Chapter Text
Jaskier has a problem.
Well, not a problem in the manner of his other problems. Certainly not in the way of 'an entire empire is currently trying quite hard to murder everyone I love', or 'two of the most important people in the world to me are at this very moment working to manipulate their way through a hall full of people who would be happier if they were dead' or even the lesser but still significant 'the Redanian intelligence service is going to eat me for breakfast if I keep leading them on like this'.
Jaskier is a man with a lot of problems.
But this one is personal, and it's of a sort Jaskier never expected to face.
As he sits there on the edge of Ciri's bed, singing softly to her and watching sleep ease a measure of peace across her face, there is no denying it.
Jaskier loves this girl. This child growing so fast in leaps and bounds, gaining strength and wisdom and power each time he blinks.
He doesn't have a word for it. He is no father to her as Geralt is, no mother like Yennefer; he's tossed around the thought of uncle, but it doesn't sit quite right. He doesn't know what it is, but it's family, sure as anything. He doesn't know if he has the right to claim it, but he can't deny that it's there.
It's funny how clear everything becomes, once you know that. He can understand why Yennefer changed course, having at last found something more important to her than power. He can understand why Geralt has transformed his life for this, forsaken what he used to believe in order to believe in something far more precious.
And he understands why Geralt is so afraid now, all the time.
Others might not be able to see it. Yennefer probably can; she knows Geralt as well as Jaskier does. Perhaps a little less in some ways, a little more in others. They can both read him. Ciri can too, but Geralt shields her, as they all wish to. She might not yet know how total is his fear for her.
There is a noose tightening around them, and nothing is certain about their future. About her future.
Except, Jaskier thinks, murmuring out his gentle song, how much she will be loved.
Gods, he's too old for this. Or not old enough. He's not ready.
Maybe he'd never have been ready. Maybe no one's ever ready.
It's just so painfully easy to feel at home when he's with the three of them, in the moments that they snatch between each disastrous step of whatever the hell is happening these days. When it's just Geralt and Yennefer and Ciri and him. He's not the Sandpiper here. Not whatever spy Dijkstra would make of him. Not an errant viscount, not even a famous bard.
He's just Jaskier, just Jask. Just a friend that Geralt trusts, that Yennefer turns to, that can make Ciri laugh even against the darkness that hounds her.
That's enough for him. That would be enough forever, if he could keep it. If that was all he would ever have for all his life, he would live happy.
Strange. Once, he thought he needed fame, fortune, audiences to fawn over him. And he's had those things, though they come and go, and he could aspire to still greater heights.
But none of it can hold a candle to this: that Geralt and Yennefer trust him to guard their child, and that he is here to pull the blankets up to her chin as she falls into a deep sleep, lulled by his song.
It's a problem because it terrifies him. He's not made for this.
Except that he is. He's made to love. It's all he is, all he knows, when he looks into his own heart. He loves so easily, admittedly - he has loved many people, all of them truly, though not all for very long.
This is different. Of course it is. This is something that began from Geralt, and Jaskier's heart has always been something so very different where Geralt is concerned. Yennefer, too, has become dear to him, a friend he never looked for but has found all the same. And now his pocket-sized princess, his little partner in a hundred schemes already, and -
There is a sound, and something moves outside the window.
Jaskier jolts out of his thoughts with alarm so sharp that his heart skips and his stomach lurches. He feels immediately as wide awake as though someone's upended ice water over his head; his hands go cold.
It's the middle of the night. The ball will still be well underway. Dawn is many hours off. Geralt and Yennefer will not be back for a long time.
No one else ought to know where they are.
Someone, nonetheless, is out there.
And Jaskier is the sole guard here for Ciri. A guard who has never known how to fight. Never had the taste to learn, or the skill for it. He's regretted that a few times, though never enough to change it - but now he rather wishes he had.
He looks to Ciri. She's only just fallen asleep. If this is nothing, he doesn't want to disturb her rest.
Shit, he hopes it's nothing.
He grabs the lute as a reflex more than anything, but they're good blunt weapons in a pinch, even if the number of lutes getting broken around him is becoming rather sacrilegious.
Some things, he thinks, glancing back at the bed, are worth it.
The quiet around him, which had seemed so calm before, now seems full of unseen terror. He eases the door open, and the hinges creak. The air that hits him is cool, and the night is dark. It takes a few blinks to adjust his eyes. Some of the warm orange light of fire and candles spills out from the door and windows, and the moon is bright enough to see further, though where it cannot penetrate through the trees there is only deep, swallowing darkness.
In that dusky half-light, he can't see anyone outside. It's quiet - so quiet.
He steps out past Yennefer's enchanted barrier, which lets him through easily.
"Uh, if - if anyone is out here, I need you to know that I am armed," he says, brandishing the lute, wishing he wasn't quite so acutely aware that he sounds far more scared than threatening.
There's no movement, nothing, but he knows he saw something - sort of felt it, too, as if someone or something had pushed against the barrier around the cabin.
He steps on a dry twig, and the crack of it is unsettlingly loud. That's when he realises that he can't hear any birds. Even the constant nightly chorus of insects is silent, and that isn't right at all.
And then the silence ends, and what comes next is worse.
Breathing. Far louder and larger, somehow, than his own short, nervous inhalations. These are breaths that rumble in a vast chest.
Jaskier turns, dread and terror rising within him.
A hulking shape appears around the side of the cabin. It's hard to make out, away from the light; it appears more like a shadow than anything, a silhouette, visible more as an absence in the landscape than an actual form. Except that it is dragging one hand - or paw - against the side of the cabin, or trying to. It's only touching the barrier, which trails a bright white light behind it.
It's huge. At least as tall as Jaskier, but he has the sense that it's crouching down, and that its eyes are fixed on him.
It can't get through the barrier.
Jaskier is outside the barrier.
Geralt. He wishes, for one moment suspended in time, that Geralt was here - wishes it with all his heart. He's been in danger a thousand times, but with Geralt next to him, he's actually always felt remarkably safe. He's never realised that until right now, when a monster is here and Geralt's not.
He shifts one foot, and the beast stills. Jaskier's heart fucking stops for a second, and he can't breathe.
And then, somehow, it gets worse.
There is a growl, but it doesn't come from the creature he's looking at, it comes from right behind his head.
Jaskier lets out a noise that might be a scream or a whimper or a yell, but he does it while spinning round on the spot and lashing out with his lute with all his strength. He's no witcher, but nor is he useless; the blow is fierce, and it connects with something hard.
The lute smashes in a heartbreaking crash of splintered wood, but it dies dealing a strong blow to something that rears back, releasing a high trilling cry of rage and pain. Jaskier gets a split second view of large serpentine eyes and a mouth full of way too many teeth before he's flinging himself away, ripping the door open and slamming it behind him just in time to hear the other beast throw itself at the cabin, snarling and roaring, only to get repulsed by the wonderful blessed barrier that Jaskier feels the sudden urge to kiss Yennefer for, even if that will only get him killed another way.
Ciri is already stirring, pulled from far too brief a sleep, as Jaskier all but tumbles into the room.
"Jask, the fuck?" she mumbles, pushing herself up, and then as he approaches the bed she gets a good look at him. Whatever she sees wakes her up in an instant. "What is it?"
"Monsters," he says, which he's aware is uninformative, but hysterical panic is bubbling up in his throat and he's not her, he's not Geralt, he doesn't have any way to guess what they're up against. "Two. And they really want to get in here."
Ciri's eyes trail downwards, and fix on something. She sits up, pushing the covers back, reaching for her sword without looking away. "Are you hurt?" she asks sharply, and there's concern in her voice that startles him.
He follows her gaze, and realises he's still clutching the neck of his lute. That's the only bit that's remotely intact - the body of the instrument is all but gone, just a few shards of wood dangling from the strings.
Jaskier lets it fall. Time enough to be sad about that later, if they make it through this. And if they don't, a broken lute is the least of it.
"I'm alright. But we're, uh-" he breaks off as two large bodies slam into the protective barrier in quick succession, followed by bellows of rage that send shivers creeping down his spine. "We're in trouble, here."
Ciri draws her sword, letting the sheath fall unheeded onto the bed. She's still wearing her nightdress, her hair falling long and loose across her back. She goes to the window, and panic of a different kind lurches in Jaskier's chest; he follows her, one hand instinctively grabbing her shoulder, and that means he's there to get a great view of the moment that one of the monsters catches sight of her.
It flings itself at the barrier, and when it gets repulsed it only comes again, claws ripping at the air like it means to tear right through. Ciri doesn't flinch but Jaskier does, and for what feels like an eternity they watch it try to rip its way through Yennefer's magic, snarling and biting with a wild look of mania in its eyes.
And then it pauses, finally stilling enough that he can get a good look at it in the candlelight.
It has a little of the appearance of a kikimora, in the spindly and unsettlingly articulated legs, though the legs on this beast are shorter, more proportional to its body. It's built more like an animal, four limbs set into a broad horizontal torso, like some huge, hulking dog. But its face is like no animal Jaskier's ever seen - the eyes seem to burn red, though it could be a trick of the firelight, and its mouth is a gaping maw that opens far wider than it should, revealing successive rows of large, sharp teeth. It moves fast and quietly, as he learned almost to his cost. Each of its claws are as big as Jaskier's entire hand, and it's clear to see that without the magic barrier it could carve through the cabin in seconds.
And there are two of them out there.
"Do you know what they are?" he asks, because it was amply clear on the ferry that she's learned everything Geralt taught her very well.
There's a long pause, and it answers the question even before Ciri does.
"No. But I can fight them."
"No, no, no," Jaskier says, and when he pulls her away from the window the creature throws itself at them again. "No, we are not going out there."
"We can't just sit here!"
"Have you still got that - that medallion thingy? The one Yennefer enchanted?"
His heart's in his mouth for a second, as Ciri seems poised to try and push past him to the door, but then she rushes over to her clothes instead and Jaskier can finally draw a full breath. She pats down her pockets and then pulls out the little wolf's head, cradles it into her hands, and draws it up to her mouth.
She whispers a spell, pauses, and says, "Yennefer?"
He gives it a second, but nothing happens. "Is it working?"
Ciri glances up at him, but doesn't answer, just returns her gaze to the medallion and deepens her focus. Again and again she tries, until she's almost yelling the spell, while the thumping grows louder against the house, and then she looks at Jaskier with eyes that have a worrying shine.
"I don't think it's working. I don't know - my magic doesn't always work, Jaskier, I don't know if I'm doing it right. I never do it right."
"Hey, it's alright," he says, aching at the vitriol she throws at herself, and comes forward to wrap his hands around hers, easing her grip on the medallion. "They're at the super fortified home of the most powerful and paranoid people on the continent. I wouldn't be surprised if they've enchanted the whole place to stop messages getting in and out. And portals."
Ciri stares at him, and it's like the full weight of what he's saying sinks in. He was just trying to comfort her - but he's probably right. Messages and portals are probably blocked. That means they really are on their own here, with no way to reach Geralt and Yennefer until they come back.
And a barrier that's only enchanted to last until dawn.
"Do you think it'll hold?" Ciri says, echoing his thoughts.
Jaskier swallows against his rising nerves like he can shove them back down by force of will. "I've never known a spell by Yennefer of Vengerberg to fail," he says, and then remembers the business with the djinn and the exploding building before promptly deciding that that doesn't count right now. "A couple of freaky little fuckers aren't going to get past her magic."
"And at dawn? If Geralt and Yennefer aren't back in time?"
Yeah, then they're fucked, but that doesn't seem productive to say.
Ciri is too intuitive for her own good, though. "Jaskier, I need to kill them. I can do it."
Could she? She is good, he's seen it himself. She's strong and brilliantly brave.
But she is also only a teenager, and Geralt has been there with her on all of her hunts so far. She hasn't really fought alone, and she would effectively be alone for this fight, because Jaskier's not going to overstate how much he can contribute here.
He doesn't doubt that she'd fight well and she'd try hard, but there are two of those things out there, and little though he wants to underestimate her abilities, he doesn't think this is a fight she can win.
And it's not a chance he can take.
"You do realise that's not the issue, right?" he says, trying to stir up a levity he absolutely does not feel right now. "If Geralt gets back and finds I let you kill a couple of monsters, he's going to murder me. And Yennefer will turn me into a pair of shoes. Who will you fleece for every last oren then, princess?"
Ciri levels a flat stare at him, but for all her desire to prove herself, he can see a faint hint of relief in her eyes.
She is only young, still, for all the weight of responsibility on her, and for all the skills she has. She, too, is afraid.
He manages to smile at her. "Get dressed," he says, turning away and releasing the curtains so that they fall down over the windows. It's no kind of defence, but it makes him feel better. "Our best bet is to wait for Geralt and Yennefer, but we should be ready. Just in case."
"Yeah. Alright."
Jaskier steps into the other room to give her privacy. It's a small cabin, just the living and sleeping space in one room and the kitchen and pantry in the other, but it's enough space for her to change in peace and him to have a minute to freak the fuck out.
They were meant to be safe here. That was the whole point. Geralt and Yennefer were facing the true danger on Thanedd, in a ballroom filled with even more danger and intrigue than most, trying to find their enemy at their source. There wasn't another soul on the Continent who was meant to know where Ciri and Jaskier were, other than the two of them. And they would have died before telling anyone.
Jaskier is not helpful in a fight. Battle skills weren't what they'd thought were needed tonight. He's here to give Ciri support of a different kind - to stop her deciding to run off to Thanedd herself, yes, but also to give her comfort, friendship, as much peace and joy as he can. It's the greatest privilege of his life, he has come to realise, being someone who can make that girl smile.
But for this, now, they'd be better off with a witcher. He can't kill these things, and Ciri's right, if Geralt and Yennefer aren't back by dawn then there's nothing they can do to stop the creatures getting inside. Ciri will end up fighting them anyway, and he doesn't have the power to keep her safe.
For a second, he claps a hand over his mouth, before a sound can escape that he thinks might have been the beginnings of a sob.
And then Ciri calls, "I'm dressed," and Jaskier screws his eyes shut for a second, pulling himself together by the frayed edges of his composure, and goes back into the other room.
He's met by a sombre-faced little witcher princess, back in her travelling clothes with her sword strapped about her waist.
"You know they're tracking me," she says, unfalteringly. Her mind has clearly been racing too. "It's like the jackapace at Beltane. You saw how that thing reacted when it saw me at the window. When it smelled me."
"When it smelled you?"
"My blood. The jackapace was tracking my blood. I guess when Geralt killed it, he had to use... other monsters."
She's pulled back the curtain again. The creatures are no longer standing right outside the window, but bangs echo at odd intervals as they try to break through the perimeter, testing it at different points around the cabin.
"He." Jaskier doesn't ask who she means. He doesn't need to. He knows who sent the jackapace after Ciri; they explained it to him on the way to Shaerrawedd.
The tips of his fingers seem to burn with a phantom pain.
"We might not have until dawn," Jaskier breathes, and sees on her face that she's thinking the same thing. "Fuck. Fuck, we can't wait. Ciri, you made a portal once before, didn't you?"
She's so tense that she looks like she might tremble out of her skin. "Once. But Yennefer was there to guide me, and... I don't know if I can do it again, Jask. My magic - it doesn't - I can't do what she can. I'm not as good as her."
"Hey." He goes to Ciri then, feeling that nothing in the world could have kept him from her. She looks on the verge of tears, and it breaks his heart. He folds her into a hug, and wonders at the way her hands clench into the back of his shirt so tightly. "Remember what I said before? You are everything you need to be. So you're not Yennefer? Thank fuck for that, I don't think I could survive two of her." Ciri laughs, even as her eyes still shine with tears, and a bright feeling bursts in Jaskier's chest. "You are exactly who you ought to be, and I'm proud of everything about you. So's Yennefer, and so's Geralt." He pulls back just a little and brushes a kiss to the top of her head, and feels her bury her face in his shoulder. "If you doubt everything else, never doubt that, okay?"
"Okay," she murmurs, muffled in his shirt, and Jaskier squeezes her tightly.
It's a lovely feeling, even in the midst of this danger. This sense that he, ordinary and human as he is, without a sword or magic to his name, can still defend her - can still be a shield between her and the world, in a different way from the others, but still something she wants, something she needs.
Family, he thinks again, and feels warmth in him.
And then the lovely moment ends.
"Cirilla of Cintra, how difficult you make yourself to find!"
The voice is a little distant, rendered quieter by the cabin walls, but it reaches them as clearly as the crackle of flame in a quiet room.
He knows that voice. He's been haunted by it for months. He doubts he'll ever forget it.
For a second, Ciri presses even closer to Jaskier, and he holds her as if he can shield her from this, as if his own heart is not beating fit to burst out of his chest, as if he can't feel the scream at the back of his throat.
And then she pulls away and goes to the window, and Jaskier follows her again because there is nothing else he can do.
Rience is standing there in the clearing outside the cabin. He's easy to see, because flames sit in each of his hands, coiled balls of fire. The beasts pay him little heed; if they ever start towards him, he raises his burning hands and they dart away, but their focus stays on the cabin. It's like Ciri said - they want her more than anything.
A portal is just closing behind Rience, that same dark vortex they saw at Shaerrawedd.
"Shit, fucky fuck," Jaskier moans, well past trying to hide his fear from Ciri. Maybe it's mad that of all the things he's seen and the dangers they are still yet to face, Rience frightens him more than anything else - but it's still true. There is a calculated evil in Rience that's not the purview of any monster. Monsters, while awful, are only following the nature of their species. Rience has chosen this every step of the way and he delights in it, revels in causing pain. And he knows how to cause pain, horrifically well. And they had only begun, last time - of that much, Jaskier is sure.
Last time, he'd prayed that somehow Geralt would find him. Instead Yennefer had saved him magnificently. This time, neither of them are here, and instead he is the one who has someone to protect.
"I thought the mage that sent him would be distracted tonight," Ciri says, and he can hear the fear in her voice too. "That was the whole point."
For a moment, Jaskier's mind is blank; his thoughts are nothing but a wash of horror, the feel of rope around his wrists, blood dripping down his face, fire too close to his skin. And then clarity sears through him, and he lands on an answer to this that he really doesn't like.
"But on the other hand," he says slowly, full of dread, "if they are in the Brotherhood, they know damn well that Geralt and Yennefer aren't here to protect you tonight."
"Which makes it the perfect time to strike." Ciri's hands curl into fists. "Fuck."
"You could come out now, Cirilla," Rience calls, idly flicking his hand. A palm-full of fire bursts from his fingers and shoots in a streak of light over to the window, where it meets the protective barrier with a shower of white and yellow light. It does nothing, physically, but terror spikes in Jaskier again. "Come out now and I won't have any cause to harm your companion. He doesn't need to die here."
Jaskier cannot articulate how much he doesn't want to die here. How much he doesn't want to face Rience again - how much he hates this helplessness, the knowledge that he could end up feeling fire consuming him again, worse than before.
But he knows in that moment, with an absolute clarity so rarely afforded in life, that there are far, far worse things than his own pain, or his own death.
"Don't you dare," he says to Ciri, before she can move or even speak. "Don't even think about it. It's not worth it. It would never be worth it."
Ciri looks at him, then. It's a strange look, one that Jaskier can't quite define in words. "Wouldn't it?" she says softly, but before he can try and speak through the terror tangling his tongue, she shakes her head. "He would never keep his word, anyway. There's no trusting him."
By the gods, Jaskier's heart cannot take this. He deals with it in the only way he can right now, which is to gloss directly over it.
"I think-" he begins, but doesn't get to finish the sentence.
"No?" Rience calls out, and his voice is just as cold and smug as ever. If Jaskier survives this, he is going to have so many nightmares. "Shame. Still, I've always preferred the hard way. It's a nice barrier, this. Made by your little mage? She's good at what she does. But I wonder if her chaos is really stronger than mine? Whether her power can really withstand my fire?"
Rience raises his hands.
Jaskier looks down at Ciri, and swallows hard. "No pressure," he says, and hates the way his voice trembles. "But I think you might need to try that portal now."
And then the world erupts into flame.