For @whataboutthebard, day 2
Prompt: Meeting after a long time apart (but its whump now)
Pairing: Geralt/Jaskier, if you squint
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Post-mountain angst, aftermath of torture, Jaskier is in shock, hurt/no (real) comfort.
~
Jaskier spits blood at the ground. Something feels wrong in his mouth; a tooth has been loosened. Fuck. That will bother him for days until the little bastard sees fit to slide out of its own accord. At least it's near the back: a toothless grin will not win him hearts or favours when he returns to the road.
If he returns to the road. The guard who'd been trying to wheedle words from him for five fucking days now had only moved onto his fingers an hour or so before Yennefer had made her spectacular entrance. If he gets them seen to and splinted quickly, he may still be able to use them.
He barks out a harsh laugh at that; he must be mad, if all he cares about are his broken fingers and not the myriad of tortures hoisted upon him this past week. It helps to focus, to keep himself distracted, to stop him from giving in to—
"Jaskier." Yen is watching him. Her expression is unreadable. "I'm going to create a portal. Stand back."
He does as she asks—even torture is not quite so fierce as Yen's steely purple gaze—and allows himself himself be manhandled through the swirling air.
He collapses out and onto his knees, landing on something surprisingly soft. A deep fur rug; she's taken him somewhere fine. He feels the urge to vomit, but he's not eaten in three days so all he does is cough, his already strained throat burning.
Yennefer pulls him up, a hand on his back. He wants to shake her off, but he hasn’t the strength. He peers around; he’s in a wide room, a bed and table to one wall, a fireplace. There are no windows.
“Show me your hands,” she says. He does, and she takes his bruised fingers in her slender ones, peering at them. There’s an odd, painful tingling beneath his skin and he watches as the weird angles of his joints right themselves again. “There,” she breathes. “Better.”
He blinks at her. “Thank you.”
She nods. “That is all that can be done, for now. Stay here.”
With that, she leaves. Jaskier wobbles slightly as he stands in the centre of the room, and is about to move towards the bed so he doesn’t simply collapse when the door opens again, and in walks—
His blood turns cold. He really is going to collapse now, and he stumbles backwards, legs colliding with the bed. He falls back onto it with a wince.
Geralt looks at him from the doorway. He looks tired, eyes darkly bagged, hair tangled. He’s a fucking mess, frankly, and Jaskier can’t stop the haggard laugh that crawls from his chest.
“You look like shit,” he wheezes.
Geralt only blinks at him. He turns to Yen. “Is he okay?”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course not.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Jaskier says, although his voice sounds far-away. “Rude.”
Geralt’s gaze snaps back to him. He makes his way across the room in only a few strides, and Jaskier resists the urge to scuttle back across the bed as he approaches. Geralt lowers himself down at Jaskier’s side, kneeling on the stone floor. He reaches for him, cupping Jaskier’s jaw, his thumb brushing against what Jaskier knows is a bruise purpling his cheekbone.
Before, the touch would have thrilled him. Now he only feels a shadow of that; old love mingling with new hurt.
“You are safe,” Geralt says, desperately. “You can get better. Yen is here, and Triss will return soon. They can help with the worst of the injuries. You can stay here until you heal. For as long as it takes.”
Geralt is talking nonsense. He cannot truly expect his words to be true. Geralt cannot expect Jaskier to remain beside him after— after everything. He pushes his hand away. Geralt lets him.
"No," Jaskier says. "I don't think I will be staying, actually."
"Jaskier—"
Jaskier stands, which is a struggle in itself. "You told me you wanted rid of me. Now you are. Be happy with your lot, Geralt, for as you can see—" he waves his bruised digits in front of Geralt’s face, "—I am quite content with mine."
"You're in shock," Geralt says, refusing to listen as Jaskier pushes past him. "You'll get yourself killed out there. It's a wonder you haven't already."
"Not through lack of trying, clearly!" Jaskier spits, delighting in the crack in Geralt’s calm expression.
"At least wait until you're healed…"
"So they can torture me all over again? Psh, Geralt, what's the use? Next time they'll just go for the fingers first and leave the kidneys till last."
"Please—"
"No!" Jaskier is shouting, now, even though it makes his throat sting. "I am through with being hurt by you, or because of you. If I'm going to be tortured I'd rather it be by someone who knows what he's doing, and not by your inability to get to fucking grips with your own emotions."
"I didn't mean—"
"You didn't mean to hurt me? You didn't mean to bring me here? You didn't mean those shitty things you said in the mountain? Or is it simply that you didn't mean to let a humble bard into your life and let him believe you could have possibly—" Jaskier cuts himself off. He's trembling, his throat painfully constricting. He's spent five full days screaming: a sixth appears to be too much. "I refuse to stay here. So if it's all the same to you…" he pulls the tattered remains of his leather coat tighter, more for show than anything else, "goodbye, good luck, and good riddance."
He storms from the room and finds himself in a wide stone corridor. A keep, then; he’s been in enough keeps throughout his life to navigate even the strangest castle, and heads swiftly down the hall towards the top of what he assumes is a staircase. His body aches all over—from his lungs to his ankles and his still-tingling fingers—but he cannot stop. If he stops, Geralt will catch up with him, and he will be lost.
He struggles down the stairs, and by the bottom step he’s breathless and sweating, but he doesn’t stop. He’s in a great hall with a burning fire to one end and several long benches pushed to the side. Thankfully, it’s empty, so he strides across the wide space towards the huge double doors at the far end. Hopefully, they’ll lead outside, and from there he’s free.
He pushes open the doors and freezes. The view beyond is not the rolling hills he's expecting, but blasted, snow-covered mountainside. There are towering cliffs to either side, great black clouds above. The air is full of thickly falling flakes. He gasps, and the freezing wind burns his lungs. He's trapped here. There's no way he could flee this place; especially not as bruised and beaten as he is, especially not with the broken bones that are finally making themselves be felt over the swirling panic of his mind.
"Jaskier."
He turns. Geralt stands just behind him, a fur blanket gripped in his hands. His knuckles are white.
"Where am I?" Jaskier whispers, already half-sure of the answer.
"Kaer Morhen," Geralt says, without moving closer. "The witcher’s keep. It was the only place I could guarantee you'd be safe."
"Safe from who?"
Geralt sighs. His breath fogs the air. "Everyone else," he says. "Everyone but me."
Jaskier blinks at him. He steps closer, watching him like a tracker watches a deer, then in a swift movement flings the fur around Jaskier's shoulders. Its a needed relief: he hadn't even realised he was shaking.
"I will leave you alone," Geralt continues. "But you must stay. You have to at least heal, and you're in shock. Give us… give us a month or so, until you are well enough to move on, and then we can find you somewhere else to go."
Jaskier tugs the blanket closer. His fingers press into the soft, thick fur.
"You sent Yen to find me?" He says.
"I couldn't leave Ciri. The—" he hesitates, looking guilty. "My child surprise. I found her, Jaskier.”
“I know,” Jaskier says, simply.
“You know?”
He shrugs, then curses as the movement jars his ribs. “That’s why they caught me, after all. They wanted to know where you’d taken her. I discovered that you’d found her through a Nilfgaardian torturer.” He sighed. “Next time you must send out cards, or something. Much more efficient, and less likely to break my ribs.”
“I’m sorry, Jaskier.”
“I’m sure you are.”
Geralt’s expression is clouded with guilt. “I have to ask,” he says. “I have to. Did you tell them anything?”
Jaskier swallows back the insult he’s desperate to hurl at the witcher. “Of course not,” he says instead. “I hate you. But I lo—” he pushes that thought down too. “But I would never have told them anything, even if I had anything to tell.”
He takes another calming breath, and his lungs scream at him. He’s stood still for too long, allowed himself to feel so much; and now he can feel everything at once. There’s a pounding in his head, a churning pain in his gut, a sharp, trembling pain in his ankle. Both ankles.
The wind picks up. Geralt steps forward, frowning. All Jaskier can see are a pair of yellow eyes in the snow. His head rings.
“They broke my fingers,” he whispers, like its important. “But Yen fixed them.”
And then his vision goes dark. The last thing he feels is something sturdy and warm below him, something wrapping around his arms, and the smell of leather, and sweat, and horse, and onion.
I dunno man!! It got angsty!! Your word is RESTRAIN. Again, this feels more like Geraskier-lite than anything.
~
“Let me go!”
Jaskier thrashes against the ropes that bind him to the tree, eyes wild, hair a tangled mess around his head.
“I can’t,” says Geralt, surprised at how calm he sounds.
Jaskier swears, hurling insults into the air, then resumes wriggling against the ropes. It won’t do any good; Geralt has restrained people twice Jaskier’s size, double his strength. A cursed bard won’t break through those bonds.
He doesn’t even know what the curse is. The forest around them is rich with chaos, and Geralt’s medallion had begun vibrating the moment they stepped in. It had been inevitable, he now knows, that one of them would have walked into a spell. He supposes its luck that it was Jaskier: had it been himself who’d wandered into the trap, Jaskier would have been unable to hold him back.
It’s fuelled by emotion, that much he can tell. Jaskier had flown into a rage the moment the spell had gotten root in his mind, flinging himself forwards until Geralt had managed to grab him and pin him down.
That’s often how these sorts of spells go: low-level magic, no more than a trap designed to lure victims towards a hungry beast lurking deeper within the forest. It could even be a Fiend or some other mind-alterer, waiting for its next meal to willingly walk themselves into its mouth. It'll only last a few hours; but it's torture to wait them out.
“Please.”
Geralt turns. He’d been too lost in thought to pay attention to Jaskier’s futile efforts to escape. He’s stopped moving, slumped forwards, the ropes keeping him from falling. As Geralt watches, his limbs twitch and jerk. His mind is still clearly snagged, but his body is exhausted with the effort.
“Let me go,” he says, voice hoarse. “Let me go, Geralt, you fucking--”
His words crack, slurring into a pained hiss. Geralt cannot stand it. He moves closer. Jaskier’s arms are bound to his sides - it had been necessary with the way Jaskier had clawed at him and attempted to steal his swords, even if it had pained Geralt to do it. He’s harmless, now. Just tired.
Without thinking, Geralt wraps his arms around him as much as he can, taking his weight, guiding Jaskier's head against his shoulder. Jaskier twitches against him, swearing weakly into his tunic.
“Let me go,” he repeats. This time, it’s a sob. “Geralt, please--”
Geralt holds him tighter. Jaskier’s arms jerk, and Geralt can feel hot tears spill against his skin.
“What a shame. What will your poor, infatuated witcher do without you?”
(Hah! Is this cheating? Part one here)
“What a shame. What will your poor, infatuated witcher do without you?”
Jaskier felt the fog of hypnosis pricking at his mind, the words - slick and sweet as honey - tempting him to give in, to drop the dagger still gripped in his shaking hand.
But he didn’t.
“Celebrate, probably,” he hissed, and both of them lunged at once - Jaskier with the knife, the creature with teeth, meeting in the middle in a roar and a scream - and even an undead beast was slowed when its throat was cut.
And then there was blood - both his and the creature’s - a flash of pain and, above them both, the tell-tale thrum of a blast of Aard.
“Jaskier!”
[Send me an ask with the first sentence of a fanfic and I’ll write the next five!]
