#immortal roach

The night was dark, the moon barely a sliver in the sky.

A man lies on the moss, white hair stained and dried to his face with crusted blood. Shivers run through his body, and he whimpers, pressing a hand to his side.

“Please,” he pants when Jaskier approaches, his hoofs barely making any sound. It surprises him that he was noticed.

When he listens again, ear twitching, he realizes the man is unconscious. Carefully he approaches, nosing at the crown of his head. Something smells wrong about him.

“Please,” the man pants again, his fingers curling in the moss.

Is he begging for life? Death? Does he know himself?

Jaskier looks around, finding a bloodied sword a distance away, and among the trees a horse. He looks to her for guidance.

Her feelings are fascinating to him. Fierce and loyal and angry and lonely. And scared. She is scared of the loneliness, of losing the human on the ground.

Jaskier wanted to tilt his head, but he learned that with heavy antlers, it takes practice. And this form is new to him yet, so instead he blinks and turns back towards the man.

Hoofs are useless when tending to wounds. Paws won’t do well here either, nor claws.

The human form is not something he has tried before, but Jaskier will not shy away from a challenge. His skin changes, his fur draws back. Well, most of it. He has seen humans with hair almost as thick as fur, and he is reluctant to part from it.

When his form resembles who lies before him, Jaskier kneels. His knees are bare, the moss cold against his skin. 

Gently, he drags his fingers over the man's face, bloody strands of hair revealing a pale face and black veins. Humans usually don't look like this. His mother would scold him for his curiosity, for his carelessness, but he can’t help himself.

Jaskier turns the man to his back and puts his own hand over the gloved, bloodied one. He is not supposed to do this, not supposed to interfere, but behind him the horse is approaching and watching his every move.

Blood feels strange on human skin. He has hunted before, killed before, but he never tried healing. The medallion around the man’s neck hums when Jaskier’s essence leaks out of him, blends into the human’s blood.

No. Not human. Not entirely.

And now even less so, when a shimmer of sunlight on the waves spreads through his veins. It’s nothing more than a droplet, and it travels through the body of the man until it finds its way back to his fingertips and back into him.

Jaskier feels different now, a small part of him changed as he changed the other. It’s not unpleasant, but it is unfamiliar in a way he is not used to. A body can be new, but this is something else. His hand remains over the unconscious man, their fingers fitting together, much like the seams of the glove. One thread hangs limply down, and Jaskier picks at it distractedly.

He remembers himself when the horse snorts loudly behind him, spraying his bare back with the contents of her nose.

“Thank you,” he says to her, this language foreign on this tongue.

Oh. Human speech must be different from the whispers of birchs and leaves. Her lips twitch with amusement, so Jaskier thinks she understands either way.

“I must leave you now,” Jaskier tells her. The horse disagrees and Jaskier smirks, standing up. “He will wake soon. Don’t worry, I won’t be far.”

He looks down on the man in the moss. He is still pale, white as the sliver of the pale moon in the far above sky. But the bleeding is stopped, his breathing is even, and in that small part of Jaskier, the part that traveled, that feels so foreign, calls for their joining once more.

No.

“My friend, I beg you, carry a burden for me?” Jaskier asks the horse. She says nothing, as horses rarely do, but she waits.

He approaches her, calling forth the foreign part of him.

“As he is yours, I am his, but this calling is not for me. Would you carry it for me and stay by his side?”

The drop that is not him anymore, the drop that is now someone else. He puts it on his lips, feeling them tingle. Her silent acceptance makes him approach, and he touches her lips to her forehead.

The piece of him and of the man leaves him, and she shudders with the weight of their lives merging with hers.

“I thank you, my friend. Keep us safe. May you be safe on your travels.”

He leaves then. His fingers become hoofs once more, his head heavy with antlers and his fur rich and warm. Leaving a part of himself with them is dangerous, he knows, but he doesn’t have the time. He has a world to explore, through shapes and forms.

What was unfamiliar to him was the depth of her emotions.

“I got her my first year. As a new witcher,” Geralt ground out, eyes on the road.

“And she isn’t dead and little more than a sack of bones...why?”

“Necromancer.”

What!” Jaskier yelped. “Oooh oh no,” he said, prancing in front of Roach, who stopped and looked at him, clearly bemused. “Geralt, I have to hear this story. A necromancer? Really? I didn’t know they existed. When?”

And, like a child in a strop, Jaskier sat in the dust. Right in the middle of the road. Geralt carefully trotted Roach around Jaskier, who leapt up, swiping dust from his pants and jogged alongside.

Geralt sighed.

“First year, a necromancer was terrorizing this village. I fought him.” He glanced down. Jaskier’s eyes were wide. 

“He killed Roach,” Geralt said. Jaskier’s eyes filled with concern. “So I killed him,” Geralt continued. “Nasty thing about necromancers, when they die, other dead things rise up and avenge them. Only dead thing in the area was Roach.” He reached down and ruffled her mane. She huffed approvingly. 

“She stood up, her wounds healed, and I thought I’d have to kill her or she’d try to kill me.”

Jaskier, still half jogging to keep up took in a tiny bit of extra breath. Geralt loved horses, all horses, and even if he hadn’t had Roach long at the time, having to kill her would have tortured him.

Geralt caught the concerned breath and offered Jaskier a hint of a rare smile. “She walked right over to the necromancer, and shit on his dead body.” 

Jaskier’s face froze a split second, then he laughed, full belly, head back laughter. 

They continued on their way.

“So she’s a zombie horse?” Jaskier asked.

“Sort of.”

They walked on in silence, then...

“Jaskier?” Geralt asked.

“Yeah?”

“What did you mean, ‘obviously’ you’re immortal?”