Chapter Text
The spell lands like lightning, spreading through his limbs like a wildfire.
Distantly, he sees Geralt rushing forward to land the killing blow. Focused. Unearthly. The only mortality that remained was the fear that flashed bright and fierce in his eyes when he watched Jaskier collapse.
He doesn’t feel himself hit the earth although the impact jars his bones hard enough that his teeth snap closed on his tongue. Blood pools in his mouth, familiar as a former lover and twice as bitter.
Jaskier swallows it down and tries to find the strength to get back up before Geralt truly starts to worry. Somehow it’s even more difficult than he remembers to fight through the pain that’s still arcing in mad arcs down his spine. His mouth opens and closes around the name that’s become his lodestone for decades.
“G--Geralt.”
Before the next beat of his heart the Witcher is there, white hair flying behind him like the banner he would never wave. Calloused fingers brush over Jaskier’s prone form with familiar focus to catalog any explicit injuries.
“Did you...?” he asks, before Geralt cuts in.
“Where are you hurt?”
Like the word was its own trigger, Jaskier gasps as the pain burns brighter. He is incandescent, spine arching in a painful bow. His lungs go flat and grate against the air like they’ve forgotten how to fill. Fingers bury themselves into the earth and he pants, head tossing back and forth against dried leaves and forest floor.
“Jaskier!”
The name is fuzzy against the growing numbness pooling through his gut and spreading to his limbs. He reaches out and lets his fingers clamp tightly around Geralt’s. He wants to tell the Witcher not to worry, but his panic is a living, beating creature in his chest begging to be released.
“H...hurts,” he manages.
“I know, songbird,” Geralt soothes in a way that would have delighted him a year ago, but now seems like a mustard seed against the mountain of his agony. “The spell should lose its potency now that the mage is gone.”
The numbness is spreading faster now, making it impossible to tell if he’s truly grasping Geralt’s hand as tightly as his mind is begging for. “Wha--?”
When the words seem to fly from his grasp, Geralt moves closer like his proximity would be enough to heal all the hurt. “Some kind of paralysis, I think. I’m no mage.”
And Yennefer isn’t here, he doesn’t say. Jaskier already knows there’s nothing they can do to stop the spell now that its taken hold.
He stares up at Geralt anyway, trying to swallow when his tongue becomes thick in his mouth. “G--Ger--”
For the second time in his life, he finds himself unable to form a way to express the emotions trapped at the base of his throat by an uncooperative body. Only this time there’s no djinn or wish that will set him free.
“It’s okay, Jask. Don’t try to speak. It’ll pass,” Geralt murmurs.
His hand reaches out to thread through brown locks, but Jaskier can’t feel it. His head shifts with the motion, but his panic only grows when there is no other sensation to accompany it. If his eyes weren’t open, he wouldn’t even know Geralt was with him.
Jaskier’s mouth opens again, but he can’t seem to make a sound.
“I’ve got you. You’re going to be okay, Jaskier. I’ve got you.”
His eyes flit to Geralt, frantic as a drowning man to a raft. He tries again, desperate. “I l--love...you...”
Breathing is becoming more difficult now, but he tries not to let Geralt see that. His mortality has always been an unspoken fear between them and he isn’t so selfish as to make his passing cause even more pain. He can’t do that to his Witcher.
Geralt opens his mouth, lips shaping the words that have been pressed to every inch of Jaskier’s body--
But he can’t hear them.
He stares at Geralt’s mouth like somehow the sound will return if he just wills it enough. Geralt frowns, looking uncertain when Jaskier continues to not react.
Tears burn at the edges of his eyes making him blink. He wishes he could feel them fall. He wishes he could feel anything at all beyond the dull throb of pain that reminds him he is still trapped within his body. His mouth opens again, but this time there’s nothing to hear.
Oh god, he can’t hear anything.
No song. No rustle of leaves. No familiar hoofbeats painting a rhythm against dry earth. No soft huffs or laughter or sarcastic hmm’s.
He blinks again, trying to clear away the blurriness of the tears in his vision. To latch onto the vision of Geralt mouthing the words that still made his heart race each time. Grey mists linger at the edges of his visions like ghosts.
He blinks.
The mists creep closer, blocking out the halo of Geralt’s pale hair until it’s just a smear above him. He closes his eyes as hard as he could, but it’s not enough, why isn’t it enough? Why couldn’t he fucking see?
He loses himself then.
There’s no earth to ground himself against. No sunlight streaming from the treetops above them or even the scent of dead leaves to linger at the back of his throat like a bitter wine. No Geralt to whisper that it’s going to be alright.
Only darkness and the silence that seems to rip away his sanity.
He wants to scream. To beg for some sympathetic deity to end this purgatory before he fully loses his mind. To cry out for Geralt to save him once again.
Jaskier wonders if this is what death is like. Maybe he just slipped away without realizing it. Maybe this is what he has left to look forward to for the rest of eternity. Maybe he’ll be trapped within this dark hell until his body rots away and his mind is finally destroyed.
Maybe it’s a gift not to see the casket close over his head and listen to the dirt cover his coffin.
If he could feel anything, he knew his lungs would be spasming now. It would sound grating and full of the panic that he had no outlet for now. He could picture the fear on Geralt’s face as he continued to talk to a bard that wasn’t able to respond any longer. If he concentrated, he could even pretend to feel those familiar hands tightening around his own limp fingers or continuing to card through his hair.
I’ve got you, Jaskier.
But what if I can’t find you? he wanted to ask. What if I can’t see you there with me?
His heart must be racing, trying to survive even as his body continued to lay still. Instinct fighting against the spell to try to keep him alive for a little longer. For what? To suffer through the next millenia of waiting for some distorted mercy to end it all?
“--hear me? Jaskier, baby, please.”
He tilts his head toward the voice, eager for any comfort against the chaos in his mind.
Something brushes against him, light as a butterflies wings. He wants to press into it, let it soak into his bones until it’s branded into his soul.
“I’ve got you, I promise. You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”
There’s warmth all around him, seeping through the icy darkness like the first rays of sunshine. He shudders, wild. Desperate.
“You’re safe. I’ve got you. I love you so much. I love you--”
Geralt, his mind produces. Geralt.
“Please, songbird, you’ve got to open your eyes. Open your eyes for me.”
Jaskier fights against the insistent drag of the spell urging him to return to the silent peace of before. He thrashes against its hold, ripping away the tendrils still taking root in his mind until he feels his lungs draw in their first full breath in what feels like a lifetime. He clings to the deep rumble beside him like an anchor, letting it pull him back to the light.
He doesn’t know how long it takes. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Geralt would never abandon him. Not now. Not ever.
“I love you, Jaskier. I love you so much. I need you to open your eyes. Don’t leave me here without you. I can’t do this without you. Just open your eyes, baby.”
Jaskier’s lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile.
And he does.