Chapter Text
Jaskier is pretty.
Pretty certain he is dying, or at least going to die very soon.
It’s a sensation he has become worryingly familiar with over the last several years, and if the scars he bears from a varying assortment of poorly handled rows and tiffs has anything to say about him (it doesn’t), he’s also become particularly skilled at surviving said situations.
Unfortunately for him, this is not a row, nor is it a tiff. This is, to put it delicately, a clusterfuck of the highest proportion.
Perhaps that is too delicate, he thinks, as his wrists strain against coarse rope and his voice cracks on a scream that is torn from what feels like the very depths of his soul.
Most people don’t tend to imagine what their own burning flesh would smell like.
Then again, most people are not Jaskier, who often stayed up late nights in his family manor, rolling in silk sheets, wondering what it might feel like to be set ablaze. Wondering what would happen were he to peel the layers of skin from his flesh and let the liquids inside seep out. Children's minds are funny like that, he thinks. Morbidly curious.
Jaskier doesn’t have to imagine anymore. It’s stuck to the insides of his nostrils, along with sweat-salt and the coppery mess of blood mixed with bile dripping from his parted lips between gasped pleas for this to stop, please, stop, I don’t know anything- between fading in and out of consciousness.
There’s a point, sometime after his fourth round of hoarse screaming - pleading - burning, where Jaskier isn’t sure if he’s actually alive or not anymore. He finds himself clinging to the pain, desperate for something, anything to ground him to a reality that he can feel slipping through his fingers, falling away, burning at the edges and vanishing into ash.
The nerves at the tips of his fingers have long been turned to ash. He doesn’t have it left in him to sob or beg for mercy anymore.
Some sick, cruel part of him wishes he knew where Geralt was, so he could give over the information like the sniveling coward that he knows he is. At least then he might be allowed to die.
Gods, he wishes the mage would just let him die.
– – –
Leather boots made soft with wear make their way over cobbled city streets, paths carved into the stone from years of heavy foot traffic in the main markets. Travellers and merchants make frequent passes through Oxenfurt, though the primary residents are students of the academy, and it is in part due to the heavy foot traffic that Letho decides to try his luck in the city.
He’s been looking for some time, ever since he took a contract up in Kaedwen, following the trail of a mage cast out of Ban Ard. He heard rumours. Whispers about a sadistic fucker who has no qualms about using any tactic necessary to get the results he wants. Human experiments, attempts to revive the dead. Calling on flames.
The first lead he found was a little girl.
Barely clinging to life, wet breaths rasping in her lungs. He was convinced the poor thing would drown in her own blood when he first heard her, gasps clear even through the wooden walls of the home he found her in. Well, more of a shack in the woods out in the middle of nowhere. There had only been one other scent there, ozone, heat and ash all mingled with an undertone of sour pleasure that made his skin crawl.
“Are you going to kill me?” She’d rasped, looking maybe only 6 or 7 years old. Too young for questions like that.
“You want me to?” Letho asked back, trying for some kind of reach at humour. There's none to be found here, maybe it would be a mercy.
“Hurts,” her fingers twitched towards her palms but it was clear she was unable to move more than that, “I want my Mommy.”
“And where’s your Mommy?” Letho crouched down, folded his hands in the space between his knees.
He suspects if the girl had any liquid left in her body it would come pouring out of her eyes, as her bottom lip trembled, “The man killed her. He wanted me, but she tried to stop him.”
“Mm,” Letho frowned, “Can you tell me what the man looked like?”
“Black hair, black eyes… like the burning coals in dying fires.” Her words grew hoarser, breath catching.
“Alright. I’ll let you rest now.” There was nothing he could do for her, he knew that, but he didn’t want to watch another child die.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered, and Letho blinked, moved - slow as to not startle her - up to his full height and out the front door to gather a bundle of dry hay and straw. He folded the bundle in half, wound some twine around it and tied it snug before fastening some loose burlap around it in a crude resemblance of a doll and returning inside.
“Here,” he placed the makeshift doll gently on her chest, shifting her arm to rest her hand over it in a mockery of a cradle, “She’ll stay with you. You won’t be alone.”
He’d followed every sign from that poor little girl - from Koviri woods all the way into Oxenfurt. He’d never found out why he wanted that girl, or why he’d wanted the several more young corpses he’d come across, all girls of less than 12 with hair so light blond their blood stained it with barely a drop.
It didn’t matter. Letho was a kingslayer, but he’d hunt down any fucker on a power trip ruthlessly kidnapping and torturing children. He’d killed other mages for the same reasons, the ones who had made him included. Killing kings and mages, it’s what he was good at. It's what he enjoyed.
Now, in the urine-soaked back allies of Oxenfurt, he can quite literally smell his prey.
Ozone and heat, salt-sweat, tears and agony reek in the very wood of the abandoned tavern he’s creeping along behind, seeping from its pores like the liquor from a drunkard. There are two heartbeats in the building.
One strong, steady - pulsing with sick pleasure that borders on arousal and makes Letho’s lips curl back in disgust.
The other rabbit-fast and sounding like it’s about to give out at any minute. Too fast for a human. Too fast to sustain. Whoever is in there with his target doesn’t have much time left, if Letho is even in time to save the poor thing. If it’s another little girl he might just tear the mage apart limb from limb before he even gets the chance to ask what this all was for.
The back door is open - the front had been locked, Letho supposes the mage figured that anyone stupid enough to go around back would likely be a loud drunkard looking for booze. Letho is anything but.
He’s silent in his approach, he can hear a man hissing questions under his breath -
“Come on, bard, haven’t you had enough?”
“I don’t know, please-” a choked sob, “Please.”
The second voice at least is not that of a child but of a very frightened and likely very injured man, if the rawness of his voice is any indication. Whoever this is it sounds like they’ve been screaming for hours, if not days, and even Letho can tell he is not lying when he says he doesn’t know the answer to whatever the mage is asking him.
The hilt of his sword sits a comforting weight in his hands.
Silver, for monsters.
He shifts down slightly, bending at the knees until his center of gravity is stable while keeping his steps silent, and peeks around the corner of a doorway into the open hall of the tavern.
The tables and chairs have all been moved to clear a space in the center of the room. A man sits tied to a chair, backlit by the slowly dying flames of the hearth. He’s been stripped down to his undergarments, which are filthy and reek of soil even from across the room.
That’s a special kind of torture, Letho knows, being made to sit in your own filth like an animal. It takes away your humanity, makes you feel less-than. It’s psychological, and the stench of sweat and burning flesh only makes it all the worse in this case.
A poker is pulled from the fire, orange hot, “I’m getting impatient,” the mage warns, but gives the man no time to answer before the metal is laid against his thigh and he is shrieking a horrible, shrill, wailing sound. The mage doesn’t expect answers anymore, Letho can tell. Now he is just playing with the man for his own amusement, taunting him with questions they both know he doesn’t have the answers to. It's sick, fucked up - it makes rage boil in the Witcher's very bones.
The mage is standing behind the bound man, dark hair damp with sweat and eyes wide and crazed like some kind of feral beast. There isn’t any trace of humanity left in him that Letho can see - a rattling, wet gasp for air lets him know he needs to act fast if he has any interest in saving the mage’s latest victim.
He’s across the room before the mage has the time to react, it’s not enough of a lead for Letho to take him out in a single swipe, as satisfying as that would be, but it’s enough for him to force the mage away from the man bound in the chair. The orange-hot fire-poker clatters to the floor (it must hit the man again on the way down if the little whimper is any indication but he’s pretty sure he’d rather another small burn versus accidentally being decapitated in the crossfire of magic-metal-magic-metal-) and a burst of energy that Letho is sure is meant to force him back pulses from the mage but it’s weak.
The mage is exhausted, sweaty hair clinging to his forehead and cheeks, breaths heavy gusts from his flared nostrils - he looks like a bull ready to stampede and the image that conjures almost makes Letho snort a laugh, but the half-second of distraction is already too much and he snaps back to attention just in time to side-step a burst of flame. The room is hot and humid now, uncomfortable, his mouth is strangely dry - he’s so fucking thirsty -
He whirls to the side of another burst of flame, maneuvering on quick feet closer with every step until he’s close enough to send out a burst of Aard strong enough to make the mage stagger backwards, magic crackling at his fingertips sputtering and wheezing like the last dregs of chaos in the man are being pulled from some reservoir so deep he might as well just be running on desperation.
“Give up an’ I might kill ya painless,” Letho offers. A pretty fucking charitable offer considering all the fucked up shit this bastard has done.
“What do you want,” the mage snarls at him, eyes darting around - frantic in search of some kind of exit- “Why are you here?”
“Huntin’ a monster,” Letho says, cool, even, and blinks slow like a predator who’s already made its kill.
There’s a lashing out, he can’t say who moves first, only that when the movement is over he’s pivoted to the opposite foot, sword tucked back under his arm with a fist full of greasy black hair attached to a head, limp, light - severed from the body - and his skin is searing with the pain of thousands of pinpricks, angry red marks spider webbing around his arms like he’s been struck by lightning -which, he has been.
He wets his lips, tosses the head to the side, glassy eyes rolling in their sockets, and starts towards the remaining live human in the room. He’s on the edge of consciousness, that much is obvious by the way his head lolls to the side. He takes a wet rasp of air in, the breath rattling and crackling, eyes hazed. Letho wonders if he is even actually seeing him until the man blinks then - inexplicably - visibly relaxes when faded blue eyes settle on his medallion.
“Oh thank the gods,” the man presses the words out sounding rough and painful and strained, but he smiles so small and soft that Letho thinks the poor thing might be delirious with pain, probably seeing some lost lover, and then, relieved, “A Witcher.”
He doesn’t think he’s ever met someone genuinely relieved or eased by the presence of a Witcher, though he has no time to press the man on the subject as he promptly loses consciousness and Letho curses, sawing through the ropes binding him as quickly as he can while not cutting him. He’s pretty sure any more blood loss and the poor fuckers heart will give out. The least he can do is bring him to a healer, then maybe he’ll be able to tell him what the mage was after.
He scoops up the man from the chair and makes his way out the front door back into the streets, uncaring that it’s midday.
– – –
Everything hurts.
His bones, his hair, the spaces where his fingernails were pried from their beds - he’s in a bed, some vague, distant part of his hazy mind realizes. As he slowly rises back into consciousness he becomes aware of the cool cloth laid over his forehead, the soft cotton of the sheets on which he lays.
There’s a noise, a high whine that filters into his senses from the background, vibrates in his skull like the buzzing of thousands of insects. He only realizes it’s him making the noise when another voice, gentle and feminine, shushes him.
“It’s alright,” the voice mutters, a second cool cloth dabbing at his cheeks and neck, “We’ve got you now. You’re safe.”
He tries to speak, but chokes out a pained whimper instead when his awareness reaches his hands - searing, burning, hot, hot pain and yet somehow he feels so very cold.
“I know,” the woman caring for him soothes, “I know it hurts.”
“The Witcher,” Jaskier finally manages to rasp out.
“Won’t be bothering you again, the vile thing.”
He doesn’t like the venom in her voice, the anger. He wonders if this new Witcher is as inept as his old one, what he said to this girl to make her harbour such a disdain so quickly. He pries his eyes open to look at her, eyelids protesting and sticking together before painfully peeling apart.
“Please,” he implores, “He saved me.”
He can’t see more than her vague shape of dark colour moving nearby, sight blurry and tired and painful, only feeding the throbbing ache of his migraine -
“Saved you?” She huffs an uncomfortable laugh, “That brute nearly killed you. Did kill the man in the tavern.”
“No,” Jaskier chokes on the word, fear rising back up, “No he- he saved me. That man was going to kill me, the Witcher stopped him. Please, I need to see him-”
“Easy, easy,” the woman soothes him back when he breaks off in a fit of wet coughs, “You’ll hurt yourself more.”
“I need to see him, please," he wheezes, uncaring of the pain in his lungs.
“I’m sorry, but… there’s nothing I can do,” her tone turns sad, sympathetic, regretful, “He’s to be executed at dawn.”
Jaskier’s heart drops, “No,” he mutters, weak and desperate, “No, they - they can’t.”
“I’m sorry - woah, hey, what are you doing?” Her hands are on him then, attempting to push him back into the bed as he struggles to stand.
“Returning the favour,” it’s the least he can do, he forces his way up to his feet despite the pain, ignores the healer's protests. He's got a Witcher to save.