Chapter Text
Blood.
It was the first and only thing he could focus on right now.
Blood, dripping down from his lips, flowing down his chin, and dripping onto his shirt.
There was more blood, on his fingers, his hands, but that wasn’t dripping. It had dried up, clinging to his skin as he shook.
He wasn’t sure when the shaking had begun. After the sun had risen the morning before, but before it had set.
He had to accept it now.
No one was coming to save him.
A hand carded through his hair, pulling his head back, flames licking at his neck. He whimpered, surprised when he could even make that sound. The screams had torn his throat raw hours ago.
There was moonlight streaming in, mixing with the fire and illuminating Rience’s face. The mage grinned down at him, always grinning. This wasn’t the smiles Jaskier pulled from his audience, this was evil. Manic. The look he’d seen on monsters as they loomed over their victims.
Usually, he only saw this look from afar, a split second before Geralt ended the monster’s life.
This? This lasted. Up close, it dragged on until Jaskier couldn’t look anymore, eyes forced shut from pain as the fire licked at his throat.
Rience pulled back, and Jaskier gasped for air, shaky sobs coming out with the breaths. “I suppose I’d be more impressed by your silence if you had the option of talking,” Rience commented, letting the fire go out. Now it was just the moonlight, catching on strands of his greasy hair and casting him into depths of shadow. “You’re stubborn, I’ll give you that. What did your Witcher do to earn such loyalty?”
Jaskier just shook. He couldn’t talk anymore. This wasn’t about information. This was about pain. And he was giving Rience everything he wanted.
Rience traced his hand along Jaskier’s jaw, muttering a few words.
Just like that, Jaskier was unable to speak, and he shook his head, tears rolling down his cheeks as Rience cupped his face. “Don’t worry, we’re just giving your voice a chance to heal. I’ll be back in a few hours to check up on you, see if you’re more willing to talk then. If not, I have other things I can try.”
Rience stepped away, and Jaskier let his head hang. Twenty years by Geralt’s side, things had never seemed this bleak.
But that was just it, wasn’t it? He wasn’t by Geralt’s side anymore. He was on his own. Completely stranded, no one coming to save him.
He clenched his fists, fingernails digging into his skin tighter than the ropes around his wrists. This wasn’t going to be how it ended. It couldn’t be how it ended!
He tugged against the ropes, desperately trying to get free. It was even less effective than it had been through the torture sessions, and all he ended up doing was rubbing his wrists bloody.
Brilliant. More blood.
He threw his weight forward, heart rate picking up for a moment as the chair wobbled, and he almost fell.
He sat back, breathing heavily through his nose. Well, he wasn’t tired anymore. There was nothing quite like the adrenaline of almost falling to wake you up. Well, maybe the threat of further torture, that was pretty terrifying too.
Wait.
He shifted, heart rate picking up as the chair shifted with him.
This was a wooden chair.
It could break.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath through his nose. This might fail. Rience might come back. The chair might not break, and then he’d just be lying there on the floor, waiting for Rience to come back and keep torturing him.
But Rience was coming back either way, and he was going to torture him no matter what he did.
Nerves as close to steel as Jaskier could manage, he clenched his fists and threw the entirety of his weight into the back of the chair.
If his throat weren’t cursed, he would have screamed as he fell backwards, head banging into the wooden floor.
He winced, head aching horribly, but the arms of the chair had splintered, and he was able to tug them out of their sockets, burned fingers trying desperately to undo the knots around his wrists.
His fingers stung, and he had to stop more than once, but eventually he was able to slip his bloodied wrists out from the ropes and roll off of the broken chair, and from there he was able to reach the dagger he kept in his boot.
Geralt had gifted it to him, many years ago, in the hopes it would keep him safe.
Fat lot of good it did him when he didn’t even know how to fight.
He desperately slashed through the ropes around his ankles, getting to his feet and stumbling his way out of the room and into the alleyway.
He slammed into the wall, supporting himself on it as he glanced around, trying to get a bearing for where he was. Somewhere in Oxenfurt…probably.
He couldn’t stick around though, he had to get away. Rience was still here, and the second he realized Jaskier wasn’t, he’d be chasing after him. He needed to get away. So, picking a direction, he started running, stumbling over his own two feet the first few times but eventually managing to get out of the city, and onto the path.
He needed to find a way to warn Geralt. Somehow, there had to be something he could do to get word to him. Even if he didn’t know where Geralt was, he had to know how to contact him…right? Twenty years of friendship, he had to have some idea of how to get a hold of the man.
He tripped over a root and went sprawling, deciding that maybe…maybe he didn’t need to figure this out right this second. He could wait, couldn’t he? He could just…sleep, for a minute. Here, under a few trees, off the side of a path. He’d slept worse places before, it couldn’t be that bad of an idea to fall asleep.
So, as the moon began to go down, Jaskier let exhaustion overcome him.
He opened his eyes, and golden pupils stared down at him. “You alright there?” a soft voice asked, and Jaskier groaned in response. Or at least, he tried to groan.
Nothing came out.
He sat up fast, almost knocking heads with the man leaning over him, and he grasped at his throat.
No.
No, the spell-
Fuck!
Ooooh this was so much worse than the djinn.
Jaskier looked around, trying to figure out where he’d ended up, despite the pounding in his head.
At least then Geralt was still with him.
“Hey, are you alright?” The man asked, and Jaskier remembered that he wasn’t alone. He turned back to the man who had found him, taking in the neatly shaved head, yellow eyes, double swords-
Oh fuck.
The Witcher in front of him winced. “Yeah, yeah I get it. ‘Big scary Witcher’ and all. I’ll just head off and-” Before he knew what he was doing, Jaskier had lunged forward, latching onto this Witcher’s arm, shaking his head. He wasn’t scared of this Witcher, that wasn’t the problem. “Um…or maybe not?”
Jaskier looked over the Witcher, trying to find something to indicate who he’d just been found by.
The medallion on his chest stood out proudly, and Jaskier poked at it. It was a cat, not a wolf, but maybe he could start there. Cat school. That had been something Geralt had mentioned before. They didn’t tend to get along with wolves, but they weren’t enemies either.
“Gutsy, aren’t you?” The Witcher asked. “You trying to ask me something?”
Jaskier tapped his throat, trying to communicate that this was a curse, he needed help. “Oh, um, I’m sorry, I don’t speak sign language,” The Witcher apologized.
Well, fuck. That wasn’t what he’d been trying to say at all.
Jaskier glanced around hastily, trying to find something to write with, or to communicate something at all, but the pounding in his head kept getting worse the more he moved. . “Listen, you seem…interesting, but I’m on my way north, I’ve got another Witcher to meet up with, and I’m already late-”
Another Witcher? North? That could be Geralt! Or at the very least someone who could get to Geralt, and warn him about Rience.
Jaskier started nodding emphatically, tapping his chest, then tapping the other Witcher’s chest in question.
The Witcher blinked at him. “You…want to come with??”
Jaskier nodded again, and the Witcher sighed. “What the hell, you look like you could use some help. Sure. Name’s Aiden, by the way. And you are?”
Jaskier looked around, trying to find something to indicate who he was.
“...Right, can’t talk. Well, what can I call you?”
Jaskier spun around, searching, before spotting one of the flowers on the side of the road and rushing to pick it.
Aiden had to suppress a laugh, and Jaskier glared. “Right. ‘Dandelion.’ Well, it’ll have to work for now. Come on Dandelion, it’s a few hours to the closest town, and you look like you could use some serious medical attention.”
And just like that, Jaskier found himself with another Witcher traveling companion. At least this one spoke more.
Aiden got them both a room at the inn, ordering them food and a bath as well.
Jaskier was delighted to find that this spell didn’t stop him from moving his mouth entirely, and he was still in fact able to eat.
Aiden chuckled at the awkwardness that was Jaskier trying to eat with his left hand. “You alright there Dandelion? You don’t seem terribly adept at that.”
Jaskier scowled, lifting up his mangled hand.
Aiden sucked in a breath. “Oh shit when did that happen?”
Jaskier just raised an eyebrow, gesturing all over himself. “Dandelion, there’s a massive difference between ‘got beat up in a back alley’ and ‘survived a fight with a dragon.” Aiden frowned. “...How did this happen?”
Jaskier looked down, stomach shrinking as he remembered Rience, his hands on Jaskier’s body, the fire-
“Shit, okay, yeah, just…just finish your food, we can take a look at that after you’ve had a bath.”
Jaskier just nodded, doing his best.
He only made it through half his food before his stomach had had enough, and he had to push the rest to Aiden. “Alright,” Aiden commented, accepting the food, but still casting concerned glances at Jaskier every few minutes. “Come on,” Aiden nodded once he’d finished. “Let’s get those injuries addressed.”
Jaskier couldn’t get in the hot water. He wanted to, oh so desperately did he want to, but even the thought of heat against his burned skin made him want to cry. Aiden must have realized this, because he tossed Jaskier a bottle of something he’d gotten from the innkeeper. “Go ahead and rub this on your burns, it should sit for a few minutes before you wash it off anyway. I’ll take the first bath.”
Jaskier nodded, uncapping the small bottle with one hand and dipping the fingers of his left hand into the mixture before spreading it over his burns and sighing. As he waited, he glanced around the room.
It was a standard room, much the same type he and Geralt would have gotten oh so long ago. Aiden’s things sat in the corner, two swords, potions and elixirs in the satchel bag, and Jaskier’s heart ached. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend it was his own gruff witcher in the tub-
No. No, Geralt wasn’t his anymore. He needed to stop thinking of Geralt as his, it wasn’t helping anyone.
“Alright,” Aiden called out, pulling his shirt off the top of the divider. “It’s your turn, go ahead and wash off and then I can dress those injuries for you.”
It felt nice, being clean again. He’d hated the dirt and filth that had accumulated on him in the last few days. Well, dirt, filth, and blood. So much blood.
Aiden whistled as he saw Jaskier fully clean for the first time. “Well someone cleans up nice. Here, let me take a look at that hand of yours, it seems to be the worst of it.”
Jaskier let him dress his wounds, rubbing more of the salve into Jaskier’s wounds before gently wrapping them, and then examining Jaskier’s neck and nose, concluding that the worst of the damage had in fact been his hand. “Alright, anywhere else?”
Jaskier thought, then nodded, lifting a hand up to the back of his head. Aiden parted his hair gently, and whistled. “Damn, that’s a goose egg of a blow. What happened to you?”
What was he supposed to say to that??
Aiden finished applying a salve, leaning back and patting Jaskier on the shoulder. “Alright, good as new. Now, get some sleep. I’ll be heading out early tomorrow, and if you’re intent on traveling with me you’ll have to be up just as early.”
Jaskier nodded, glancing to the bed and extending his arm, offering it for Aiden. It was his room, after all.
Aiden shook his head. “You go ahead. I’m not that tired, I’ll just meditate.”
Jaskier nodded and tried to smile. It wasn’t as ‘nice’ of a gesture as Aiden was trying to make it seem. Aiden didn’t trust him, and didn’t want to be asleep around him yet. Still, Jaskier had been around Witchers enough to know how significant it was anyway. Aiden was giving up his sleep for Jaskier. He wanted to make sure that even though he didn’t trust this man, he still got enough sleep. So, maybe it was actually that nice of a gesture.
Either way, Jaskier was done analyzing it, and he curled up on the bed, automatically leaving enough room for the Witcher he’d shared so many beds with over the last two decades.