A Little Life

Jaskier

The body lies on a low wooden table in the center of a vast, shadowy room lined with workbenches and shelves, all cluttered with vicious-looking metal instruments and half-empty vials. The room is so dark that it swallows the meager candlelight, so cold that it saps any warmth clinging to the body. It looks so small as it quakes and heaves, alone there in that yawning dark.

Alone. No, that isn't right. There is movement all around the body, shouting over it. More light is thrown about the room, and the body is illuminated. Two heads bend together over the middle of it, one bouncing ginger and the other inky black. Their hands are joined over the sunken chest, their palms pressing, squeezing, insisting that the flesh beneath give way.

Jaskier is molten, unmoored. It's so easy here, he thinks - doesn't think, can't think, is the thought - so warm. He sees the three figures pirouetting around the table as though from beneath a gauzy veil - they're distorted, distant, or maybe that's him. Jaskier is nothing and no one - only tethered to a body by one golden strand. Somewhere close, someone waits to greet him.

Somewhere else, the body has stopped its hideous gasping and Geralt is roaring.
He touches the body now, shakes it, holds his fingers to its throat, and Jaskier doesn't want to look. He doesn't feel, here, but he does remember. He remembers the body being lashed, being wrenched apart and forgotten somewhere damp. The shining thread pulls like an over-tight lutestring, and Jaskier follows it away from that lightless memory. There is someplace waiting, filled with sun, but-

Do something. It's a plea, not a command. That voice slips and shudders along his shining string, making it vibrate where it runs through Jaskier.

Geralt, I can't.

Is he? Yen, is he-

Jaskier reaches for him, tries to gentle him as his great shoulders begin to heave and tremble, but it's like running after smoke. Yennefer does not answer.

It is Triss, instead, who lays a hand on the body and Jaskier does feel that - not a touch, just an effervescence. Her chaos feels familiar here; it's gossamer-light and inquisitive, just like a cat rubbing against his leg. It winds around that gilded cord, benign and curious, then retreats.

He isn't gone, not yet, but he's not here either. There is nothing to be done, Geralt. A pause. Another tendril of chaos flickers in the dark and he reaches for it, too slow. You should speak to him, I think.

Is he in much pain?

This time, no one answers.

Pain. Jaskier remembers pain, remembers all the breaking in his bones and heart, remembers the aching, weeping tired and the strand goes taut enough to snap. He remembers shut up, Julian, so sharp and shut up, Jaskier, so sweet and remembers rain and apple tarts and fire under his fingers and marbles in his hands and acorns and constellations and music and yawning, rending grief and precious, ecstatic joy.

The sorceresses leave, and Geralt stays. Jaskier thinks that someone should have stayed with his witcher, and the thread relaxes.

Geralt remains for a long while after the mages leave, unmoving, before he steps close to the body once more. He looks every bit his impossible age in the dimness, candlelight deepening the shadows beneath his eyes. Jaskier watches his broad back bow like an old farmer's as he begins to carefully wash rivers of blood and dirt from the body. He lifts its filthy hands with reverence and swipes at them methodically until the pale skin revealed is clean, new. Jaskier doesn't realize right away that his friend is speaking. Geralt's voice is undistorted - as clear as if Jaskier were standing with him - but so quiet. Jaskier remembers cool rushing water and hot, dancing embers. He drifts closer.

I'll take you to the coast, Geralt whispers, then shakes his head as if trying to knock something out of it. He stomps away from the body, but returns a moment later with a bundle of thick, heavy furs in his arms.

I will take you someplace better, he promises, tucking them around the body so delicately - under its battered feet, around the brambleberry stains blooming across its neck.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll find you a room with a window. Geralt brushes a lock of chestnut hair away from the body's forehead. Jaskier remembers cold, remembers warm. Remembers walking in the sun.

Tomorrow, you'll be warm. But you have to stay. The witcher's voice is unyielding, serious. It reminds Jaskier of the way he talks to Roach, and a drop of light shivers down the golden thread. Stay. Tonight, just stay.

Jaskier watches the bead of light travel, peering closer as it reaches the end of the thread and dissolves into...not the body, not his own, but...Oh. Oh, of course.

Geralt lifts the body's hands to press them against his mouth and how unfair, how wretched that Jaskier can't feel it, but oh - he remembers kisses. Please, please, please, Geralt is speaking into the icy skin and it is Jaskier who answers; Yes and yes and yes.

He descends toward the terror and grief and hope, faster and faster back to his foolish heart. He glances once at the place that waits for him and takes something from it instead.

Give it back to me, he demands, following the gold down and down. Give me back my pain.