A @thewitchersecretsanta ficlet for @jaskicr, queen of witcher!Jaskier.
Jaskier has lived many lives.
He doesn’t always remember them. They come in flashes and moments, more feelings than memories. There is often music. Often fine clothes and fine company. Often adventure.
And always, always, there are witchers.
He’d felt it, in that dingy tavern in Posada, that irresistible pull towards the dark stranger sitting in the shadows. Yellow eyes, white hair, two very scary-looking swords. I know who you are.
I remember you, Jaskier doesn’t say.
He remembers the Trials and the Path. He remembers the sacking of Kaer Morhen. The walls crumbling around them and the cries of pain, strong men turning to fear. Clutching his sword -- steel for the men scaling the walls and pouring into the keep, though to him they seemed more like monsters -- a last desperate effort to protect his brothers. He tastes the blood in his mouth.
He is not always a witcher. In some lifetimes, he is a friend or companion to one. In a lucky few, he is a lover.
In certain periods, with life’s cruel sense of irony, he is a siren or a werewolf, destined to be hunted and killed by those he considers his kin. He bears them no ill will. He understands that they do what they must.
But most often, he is a witcher. In every lifetime he is graceful, and although in this life he has turned that talent to dance, in others he turns it to swordsmanship. In place of the dexterity of his fingers on his lute strings there is the dexterity of fingers clasping a concealed dagger, poised and ready to strike. In place of memorised lines of poetry there are memorised alchemical formulae, an ample knowledge of potions and healing salves and the many uses of herbs.
In both poetry and monster hunting there is a place for flowers, he thinks with wry amusement.
He has trained as a Cat, light and agile, striking for the throat without remorse. He has trained as a Griffin, chaos crackling through his body, signs exploding from his fingers in raw bursts of power. He has trained as a Manticore, mixing chemicals into deadly bombs deployed with pinpoint accuracy. In each life there are new skills to learn, something new to see. He is never bored.
But also, in each life there is profound loneliness. There is hatred and fear, men cowering back from his yellow eyes and scarred face. He understands, and he forgives, but he does not forget.
In this life, his face is handsome and unmarred. People flock to his side, appreciate his charms. He enjoys the change of pace, he can’t deny it. But he remembers.
And so how could he turn away? When he sees that stranger huddled in the corner of the inn, senses the hostility being thrown his way from every side, how could he not follow this man, devote his life to him, uplift him, love him?
He remembers. This is what he is born, and born again, and born again to do.
