Work Text:
Jaskier leans back, a heavy sigh on his lips. So, this is where he ends up. A humid cell with only mice as company.
It’s been a long time travelling
On roads that lead to nowhere.
With his head tilted back, not shielding his eyes from the light that filters from the tiny window, he sings. There is no accompaniment to go with it – since he doesn’t even have his fucking lute anymore. Lost. Probably broken, like everything else in his life.
It’s not like he never expected to end locked up somewhere at some point, but –
He always thought he wouldn’t be alone. He thought –
With hopes and dreams that always rot.
A mouse squeaks beside him and then readily jumps onto his open palm the moment Jaskier lowers his hand next to it. He gently picks it up, taking a moment to marvel at how placidly the tiny creature lets him touch it. He pets it briefly before putting it back down.
Sometimes it takes a prison cell, the tricks and tales the traitors tell
To help you see that freedom is all you’ve got.
Jaskier pauses then, only for the length of a breath. To help you see that freedom is all you’ve got . His own words echo cruelly in his mind. All you’ve got.
He grabs his two spoons from the floor almost aggressively, tapping them against his leg in tune with his next words, words that come unbidden to his lips like seldom a lyric does.
The last time was when –
So lock me up and sock me up and throw away the key
Go fuck yourself, you whoreson
‘ Cause you’re through fuckin’ with me.
He repeats the chorus once, then twice, letting the tune rise, flexing his voice. Finding no small satisfaction in repeating the curse words over and over.
A tiny smile stretches his lips and he doesn’t even flinch when someone bangs against the door to his cell.
“Sing another word, and I’ll cut your tongue out,” the guard yells at him.
Excuse me, Jaskier thinks at the same time as he says, “Rude.” Even Geralt used to last longer than this piece of shit of a guard before complaining.
Jaskier winces at that, feeling like a needle just lodged itself between his ribs and into his lungs. It has been months , and still his every second thought is about Geralt of Rivia. Fuck.
Push it away. Push it down. Stop thinking about him.
Jaskier turns his head, looking for a distraction – any distraction. His eyes land on two mice looking at him from a turned over bucket. That will do.
“Guys,” he says, pointing at them with one of his spoons. “Your harmonies were a little pitchy. Gordon,” he adds to the mouse that let Jaskier pick him up earlier. “You’re amazing. Talent recognises talent. Let’s go again. Three, four… And lock me up and sock me up and throw away the key…”
He smirks, satisfied, when the guard walks off in a huff. Serves him right for not appreciating his music.
A moment later he hears a grunt, thinks he sees the guard stumble back out of the corner of his eye.
Geralt? He thinks again.
These intrusive thoughts that won’t fucking leave him alone. How many times in the last months has his sorry mind conjured up images of Geralt appearing from around every corner? Imagining him looking for him, finally coming for him. That never happened, of course. No matter how many conversations he imagined himself having with Geralt in the aftermath of that fucking mountain, Geralt doesn’t care about him.
So stop thinking about him, you fool.
Another hoof, another groan. He doesn’t know if the guard decided to shit himself in the pants, but this isn’t going to work. He is trying to brood and all these noises make it impossible.
Jaskier sighs theatrically, despite having no audience.
“Fucking hell! You know what? We’re trying to rehearse in here!”
With mock seriousness – and desperate for any scrap of distraction he can find – he turns to his cell’s companion and says, “Gentlemen, I am so sorry. Give me a moment. I need to deal with this guard’s complete lack of decorum.”
He puts his spoons aside, carelessly throwing them on the dirty floor, as he prepares his indignant tirade. Except, half-way through –
“Good sir, you would not know talent if I shoved it up your...”
His words get stuck in his throat.
“Geralt,” he croaks.
Jaskier’s heart stops in his chest before it starts pounding at increased speed.
Geralt. His golden eyes. His white hair, curling unkept around his beautiful face.
I love you. I hate you. I love you.
Jaskier has to physically stop himself from going to him, planting his feet on the floor. All the heartache he went through, and still he lets Geralt pull him in like a magnet.
So much for promising himself he would not fall into it – into him – again. His heart has been broken enough. Leave it all behind. Forget about him.
All the memories of you.
He promised.
All that Geralt will ever bring him is pain and loneliness. He will never give him even a glimpse of what Jaskier desires.
The words he needs to say tingle on his tongue. “Well, thank you for your assistance, my good witcher,” he should say. “What a fortuitous event that you chose passing through here. Now off you go, back to your life. I’ll be on my way as well.”
But then he lifts his eyes, and meets Geralt’s gaze, already trained upon him; so of course, what he actually says ends up being quite different.
“Fuck it,” he whispers, and before he’s done speaking, he has already thrown himself into Geralt’s arms. Which are… hugging him back.
As they hold onto each other for a breath longer than what would be considered normal, Jaskier stares ahead of himself, unseeing, at the bare walls of the prison cell. He can feel them closing around him as he chooses.
Fuck his pain. Fuck his resolution. Fuck his promise. Even when he made it, drunk out of his mind on the disgusting floor of an inn, he knew he would break it the moment he saw Geralt again. He was never good at making good choices for his own good.
Unsurprisingly, it is Geralt who lets go of him first. Which is good, probably, otherwise Jaskier would have clung to him until things got embarrassing.
What is surprising are Geralt’s next words.
“I’ve missed you too.”
Jaskier’s heart misses a beat, then soars with rage. Because as soon as he allows himself to focus on the reality of the present, of what really is in front of him and not on the wonder of being back in Geralt’s presence, the realisation of Geralt’s real motivation for being there hits him. The motivation, as always, is never just him .
“What are you doing here?” Jaskier asks, trying to stop his face from twisting into a pained grimace. He takes a step back, putting some distance between them but already hearing the defensiveness in his own voice.
“No time. We need to go,” Geralt replies, as he readies himself to step towards the exit.
Jaskier’s voice is clipped. His consonants rolling on his tongue with the echo of an accent from a time long past. “Are you sure?”
He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, as if that would ever stop him from following the Witcher for as long as he is allowed (until he gets kicked away once again).
Geralt frowns slightly at him. He hesitates briefly, seeming confused. “Yes,” he confirms, almost tentatively.
How dare he sound confused?
This helps. Indignation helps. If Jaskier gets angry, the chance of him starting to cry lessens.
“The last time we saw each other, you basically told me to fuck off. Remember?” he says, reminding both Geralt and himself of the fact. His voice wavers, but it doesn’t break up into a sob, and that’s everything Jaskier can ask for at the moment.
Hiding behind mannerisms is the best thing he can do to put some distance between him and his own emotions.
Geralt lowers his gaze, the corners of his mouth turning downwards with it. Ah. And now he has the audacity to show guilt.
Or maybe he is just disappointed that Jaskier is putting up a fight (token though it is).
“You left me. On a mountain,” Jaskier continues, his voice rising outside of his control. “Have you seen these boots? I mean, I pretty much slid all the way down that hill to Caingorn.”
“Jaskier,” Geralt tries to interrupt, but that just makes his rage flare.
“Don’t fucking Jaskier me!” he grits his teeth, holding in the shout that threatens to burst out. He takes a step forward, wishing he could look – or at least sound – menacing. Somehow, with the way his voice shakes and his lip trembles, he doesn’t think he is doing a good job of it. “I’m talking to you. This is how it works.”
And now he can feel the corners of his eyes prickle with unshed tears. Fucking wonderful.
He takes in a shaky breath, ready to add something else. Some new scathing word that will make him feel better. Or anything from all the conversations he imagined himself having with Geralt in his head these past months. Melite knows he had enough of them.
But Geralt takes a step forward, not intimidated in the least, and lays his hand on Jaskier’s shoulder, his thumb brushing against the side of Jaskier’s neck and right on his racing pulse.
“I need your help,” he says then, and all the remnants of Jaskier’s resolve crumple.
His eyes flicker to Geralt’s lips, just for the briefest of seconds, then slide away,
I need no one.
And yet. Here we are.
Jaskier wonders if the witcher remembers that old conversation as well as he does.
Here we are indeed.
Jaskier's eyes roam, looking everywhere except at Geralt’s face. He needs a moment, – only a moment – to pull himself together. To take his feelings and bottle them up. There is no time for his hurt right now. There never is.
“Fine,” he says in the end. “But first...”
Allowing himself just a moment to drape himself in his bard persona – cheerful and carefree – he turns around, looking down at his cell companions. He needs a moment. Just a little moment. A witcher has no use for a bard’s emotions: hide them, kill them.
“Gentlemen, it’s been an honour,” he announces, bowing to the mice.
When he turns back around, he thinks he catches a glimpse of Geralt shaking his head. And it is probably only his wishful thinking that makes him imagine he saw a slight upwards tilt to the witcher’s lips.
“What? I made new friends. Get over it.” Jaskier forces out a snort, picking his charade back up. “Jealous,” he says, his voice not sounding quite as joking as he was aiming for.
The only friends he made in the last months are the smell of vomit and regret in the morning, as he spent half of his time since that day on the mountain trying to drown his sorrows in piss-poor ale. (The other half passed out on a dirty floor or nursing an awful hangover.)
Well, he also found the time to write heart-wrenching songs of unrequited love, so maybe it’s not a perfect division of his time but, you know, more or less.
It is honestly surprising how quickly people caught on to his sour mood and stopped asking him to perform the songs he wrote about Geralt’s heroics. All it took was for him to sing… that song.
Burn. Butcher, burn.
After that, he saw a new glint of understanding in their eyes when he then sang his other songs. When he inevitably slipped into Her sweet kiss and his public would share either an incredulous or a knowing glance.
Not that he cared. He is more popular now than he ever was.
Jaskier lifts his eyes on Geralt, who is silently staring at him. He hurries out of the cell, hoping that Geralt didn’t notice him getting lost in the memory of his recent past, hoping that his face didn’t twist with the familiar loneliness and hurt.
And yet, he thinks as he walks briskly –
If I had to do it over, I'd do it all again.