleep.
“Maybe, but only if I got these cuffs off me,” she admits. “Even then, it’d be a gamble. And if you’re still cuffed as well, I’m not sure I could do both. My chaos is… broken.”
There are a few beats of quiet. She wonders if he’s somehow fallen asleep. Then,
“I asked if you had a way out of here, Yennefer.”
Ah. She can hear his soft smile. Shit. That wasn’t what he’d meant? Was that not— did she really just assume him into her escape plans? Of all people?
“I assumed you meant—”
“Listen,” he says, “assume away. But when it comes time… don’t let me slow you down.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t.
She doesn’t sleep, that night.
“Do you hate him?” he asks another night.
“Yes,” she says, and everything aches. “Sometimes.”
“Only sometimes?”
She nods. “And you?”
He nods back. “Only sometimes.”
The days slip and fall together.
This is what it feels like to be in a cage:
Her bones feel like lead, her mind feels like lead. The dimitrium weighs down something inside her, too, and it’s even more difficult to stomach the gruel they serve day in and day out. The cell is dark and cavernous, large enough to fit fifteen more prisoners at least, but it seems to be reserved for the two of them. Small sounds echo for ages and threaten to drive her mad.
(It feels like a door locked from the outside, a handle too high to reach.)
This is what it feels like to have a cage inside of you:
Yennefer had a scream inside her, ripping at her insides, desperate to get out. Her chaos, budding slowly, had never felt so oppressive and unnatural before. She knows if she goes too long with these cuffs on her, it’ll explode outward, and she knows Nilfgaard is willing to play that game of chance.
(It feels like knowing you’ve already ruined everything.)
This is what it feels like to be in a cage with Jaskier:
The bard was quieter than normal, but when he talked it was a mile a minute— when they let themselves argue or hiss at each other, whenever they would banter or bitch. She could lose herself in his stupid, often unfairly funny, labyrinthian trains of thought. She often did. She suspected that was what he meant to happen. He still doesn’t sing.
(It feels like being handed a key.)
The guards are cruel. When they pull Jaskier away, he goes softly, sometimes throwing a quip at them but more often allowing it without a word. She tries to pull attention away, tries to make an ordeal of it, but they barely look at her, even when she screams bloody murder. And every time, he comes back bloody and bruised, sometimes with a bone broken, and every time he fights it in near silence. She complains about the meaningless drama of the powerful people in her circles to pass the time, and occasionally he smiles through his pain, or gives a laugh behind quiet sobs.
When they pull Yennefer away… it’s not nearly as often as they haul away the bard, but every time, he snaps at their heels like a dog. Now there was a bard she recognized, running his mouth and saying everything he ought not to. Once, a guard twists her sending her falling to the ground, and feels a bone in her hand snap. She expects Jaskier to make a fuss, but he’s quiet.
“I’ll kill you myself,” he says softly to the guard, and somehow she feels it’s a promise he’d do anything make good on.
x
“Yennefer,” Jaskier says one morning, low and careful. “Would you be able to do it today?”
She closes her eyes, concentrates. She can feel her chaos locked within her, scratching at her, desperate and hungry. But how much she has to burn, there’s no way of knowing. It’s something, though. She looks up at the bard, his gaze on her steadily.
“I could try.”
He nods. “You’re going to think I’m mad, but— I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you?”
They stare at each other. Somewhere, a door slams.
“Of course not, obviously not, have you met me? But it’s an idea, which means it’s got a better chance at working than all of our other nonexistent, well crafted and reliable ideas.”
Yennefer rolls her eyes, but she finds she’s… smiling again; he has a talent for that. When she glances back at him he’s got a small grin as well, but he’s biting it back. She wonders if he even realizes he’s doing it.
“Will you at least tell me what it is?”
“Nope! Actually, no; need to preserve the surprise, keep everything feeling authentic. Crucial to a major performance. Possibly my most major to date, considering the stakes."
“Fine. But if things go wrong, I’ll carve you open with a rusty nail and replace your liver with a salamander.”
“You know, I could also just take this back!” he says, “I could undo the idea! Idea gone, I like my liver where it is, it’s very hard to operate with a liver on the outside of one’s body, thank you.”
Their smiles are almost real now even in this false reality of a cell. She can really say anything to him, right now, and he won’t look at her like damaged goods. Then again, once they’re out, he could very well attempt to discard her. She’d beat him to the punch.
It hurt to think about. Wasn’t she above this, by now? Above her own heart?
She looks at the bard, disheveled, smiling, and with something that looks like excitement in his eyes, and sighs.
“Best of luck,” she says, and she doesn’t know who she’s talking to anymore.
x
The lone guard comes later than usual, and Jaskier is so full of anxious energy she thinks he might burst. He’s been making low humming noises all day, like he’s warming up for a performance— a bit dramatic, she thinks, but she’s not going to fault him his coping mechanisms while they were restrained in a Nilfgaardian prison. If they made it out, however, she made no promises.
(The thought of an After, where she saw this stupid, bumbling bard, spoke to him willingly and without malice for his general incompetence, disgusted her. She wanted it so, so badly.)
The regular soft thudding of boots down the corridor made both their heads snap up to the door. Jaskier took a breath in and closed his eyes.
“You ready for your pièce de résistance?” Yennefer jokes, straightening her back and lifting her chin. No sense in letting them see her any less dignified than she already was.
Jaskier doesn’t meet her eyes and reply until the boots are just outside the door. “I am,” he says, and it’s so deadly serious Yennefer reels for a moment.
The door opens, and the guard that comes in is the same that usually comes to drag them off; today the oaf saunters in and makes sure to wipe some grime of undetermined origin off the sole of his shoe and onto her already ruined dress. She rolls her eyes.
“Oh, gods,” she mutters sarcastically, “what will I do now with a stained dress.”
He bends forward to grip her chin, and she finds herself less than an inch away from his face— it looks like hatred. Warm breath from his nose hits her face and she can hear Jaskier’s chains rattling as he strains forward, wanting to rip the two apart.
“Better play nice, doll,” he says softly, a voice like cheaply cut gravel, “or I’ll make it so you can’t play at all.”
His breath smells like—she makes a face.
“If you let me out of these cuffs,” she says, sweetly as she can manage, giving a flutter of her lashes, “I could help you with your… dental hygiene?”
She expects the slap. What she does not expect, is Jaskier’s reaction.
“This is so fucking boring.”
Yennefer frowns and the guard frowns deeper before turning.
“Excuse me?”
If she hadn’t known to expect something from him today, she would have missed the quiet fire in his eyes. He sits back against the wall, looking otherwise nonchalant.
“You do this every other day! I want some real fucking entertainment.”
The guard snarls and turns back to Yennefer, reaching to undo her cuffs from the wall.
“Well, fine then. If you won’t provide any, I will.”
Oh, fuck. She knew exactly what this was.
“When a humble bard, graced a ride along…”
His voice is rough with disuse and lower than she’s used to hearing it. For a moment, she thinks it sounds like a million birds flying, like a key in a door, like the most beautiful sound in the world.
“CAN IT, bard. You know what happened last time you sung.”
“With Geralt of Rivia!” he shouts more than sings, “Along came this song!” His voice echoes throughout the complex, hitting them from a million directions. The guard yanks Yennefer to her feet and looks deeply, deeply angry.
“From when the White Wolf fought, a silver tongued devil—” The guard takes a few strides to loom over the bard, a wild look in his eyes, pulling Yennefer with him. The echoing was overwhelming already, Jaskier projecting with full force. The guard bent to get his face close to Jaskier’s. He’d been right— she thought he was mad, even now as she realized his move.
“His army of elves—”
“You’re done with, you fucking—”
“With his HOOVES—” Jaskier sang, and threw his foot up, hitting the guard squarely between the legs. He dropped the keyring to their cuffs and fell to the ground with a groan. “—did they revel,” Jaskier cackles as he lets the words flow out.
Yennefer seizes on the opportunity, twisting to grab up the keys even with her hands behind her. She takes delight in stomping on the same spot Jaskier had a moment before, watching the guard roll over in agony. The bard keeps singing, even louder now, and the guard’s cries are dwarfed easily.
She fiddles with the keys until finally, she unlocks herself. Her chaos ripples out, and already she hears footsteps thundering toward them. It feels like she’s grown wings, like her chest has opened, and she realizes after a moment she’s screaming in relief, arms thrown wide, head tipped back. She shakes it off, lets her power crackle through her. By now, Jaskier had gotten to the chorus.
“O’ Valley of Plenty, oh— RUN!” he shouts, and she smiles so wide she feels her lips crack. She reaches out a hand and prays she can still focus herself after all this time.
Jaskier’s cuffs explode.
She grabs at him, and throws out a portal just as the footsteps clattering to their door get close, and she turns to see a dozen guards and a mage— not Fringilla, thank the gods— rushing toward them. She’s still got something left, so with Jaskier still singing by her side, she caves in the ceiling above them and lets the bard pull them into the portal.
x
On the other side, it’s approaching evening. She can see a mountain, in the corner of her eye. The bard, looking frantic, takes up most of her field of vision. Breathing is difficult at best, and she feels him adjust her against a tree. She coughs, and breath returns to her slowly. He kneels beside her, and lays his head against her shoulder. It’s the first kind touch she’s felt in weeks; the first for him in over half a year. Yennefer leans her head against his and soon he's wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
Maybe, she thinks deliriously, freedom could just be a warm embrace at just the right moment.
“Not bad,” she says when her chest moves more easily, “for being out of practice nearly 7 months.”
He laughs. It’s wonderful.
“Not bad for someone with ‘broken’ chaos.” He leans back to look at her, and then at their surroundings. “I…” he frowns. “I know where we are.”
She raises an eyebrow. “I don’t.”
“It’s. Ah. We’re in Kaedwen. Near Ard Carraigh. It’s near Kaer Morhen,” he gives by way of explanation.
“Of course,” she groans.
“Let's... let's get to an inn, I'll find us a room. Rooms? We’ll figure out payment later, but you need rest. If you’re willing to extend the peace treaty a little further, that is?”
She looks at him and chooses to believe it's chaos that puts her heart in a viselike grip and squeezes, not something in his eyes.
“I can go a little further,” Yennefer says, and lets her eyes fall closed as a breeze kisses her cheek.
