Chapter Text
In the dead of night, the village was near deserted. Geralt reined in Roach, grinding his teeth, and debated the merits of dismounting to bang on the door of one of the darkened houses. Even as he considered it, Jaskier threatened to slip from behind him, and he was forced to tighten his bruising grip on the arms he held around his waist. A stuttered breath, too quiet to be called a moan, left the bard. Geralt’s gaze flicked over the empty streets again and paused on what he’d taken to be an abandoned sack of grain. It was, but huddled behind it and using it as a pillow was an old man curled and trembling in the chill autumn air. Geralt urged Roach toward him.
“Hey,” he said. Then he repeated it louder. His jaw clenched as the man refused to stir, and his fingers formed the sign of Axii. “Wake up,” he commanded.
The man bolted upright, blinking and dazed. After a moment’s panicked breathing and whipping his head around, he gaped up at Geralt.
“Is there a healer in this town?” Geralt demanded.
The man continued to stare with open mouth and lidded eyes. “What now?”
“A healer,” Geralt barked. “Does this fucking town have one?”
“Oh, aye.” The man nodded and held up a shaking hand to point toward the far end of the village. “Cottage at the edge o’ t’wood. Mother Mora, we call her.”
Geralt reached into the purse at his belt and fished out a handful of coins without even looking what they were. He tossed them to spatter on the grain sack, and with eyes now wide open, the old man cupped his hand to slide them closer. As Geralt urged Roach back into motion, the man’s reedy voice called after them.
“Gods bless you, sir!”
Against the back of his neck, Geralt felt Jaskier huff a breath. The lips pressed into his skin curled up for a moment before going slack again. Jaskier’s weight slumped against him, and Geralt pushed Roach to a gallop.
As described, the cottage stood at the edge of a gnarled patch of forest that swallowed up the road and spit it back out as little more than an animal trail. The cottage itself was a stone sprawl covered in ivy and seemingly put together and added to at random. A rough wood fence marked off an overgrown pasture with a ramshackle lean-to of a barn on one side of the cottage and a profusion of herbs, flowers, and vegetables on the other. Roach stopped before the low gate, and Geralt kicked his feet loose of the stirrups before turning sideways to support Jaskier’s shoulders. Once his feet touched the ground, he shifted and pulled until the bard fell into his arms and against his chest, and then he pushed through the gate and jogged up the uneven stone walkway to the door.
Geralt kicked against it, but it was barred from the inside. He kicked it again. “Healer!” he called. “Mother Mora!”
Jaskier squirmed weakly in his arms as he surfaced to consciousness again. His panting breaths were the only sounds aside from the crickets in the garden.
“Ger’lt?” he gasped. “Where are we?”
“Healer,” Geralt answered. “Don’t talk.”
He kicked the door again until the wood began to shed splinters from the heel of his boot. A muffled shout from inside made him pause, and if he focused, he could hear the padding of bare feet on wooden planks. The door bolt rattled. An old woman with a long gray braid and a shawl wrapped around her shoulders flung the door open and raised a candle to the scuff marks on the wood. Pale green eyes glared up at him.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“My friend needs a healer.” Without waiting for an answer, Geralt shouldered past her and into the cottage. Before he’d gone two steps, his boots stuck to the wood floor. He nearly dropped Jaskier as his upper body lurched forward without any participation from his feet.
“You’re a piece of work,” the old lady muttered behind him. “Storming in here and you don’t even know where you’re going.”
Geralt seethed as he tried to pry his boots off the floor. The old lady walked around the table that took up the center of the room, setting the candle upon it, and went to the fireplace along the wall. She took down flint and steel from the mantle; fortunately kindling was already laid, and the fire caught quickly. A cauldron full of water hung suspended above the flames. In the firelight, Geralt looked down at Jaskier. His eyes had slipped closed again.
The old woman picked up the candle again and then jerked her head to the side in a silent order for Geralt to follow her. As soon as she did, Geralt’s feet moved freely again. She led him to a small room with a proper bed along one wall and a cot along the other. She tugged a small table toward the cot, set the candle on it, and then gathered two more from other spots in the room. As she lit them, she nodded to the cot. With as much care as he could, Geralt laid Jaskier down, but the bard still hissed as his eyes fluttered open. Geralt put a hand over the knife wound in his side, pressing down on the linen pad that had soaked through with blood. He knew the back of his armor was likely wet with it as well.
The old woman positioned herself at Jaskier’s head and looked over his multiple injuries--the limp hands that dripped blood onto the blanket, the bruises along his ribs, and the bent and broken feet. He had no shirt or shoes, and even his trousers were tattered and torn.
“What the fuck happened to him?”
“Nilfgaard.”
“Bastards,” the old woman spat. She glanced up at Geralt, though one of her hands already rested lightly on Jaskier’s brow. “What’s he call himself?”
“Jaskier.”
She nodded and turned her gaze to the bard. “Jaskier, is it? You with us, young man? Can you hear me?”
Jaskier licked dry lips and nodded. The old woman’s wrinkled and spotted hand brushed back through his hair in a surprisingly gentle caress.
“That’s a good boy. Got yourself in trouble, did you?”
Blue eyes wandered from her face to Geralt. “I didn’t tell them anything,” he whispered in a broken rasp. “I swear it.”
Geralt couldn’t reply, couldn’t find words of gratitude or praise. How the fuck did anyone count loyalty as a virtue when it could lead to an outcome like this?
“Of course you didn’t,” the old woman answered for him. She petted Jaskier’s hair again despite the sweat in the lank strands. “Now, Jaskier, you look at me.” When the bard obeyed, she nodded. “You can call me Mother Mora, and I’m going to fix you up, but I need to ask you a few things. How long did they have you?”
A crease appeared between Jaskier’s brows. “I… don’t…”
Mora nodded again. “That’s fine. That’s fine. What day were you taken, you remember?”
“Day after Velen.”
“Two days then. They feed you?” Jaskier shook his head. “Any water?”
“A little.”
“All right,” Mora said as her eyes took in his injuries again. “I know the fingernails probably hurt like a bitch, but they’ll grow back. Ribs look bruised, not broken, and I’ll take a look at the knife wound in a second. They use a lash and a flog on your feet?”
Jaskier nodded, a sheen coming to his eyes. Geralt curled his free hand around Jaskier’s forearm and held tight.
“They use ’em anywhere else? Your back? Testicles?”
With a soft huff, Jaskier shook his head. “No, thank the gods.”
“They penetrate you with anything? Poker? Broken bottle?”
Geralt stiffened, and Jaskier’s eyes went wide. He shook his head in mute horror, and Geralt felt the tremble that went through him. He felt a little unsteady himself, and he went without protest when Mora shifted to his other side and pushed him to take her place at Jaskier’s head.
“Hold him, Witcher,” she said before lifting the pad covering the stab wound.
Jaskier looked up at Geralt with a wan smile. “Guess it could have been worse, after all.”
“Jaskier…” More words flooded up Geralt’s throat from his chest, but he couldn’t sort them before Jaskier was squeezing his eyes shut and gasping for breath.
Geralt whipped his head to see Mora pressing against the skin around the wound. Blood leaked out around her fingers, and Jaskier whimpered.
“I said to hold him, Witcher,” the old healer said without looking up from her work.
With a jaw clenched so tight he felt the muscles twitch, Geralt laid his arm across Jaskier’s chest. Soft moans escaped from behind the bard’s teeth, and Geralt lifted his other hand to his brow in pale imitation of the healer’s gentle touch.
“Can’t you give him something for the pain?” he demanded.
Mora bent low over the wound and sniffed at it. “Not until I’m sure it won’t do more harm than good.”
Geralt looked back at Jaskier, but his eyes were unfocused, vacant, staring at the rafters as tears leaked from his eyes. He had gone to that distant place beyond thought where only the pain could reach him. Geralt could do nothing except serve as an anchor back to the body that had been mutilated because of him.
After a small eternity, Mora finished prodding. She elbowed Geralt out of the way again and brushed her knuckles across Jaskier’s jaw. All tension in his muscles released at once, and his eyes slid closed.
“Right,” Mora said. “He’ll be fine. Keep up that pressure while I get what I need.”
She bustled out of the room, and moments later Geralt could hear the sounds of drawers opening and closing. He kept one hand on Jaskier’s wound and set the other on his shoulder. Even while asleep or sedated or whatever Jaskier was, his face was creased with pain. Guilt scraped at Geralt’s spine and clawed at his gut. If he hadn’t pushed Jaskier away on that fucking mountain, if he hadn’t been so focused on protecting Ciri, if he had bothered to think for even one godsdamned second, he would have recognized the danger that would stalk the man the whole Continent knew as the White Wolf’s bard. Yennefer had been the one to think of it, the one who pushed him to go and check, and she didn’t even like Jaskier. He wondered if she’d known somehow, if some intelligence had reached her that he didn’t know about, because he’d barely made it to the dingy jail in the small border town before Jaskier was shipped back to the Nilfgaardian capital.
He looked down at the bard, at the thick stubble covering the pale, haggard face, at the shadows beneath his eyes, at the furrow in his brow. Then he glanced at his own hand, where his thumb rubbed soothing circles against Jaskier’s shoulder. He hadn’t even meant to do it, and it was such a ludicrously weak gesture toward easing the man’s pain that he stopped.
A whine caught in Jaskier’s throat, and Geralt moved his hand to the bard’s hair. He glanced at the open door, but he could still hear Mora bustling in the other room. Bending down, he leaned his forehead against Jaskier’s and closed his eyes.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “I’m so…” His voice left him, and he had to clear his throat. “I’m so fucking sorry, Jaskier.”
He straightened when he heard a bang against the wall outside the door. Mora reentered, puffing for breath and waddling under the weight of two buckets filled to the brim with steaming water. A spool of thread, several large needles, and cloths for washing floated in one, and Geralt grabbed the handle once it was in reach and placed it at his side. Mora nodded her thanks and set the other bucket down beside the candle-lit table.
“All right,” she declared. “You have a horse? Go see to it. You can put her in the pasture with Valeena.”
“Valeena?”
“My goat.” Geralt found himself elbowed out of the way as Mora began to fuss over Jaskier’s wounds. “There’s a well out back. Get yourself cleaned up too.”
Geralt hesitated, reluctant to leave Jaskier in pain and vulnerable with a stranger, but Mora fixed him with a hard-eyed glare and flapped her hand toward the door.
“I said get out. I don’t need an audience underfoot.”
Even in the middle of the night, even knowing what Geralt was, she had agreed to help them. He kept that thought close and tried to let it comfort him as he walked out the door. He glanced back once, but Mora’s bent head blocked his view of Jaskier’s face. He prayed it would somehow bear a familiar smile the next time he saw it.
He had missed that smile.