#prisoner jaskier

However inevitable Jaskier’s rejection—and his rage—will be, Geralt has to know. He has to ask, and he chastises himself like he would a child as he wanders the bustling city. You don’t get if you don’t ask.

A half-formed apology is playing around his mind. Geralt has never been good with words, certainly not as good as Jaskier, and he needs to find the ones that will convince him he’s worth it; that will win his help.

But not just that. Not just his help, like Geralt is bartering his trade, like he’s a Lord demanding Jaskier play him a tune at a banquet.

It’s been nearly two years since he last saw the bard, and it’s taken him nearly half of that time to realise that the leaden weight that’s sunk around his chest is a heavy sort of grief. He misses Jaskier; misses his singing and his humming, misses his ridiculous clothes and unsuitable footwear. He misses how he’d charm landlords into giving them extra food or larger rooms, the way he’d spin lies to convince spendthrift aldermen to pay Geralt what he was owed, not what they wanted to pay.

He misses the way Jaskier’s face cracked into a blinding smile during a particularly good set. He misses the way he mumbled over rhymes when he was trying to work out new lyrics, his tongue sticking from the corner of his mouth as he scribbled them down. He misses the way Jaskier curled around him when they shared a bed or a bedroll, the noises he made in his sleep, the way he never balked, not once, at the prospect of waking up with his limbs tangled around those of a witcher.

He misses his scent, all ink and parchment and oils; chamomile in the evenings, lavender in winter, orange blossom in spring. He misses the sound of his heartbeat. He can still tap out the rhythm of it; he memorised it two decades ago.

Geralt has had a lot of time to think, these past twenty-four months. He’s had a lot of time to think about himself, about the way he thinks, about the emotions he’s tried to bury and push down since he was old enough to know he was feeling them.

Touching them—acknowledging them—is like poking at a tender bruise, or binding a wound. It hurts, but it hurts because he’s alive; because he’s healing.

He’s re-learning himself, starting from scratch, but fuck; he cannot indulge in it too much. Especially not now; not like this. The hot ache in his chest that flares when he thinks of Jaskier is his problem, and his alone. No doubt any feelings Jaskier once had for him—friendly or more than—have been effectively extinguished by Geralt’s own careless words and two years to stew on them.

Jaskier carries grudges, Geralt knows. He’s likely just the latest weight for him to carry, heaved onto his shoulders like it’s nothing at all.

He’ll find Jaskier and apologise and then, only afterwards, will he ask for his help. He’ll beg, if he has to. But Jaskier doesn’t need to know the rest. He doesn’t need to know that the smell of parchment still makes Geralt’s lungs constrict, or that he finds himself mindlessly knocking out the drumbeat rhythm of Jaskier’s pulse—tap-a, tap-a, tap-a—when the road is too quiet and the silence presses down on him.

He pushes those thoughts from his mind. It doesn’t do to dwell, after all, and pressing at the bruise will only make the pain flare worse, healing or not. He can ruminate later, when Jaskier is by his side.

If Jaskier is by his side.

It’s such a fragile thing; and he doesn't even have it yet.

But before all of that—before an apology and grovelling and pleading and pushing aside his pride—he needs to fucking find him. Novigrad is enormous, and he could be anywhere; especially considering how Nilfgaard has spies even this far north. He could be in hiding; his friend at the academy had never specified if he was still even playing music. Maybe the bard—his bard—isn’t a bard any more.

It’s a difficult balance to tread; Geralt can’t simply go around taverns and inns demanding if anyone has seen Jaskier if he is indeed in hiding. He may even be going by a different name, and in any case, the sudden appearance of Geralt of Rivia asking leading questions could land Jaskier in even more danger.

He’ll have to play it slow. He’ll visit the largest taverns and brothels first, asking not for Jaskier but for musicians, following trails and keeping low to the ground. With any luck, he’ll recognise a song—or even the distinctive twang of Filavandrel’s lute—and that will lead him the right way. It’s not a great plan, nor is it a good plan, but it’s all he has. Once he’s centred in the city and used to the sensory bombardment again, he’ll be in a better position to come up with something a little more solid. All he needs is—

There’s a whisper behind him. His head squeezes unpleasantly. There’s an icicle down his back, freezing his nervous system, tingling to his fingertips.

Fuck.

Everything goes black.

~

“A good try, witcher.”

Geralt’s skin is on fire. He’s on his back, lying against something cold and hard, but he can’t open his eyes.

“Good, but not good enough. Walking into Novigrad so unprepared—such pride! Such foolishness. What did you think would happen?”

Something is wrong in a squirming, bone-deep way. Pain suddenly flares through Geralt’s limbs, across his face, down his back. His body constricts in on itself, but he’s tied down and there are chains around his wrists and ankles and he’s trapped, he’s trapped and he can’t even struggle—

“I saw what you did to the others. The ones who caught you, or nearly caught you. I will not be taking that risk.”

The medallion is bouncing wildly against Geralt’s chest. His amour, which had been tightly buckled over his shoulders and sides, feels like it no longer fits. His skin feels tight and dry, like old fruit, like aged leather. His hands form fists at his side and his toes curl in his boots and there is nothing he can do to stop it.

He tries to yell out but his voice is gone, and all the noise he can make is a choking, pitchy gasp.

There’s a laugh from somewhere far away; from right next to his ear.

“Struggle all you want, witcher. It won’t work.”

The disembodied voice is too loud, now. It fills the room, echoing. Geralt’s hearing has always been good, but now it's pin-prick sharp.

Footsteps. Breathing. A heartbeat. The soft shff of fabric.

Geralt can’t move. His arms are stiff, his swords are gone, his signs are useless. With more effort than he knows he has left, he opens his eyes.

He sees a hand. He acts instinctively, barely even thinking.

He bites.

The voice—the mage—swears.

For a moment Geralt is flying, stomach lurching, ears ringing. The floor comes up to meet him, or he meets it.

He lands on his feet, and he runs.

~

Jaskier watches the shaft of dust-speckled light move across the floor of his cell. When it reaches the third crack in the second floorboard from the left, that means the morning is nearly halfway over. When it reaches the dent in the fourth from the right, it means someone will soon be on their way to feed him—or not, depending on the mood of his jailors today.

He’s lost count of how long he’s been here. He’d attempted to keep track for the first six days, scoring a mark onto the wall below the barred window with each sunrise. He’d forgotten one day, couldn’t be bothered the next, and the system had gotten away from him; he’d been stuck on six days since.

“Day seven,” he says each morning when the sun is bright enough to illuminate the cell and wake him from his spot curled upon the floor. “That’s barely even a week.”

The pair of mice who share his cell—skittering here and there, showing off the freedom he wishes he had—do not respond. He makes the same joke every day, and they simply sniff at him, apparently unamused.

Today is day seven—just like yesterday, just like tomorrow. The sunlight reaches the crack in the second floorboard from the left, and nothing happens. He leans back against the wall, staring forwards. He watches a mote of dust sparkle in the light, then fade.

This boredom is deliberate, he suspects. When the masked spies had pulled him from the stage midway through a performance, gagged him, bound him, and dragged him to this cell he’d assumed he’d be dead within two days. Gossip about what the soldiers and spies of Nilfgaard do to their prisoners had reached him months ago, and he’d anticipated torture and blood and pain.

But it hadn’t come. He’d been thrown into the tiny room and left him there. He hasn’t been forgotten—they still bring him food occasionally, if not every day—so he’s been forced to conclude that the seclusion is deliberate.

They’re toying with him. Lulling him into a false sense of security. Making him wait for his own demise, knowing exactly what’s coming to him. It makes each day precious, but each day is the same as the last, and now they've stopped having meaning altogether. It’s nothing more than a cruel, prolonged joke.

Leave him—let him go mad with boredom—let him come to sit with his own death, grieve for himself… and then bring out the thumbscrews.

He sighs, shutting his eyes. Maybe the thumbscrews are preferable to this perpetual waiting, existing but not existing.

They do feed him, today. It’s nothing more than a crust of hard bread, thrown through the door without a word, but he’s grateful for it regardless. Tomorrow he may not be so lucky; they rarely remember him two days in a row.

He stays in the same spot until the cell goes dark. If he looks out of the window, he can likely see the moon. He doesn’t. He moves slowly to the spot in the corner, where once there was a thick pile of straw, and curls in on himself.

He falls asleep. Tomorrow will be day seven, and it will be just like today.

~

“—and he said ‘if I had one blessing’—” Jaskier pauses with a frown. “Yes,” he says, “I know you’ve heard it before, but I’m telling the story and it’s an important one so you’re hearing it again. Yes. Yes I know—”

He sighs, running a hand through his tangled hair and staring down at the two mice perched on the upturned bucket in front of him.

“Oh,” he says, shaking his head, “now that’s not very fair.”

One of the mice peers at him.

“Yes, I know it’s been two years. I should be over it by now. I know. But you can’t just— after twenty years—” he throws his hands in the air. “Well of course you wouldn’t get it, you’re mice. How long do you live? Two years, tops? You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to spend a lifetime pining after…” he trails off. “Do mice pine? I suppose, if you spent two whole years pining…” he shakes the thought from his head. “No, absurd. Of course not. The point is—” he hesitates. What was his point? Oh yes. “The point is that I am fully within my rights to still be angry about it.”

Jaskier slumps back against the wall. “Anyway,” he continues, after a moment. “And he goes, ‘if I had one blessing’—”

He’s not sure how long he’s been talking to the mice. They’re sweet things, and he’d taken days to lure them both in. The first one had appeared quite by chance, and it had looked as rough as Jaskier felt—all scraggly fur with little scars across its back—and his heart couldn’t take it. He’d watched from a distance, then offered a crumb of food after he’d been fed that afternoon.

Against all odds, the mouse had accepted the offering, and he made... a friend. Of sorts. A second mouse had appeared, no doubt lured in by the prospect of food, and now one or both of them are always sharing his cell.

They make for good, if quiet, company. But that’s fine; he can talk enough for all three of them.

He feels like he’s talked through his entire life, several times over. He probably has. He’s touched on his childhood, his father, his fraught teenage years. He tells them about the Academy, and Valdo fucking Marx, and—eventually—about Posada.

He doesn’t really want to talk about Geralt. That’s why he’s here, after all. Nilfgaard wouldn't want him if it weren’t for his connections to the witcher, and soon enough they’ll be dragging him away and asking him more questions about Geralt than he could possibly answer. Than he will answer.

When he thinks about Geralt, it hurts, but he still wouldn’t tell them what he knows; not that he knows very much.

But when he starts talking about their travels together, he finds it hard to stop. He doesn’t talk through their shared adventures chronologically, but picks up whatever thread comes to him first, jumping between memories. He’s sitting with one of the mice perched on his knee a few days after the story of Posada when he pauses partway through a tale about a drowner infestation near Rinde.

“What?” He says, eyebrows raised. “Oh I—” he peers down at his knee. “You’re very perceptive, for a rodent. Yes,” he sniffs. “I was in love with him. Not that I ever told him, or he ever worked it out.” He listens for a moment. “Am I still? I… I can’t say. I want to say no, but—”

He sighs. This is an awkward conversation to have with a mouse. Despite that, it feels good to say it out loud. He wonders if this is another Nilfgaardian trick—get him to spill his secrets to a pair of mice instead of a torturer. But after so long, he no longer cares. Nilfgaard won’t give a shit about the griffin contract that ended up with Geralt being dumped in a dung heap. They’ll care that he’s in love with the witcher, of course—they can use that against him, he’s sure of it—but that barely feels like a secret any more.

If the Nilfgaardians are somehow using the mice to spy on him, they’re taking their damned time to do anything with the information they’ve gotten. So he carries on talking, his own babbling filling the endless silence till his voice goes hoarse and he finally falls asleep, day after day after day.

It’s still early in the morning of the most recent seventh day. The sunshaft has not even reached the first crack in the second floorboard, and he’s sat chatting to the mice as he so often is. The scruffier one seems keen to stick around; no doubt because it struggles to get food alone and knows that Jaskier is a reliable source. The mouse certainly looks like it’d be immediately eaten by a cat or crushed by a cart if it ventured into the street beyond.

Jaskier lowers his hand, and the scruffy mouse scurries onto his palm, no doubt seeking out crumbs. As a boy, Jaskier had trained dogs and cats and—on one memorable occasion—a pigeon, and taming a mouse has proven to be far easier. He lifts it up, peering at its little beady eyes.

“You are a sweet thing,” he says, “even if you look rough.” He laughs at himself. “You make for fine company, given the circumstances.” The mouse sniffs at his hand. “Quite. And look, you haven't even pissed on me, unlike your ungrateful friend.”

The mouse cleans its little face with its paws.

“Very hygienic,” Jaskier agrees.

It really is a darling creature. Acting unthinkingly, like he would with a kitten or a puppy or Roach, if she would ever let him get close enough, he lifts the mouse higher and presses a soft, light kiss to the back of its head.

There is a sound like wind rushing in the wrong direction. A squeak that melds into a swear. A flash—far brighter than the speckled sunlight coming through the bars—and then the mouse is gone and there’s a sudden weight on his legs that makes him shout and there, sitting in his lap and looking dazed, is Geralt.

He is also, Jaskier cannot help but notice, completely naked.

“What the fuck?”

Geralt blinks at him, his eyes refocusing. “You—” his voice sounds hoarse. He coughs, starts again. “You broke the spell.”

“Someone turned you into a fucking mouse?”

“You broke the spell.”

“Yes, you said that. But you were— Geralt, you were a mouse? What the fuck?”

“You still love me.”

Jaskier falls silent. “I… did I say that? In, ah… in so many words?”

Geralt shrugs, and Jaskier makes a concerted effort to look away from his maddening physique, his body littered with new scars.

“You didn’t have to,” he says, voice still gravelly. “Because you broke the spell. With a kiss.”

“But what does that—” it takes Jaskier a moment to catch up. “Hold on. Hold on. That’s a thing? I thought that was just a fairy story!”

Geralt shrugs again. “All stories come from somewhere.”

“Shit.”

Geralt’s expression drops. He looks hurt. Fuck.

“It’s not— Geralt, it’s not that I don’t—” Jaskier scrambles for words. It was so much easier talking to a mouse. “You don’t love me back!” He pauses, watching Geralt’s expression carefully. “...Right?”

Geralt smiles. He leans forwards, pressing their foreheads together. “Can we… talk about it later?” He says, voice low. “I’m not… I’m trying to be better at this, Jask, but we don’t have time…”

There’s a buoyant light in Jaskier’s chest. “I…” He breathes out, slowly. “Of course. Yes. I, ah—”

“I need your help,” Geralt says, cutting him off. “We need your help.”

Jaskier laughs—he can’t help it—then gestures with his arms, taking in the cell around them, the barred windows, the locked door.

“What a coincidence,” he says. “It looks like I’m in need of your help too.”

Geralt sighs. The familiar noise is like coming home. “Fuck,” he mutters. “So you are.”

“Do you…” Jaskier tilts his head to one side, finally allowing his gaze to drop down. “Do you think you can break us out of this cell, take down between six and two dozen Nilfgaardian soldiers and ensure we both get out of here alive while also being completely and totally and quite entirely... “ he looks down again, unable to stop himself from smirking. “...naked?”

There’s a smug half smile on Geralt’s face. Finally, he stands, and now Jaskier really is forced to keep Geralt’s gaze lest he find himself face-to-face with all of his dreams come true at once.

Geralt stretches his shoulders, twisting his neck with a low groan. He extends a hand, pulling Jaskier to his feet.