A Little Life

Jaskier

He sings. Because there is nothing else to do, because the acoustics in a dungeon are frankly incredible, because it annoys the guards posted outside his cell. He sings to keep hold of his sanity, to prove to himself that he continues to draw breath. He sings between bites of foul food, sings for water from the soldier who saw him perform at an inn in Temeria once, sings until it is time to scream. He sings because he is Jaskier the Bard. The first time a mage enters his cell is the first time his voice wavers.

Pain has become an odd comfort to Jaskier - it clings to him the way a shadow does, dark and immutable, and becomes just as constant. Like the singing, it keeps him sane. It gives him some proof that yes, yes, he is here and alive and they are safe. He feels a strange, dark pride in himself for facing it - after all, pain is only a single note, the only song these people know, but Jaskier is so much more. He starts to build hope on the idea that no amount of agony will take the music from him.

So when the mage - Jaskier knows she is a mage by the way she sort of saunters menacingly into his cell instead of walking - kneels in front of him and takes away his pain, strips him of his shadow, he trembles.

Chaos filters through him and he is suspended, dust in a sunbeam, as it traps him in its glare. The freedom it grants from his aching, fevered body is inviting as it chases into the dark corners of his mind, shines at all his hidden pieces and leaves nothing undiscovered. He startles internally, struggles for control over his own mind laid bare - safe, safe, keep them safe. How?

Jaskier is so many things, and more than all of them, a liar.

That's not how it happened, Geralt's voice rumbles in his memory, calling to him across the years since Posada, and that invading light whips toward it. His own voice comes next, wrung out and wine-heavy after an especially profitable performance in Cidaris a season or two later. It doesn't have to be real, dear witcher. It has to be convincing. The light circles that memory, slithers toward its meaning. Jaskier scrambles for his shadows, but he is pinned. Mid-stage in full view and he's forgotten all the lyrics.

He hides them from that spying light, then, in the only way he knows how - he weaves them into a story, tucks the truth right up against the fantasy like a grace note. He conceals his family in winding metaphors, ends their stories in looping codas before any truth can be revealed. In the final verse, the hero and the princess ride to some unknown land through a festering swamp, leaving the bard behind.

Come, he invites the chaos snaking through his head. Listen to my song. Look at what I've made for you.

"Useless," the mage spits. "He knows nothing. We have to try something else."

She shoves him and he hits the stone floor, boneless. This is real. This hurts and it is real and it will keep them safe.

**

"My mother was a lovely woman, actually!" Jaskier chirps, and spits blood into the dirt. The whelp of a guard assigned to him today has very clearly had enough of the talking, which naturally only encourages him to go on. He scrunches his nose up dramatically. "We-eeeell, that's a lie. She was a hateful bitch, but there's really no reason to insult me about it."

The guard launches a boot into the back of his leg and Jaskier crumples to the ground. Pain sings from his knees and he is grateful for it, because he knows he must be getting under the other man's skin. It's easier with the younger ones, after all - they're volatile, sure, but they don't linger. Keeping track of a mouthy prisoner of war is still a chore to the younglings, not yet a sport.

"What about your mother, eh? Did she weep when you left your cradle to whore for Nilfgaard? Or was she glad to be rid of you?"

Jaskier's breath is chased away from him as the boot shoves at his chest, enough to knock him back into the grass. It could have been a caress, for all it bothers him, and he knows he's truly gotten his way when the guard throws heavy ropes around him to yank him back against a tree. The rough bark digs into his back and he hisses