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Jaskier doesn’t remember dying.
He doesn’t remember much about the moments before dying either. He thinks Geralt might've been there; likes to imagine the white that had encapsulated his vision had been Geralt’s soft locks, the last light he’d seen, the warm yellow-gold of Geralt’s beautiful eyes, and the rumble that had furled through his skin and shaken him to the bone, had been Geralt’s gravelly roar. He misses him, with a gnawing hunger that’s eating Jaskier inside out. He misses the long nights spent beside roaring fires, misses Geralt pretending he didn’t know Jaskier fed Roach sugar cubes, even their silly arguments and Geralt’s monosyllabic hums; but most of all, he misses the absence of fear, and the absolute certainty he’d had of his safety in Geralt’s presence. He’s afraid he’s going to forget that feeling before he gets to experience it again.
What Jaskier does remember, is waking up.
He’d been sluggish at first, eyes barely open to slits and limbs leaden. His mind parsed things through a veil of thick honey, slow, and utterly distorted. He could hear vague warbling voices, feel the sharp scratch of nails against his touch-parched skin, the smell of dampened stone settling in his nares. Jaskier was adrift, soul floating untethered in this envelope of muted sensation.
The next time Jaskier wakes up, he is slightly more lucid. He blinks slowly and takes a deep breath. He’s lying on a bed , he thinks, craning his neck to look at his body. His hands and feet are unbound; there must be some trap. He slowly lifts his limbs and flexes them one at a time, relieved at their cooperation. He lies back down for a moment, waiting to see if his return to consciousness has triggered any sort of alert or signal, but no one comes. He is alone.
He gazes around him, taking stock of his surroundings. The room he’s in is bare, with jagged stone walls and a high ceiling. There’s a single wooden door on the far end, and no windows. The only source of light is a solitary glowing orb high in the air. He shivers, in cold and in fear.
He sits up. And the world explodes.
Jaskier screams, hands flying up to clutch at his head, tearing into his hair. His neck tilts back painfully and his back bends into a high arch. There’s so much light, around him, in him. And the voices, oh, the voices . It’s a cacophony inside his head, of voices deep and shrill, a menagerie of emotions being thrust at him. He whines, high pitched and desperate, clawing at his ears and scalp.
Something wraps around his arms, yanking them down to his sides, and binding his body into preternatural stillness. It feels like a dozen hands restraining him, fingers tight and so, so cold. The silence that follows, is deafening.
A single voice rises from the depths, ringing with devastating authority. It reverberates through his skull, making his lashes flutter and teeth rattle. If he could, Jaskier would be wincing he knew.
The voice is weary as it begins, spinning a tale of heroes and gods, and one man’s drive to derail destiny. It’s intonation remains utterly disinterested, almost sterile, as it weaves together a plot meant to bring the usurper to heel, and how he’d managed to evade their grasp by the barest of breaths.
So they’d taken the next best thing- Jaskier. They’d stolen the breath from Jaskier’s lungs as he’d stood within the circle of Geralt’s arms, and rejoiced in the agony that had shuttered Geralt’s brilliant eyes, the desolate pleas that had broken his voice; oh, how Geralt’s soul had bled.
Jaskier’s veins fill with ice. He’s crying unfettered, tears tracing shining trails down his porcelain cheeks. His throat is tight, teeth biting down the vitriol that’s pooling in his mouth. Geralt, oh Geralt, what have they done? The voice is not finished.
It turns angry, inflection harsh, consonants beating like war-drums. They had been cheated , it reveals. Jaskier’s body had been trapped in the world between worlds, and Geralt had been given a chance. Fate likes watching its children play. Since Jaskier’s soul had never made it to them , Geralt could free it from limbo.
Its rage tinges with amusement now. The world between worlds is a treacherous place , it says, and one of transition . It is not meant for mortals at all. Jaskier will lose himself to its mist. He will begin to forget who he is, everyone and everything he loves. The waters that flow through the heart of this land will claim him, one wisp of thought at a time.
‘No!’ Jaskier exclaims in the caverns of his mind, ‘no, there must be some way’. He cannot lose himself. He cannot lose Geralt . He needs to get back. He has to.
The voice wavers, and a strange hissing fills the air. Laughter , Jaskier realizes. They’re laughing at him. Rage and humiliation rise like a maelstrom in his chest. Determination burns bright in him.
"You wish to attempt an escape, then?"
It takes Jaskier and moment to realise that he's been asked a question. "Yes," he says, or thinks, rather. He can't feel his lips moving.
"Hmmm, very interesting." The titters echo like heavily falling rain. "You will not succeed, human. But it will amuse us to watch you try."
Jaskier dares not breathe.
"The river leads to a waterfall, at the end of the vale. You will follow it, past the city and through the forest. If your witcher manages a portal, it will be there , at the edge of the cliff.”
Jaskier’s mind rails against the thought of it being this easy. “What are you not telling me?” he asks them. “What’s the catch?”
It harrumphs at him, and Jaskier feels a phantom gust of air sweep over him.
“This is a plane of transition. You will begin to lose parts of yourself as you walk. The fog will steal the thoughts as they cross your mind, and the river will keep them.” It pauses, watching Jaskier try and fail to keep his panic from surfacing. “You can take them back, of course, but this is no mere river. It flows between the realms, its currents carry the eddies of the cosmos. You may find yourself being swept away even if you get too close.”
The voice sounds insufferably smug; secure in the knowledge of Jaskier’s imminent failure and the entertainment it would provide.
“When the portal opens, you will have but moments before it collapses on itself, forfeiting your life, and perhaps that of the usurper as well. You will brave the flow, and meet him at the edge of worlds. If he takes so much as a single step outside that portal, he will fall.”
Jaskier gulps, mouth dry and pulse thundering in his ears. How is he meant to do this?
“Any other warnings, oh venerable one?” is what leaves his mouth. He regrets it instantly. But sarcasm apparently is not a familiar concept among other-worldly beings.
“Do not stray from the path.”
`
It’s been hours since Jaskier started his trek, and he’s losing his mind.
“I am Jaskier, and I am a bard. A bard . I am Jaskier” , he repeats to himself, “I am Jaskier, I am dandelion, and buttercup, and fervent whispers of little lark under the cover of night.” His voice is hoarse, and shaking. He likes singing, he thinks, even if can’t quite do it anymore, can’t force his tongue to wrap around those silverd words that traipse through his mind. His vocal cords , his thoughts falter, he loosely wraps a palm around his throat, his vocal cords can find no rhythm in the dense fog that sinks heavier into his lungs with every inhale.
He picks up his pace, becomes more unforgiving of his unsteady tread cracking over twigs and bones alike, the sharp sounds failing to startle him they had before. The path he is taking is more of a loose guideline, a vague sense of direction, rather than any well-worn trail. But still better than that city, he thinks, with its phantom buildings and skeletons of arbours and gazebos of a bygone era. The streets had been ephemeral, turns vanishing as he’d taken them. Staying on the path had flayed his side open, and left his spirit spilling into gleaming gutter-canals and endless starlit puddles. He tries not to think about the prickling feeling on the back of his neck, the gazes of a dozen disembodied voices boring into him.
He stumbles again, laces catching on a gnarled root, and Jaskier hisses in frustration. He has to move faster . He slips off the offending boot, too frazzled to bother with untangling the mess, then slips off the other one as well. The dirt feels like ash beneath his bare soles.
“I am Jaskier” , he whispers again. He is Jaskier, and he has far too many facets of his identity tumbling out the holes in his hold, too many precious memories he had salvaged from the flowing waters of that accursed river, simply fading into mist. The river, he sees it in his mind’s eye, it flows through worlds, carrying bits of souls and carrion. He had plunged his hands into its glowing depths, skin nearly shearing from the force in its flow, grasping with desperate flailing fingers at the splinters of his psyche caught in the turbulence. How could he have forgotten the name of the inn where he had met Geralt?
But he will never forget it now, he knows. The cost of remembering flows tortuous and inky beneath his paper skin.
He gasps, when his next shove through a thicket brings him right to the edge of an embankment. The flow of the river here is silent, and an unearthly stillness permeates. Up ahead, he can see the cusp of the rapids, where the water bends too sharply to be natural. He’s made it to the edge of the world. The light emanating from the water is almost too bright, even through the heavy fog that hangs like a veil over everything.
He looks behind him, and can no longer see the Jaskier-shaped hole he’d made in the bushes pushing his way through. If he squints, he can make out the polka-dot lighting of the dilapidated city twinkling near the horizon. Had he really walked that far? Time hadn’t had any meaning to him here, and neither had distance. Desperation had carved his path.
Jaskier walks along the slick riverbank, creeping closer to the awning edge, and peers into the water. He startles. He’d known that this place had done something to him, felt the cloying chill seeping through his bones, but he hadn’t expected it to change him quite so viscerally.
His skin is waxy, eyes sunken in and hair sallow. He looks gaunt, like he'd been locked away, starved, and deprived of sunlight for months. His clothes are falling off of him, revealing bits of bleeding skin and purpling bruises. And his veins- they're all visible now, writhing across his skin in dark serpentine coils, from the dorsum of his cragged feet to his matted hairline. He looks monstrous. Jaskier whimpers. Oh, if Geralt could see him now.
His eyes are torn from his grotesque visage by the sudden rumbling of thunder, a crack of lightning that ends with the sky looking like it's been torn asunder. The clouds blush purple, and part. A faint silhouette appears at the edge, outline growing steadily darker. Jaskier knows that long hair, the pommels sticking over those broad shoulders, that narrow waist, and those steady feet.
Geralt.
He throws himself into the water, voice cracking as he screams with all the voice he has left. "Geralt! Geralt, here!" He can see the portal morphing, someone, Yen probably , struggling to keep it open. "Geralt!" he calls out again and runs, water waist-deep and still rising. The tide wraps around his feet, moving up his calves, thighs, and cinching around his waist. No. He won’t let it keep him, he won’t . He glares harshly at the air around him, at the faces he knows are there, can feel their insidious gazes willing him to fumble. Well, tough luck, he swears.
He sees Geralt jolt as he spots Jaskier. Geralt’s countenance stiffens, body tensing as he prepares to ride to Jaskier’s rescue for the umpteenth time. Jaskier has to stop him.
"No! Don't move!" Jaskier yells, over and over. "Stay! Don't move!" Geralt please, you cannot move.
Geralt, bless his faithful heart, listens, for once in his life. "Jaskier!" he calls out to him, "Hurry!" His face is set in a heavy frown, lips curled into a helpless snarl.
The portal is blurring at its edges now, wavering, and Jaskier is just an arm's length away.
He can feel his limbs faltering, water angling him away. Geralt's face is frantic. Jaskier runs harder than he has ever before. He’s panting open mouthed, calves burning and vision spotting. He has to make it. He has to.
Geralt leans dangerously forward, and wraps his long fingers tight around Jaskier's outstretched palm. They stare into each others’ eyes, suspended in that single infinite moment.
The portal winks out.