part two of a Witcher! jaskier post from a while ago
this is part two of this au: https://www.tumblr.com/lazyjellyfishcreation/754661152979566592/my-thoughts-on-witcherjaskier
One (1) person has asked me questions about this, so I'm about to expand on this. ( @kezikatescribbling )
Julek becomes grandmaster, takes his son, stops being grandmaster (guxart takes over, it's popular vote) and fucks right off. He no longer goes there. He does not return to the caravan. He raises Aiden for the rest and is verry happy bc he's no longer hunted.
Eventually, Aiden grows up and starts walking the path more or less on his own. (they still walk together often, but also seperate more and more as time goes on) Note that Aiden does not, and never has, taken human contracts. Julek has and will continue to do so. Julek has no problems killing people, as long as the people are bad and he's getting paid. (Yet he never shames Aiden for not wanting to do the same. He's honestly kind of proud of his son's self restraint and moral code.)
years go by. The tournament happens, Julek and Aiden are across the country when it does. When they get the news, it's the first time in a long time Julek cries. 4 of his 7 remaining littermates died that day.
Sure, Julek would have happily killed them himself for their treason if he were there, but they were still his siblings. He still grieves them. (As does he grief the remaining 4 when Guxart and the grandmaster Wolf hunt down the traitorous cats, whom the 4 were part of.)
In the end, he's just glad Aiden wasn't there when it happened. He couldn't imagine what would have happened, what he would have done if his boy was in that fight.
Nonetheless, time goes on, years pass. Aiden grows up. They start meeting less and less, only once or twice a year now, where they walk to path together and catch up for a couple of weeks before splitting again. But that's okay. Aiden's a man now, he's grown. (He will always be Julek's baby, no matter how tall, strong or old he gets).
After 60-70 years of this, Julek starts noticing that his boy faintly smells of wolf in one of their bi-anual meetups. He smells of wolf and honey and fresh bread and... and oh melitele's tits his dumbass son has gone and fallen in love with a fucking wolf, hasn't he? Goddamn it Aiden, he's taught him better then this.
But Aiden seems so sweet on him, and apparently they usually split some weeks before Aiden and Julek meet up so that Aiden doesn't smell like wolf anymore by the time they get to their meeting spot, but he got careless this time. Apparently, this has been going on for about a decade at least. Julek is sceptical, but his boy seems so happy and in love.
He is happy. Aiden is happy. being a witcher is hard, after the tournament, being a cat even more so, but they have eachother and Aiden has his wolf (that he won't shut up about) and it's good. He sometimes sees Guxart, just to see how it goes. He's always met with the same joke of 'I may be a grandmaster, but don't kill me yet.'
And then a duo hunt goes wrong.
They're high in the mountains. treacherous terrain.
It was a stupid decision to take this contract. Cats don't do well in snow.
But two witchers are hard to feed, so they take what they can get hunting together.
The monster flings Aiden against a rock. (it's not bad, not for a witcher, but aiden spends a few precious miliseconds getting up and back)
Julek kills the monster, but the monster falls and the ledge he was standing on cracks and breaks and then he's falling.
they were so high up in the mountains. not even a witcher could survive this.
Yet still, Aiden searches for his masters, and fahters, body. He can't find him. But the wild is wide and the wind is so strong it carries away what little smell the cold air carries.
Julek dies and Aiden gets sloppy.
He should have seen this coming.
His father taught him better then this.
His father taught him better then to walk into traps.
His father is dead, and soon he will be too.
Aiden could fight them. He was trained and raised and was now on par to one of the best swordsmen that ever lived. Even against 3 witchers, he stood a chanse of at least getting away.
Aiden hangs his head and doesn't protest as they shackle him and take him away.
He couldn't save his father, what right does he have to save himself.
(His father would be so disapointed in him, Aiden could almost smell it, but he can't. Julek is dead. God, he wishes he could smell his fathers disappointment again. It would mean he was alive.)
His wolf comes for him. His beautifull, strong, angry wolf comes and saves him. Aiden smells like grief and pain and agony and Lambert takes him to kear moren to heal. What else is he supposed to do? Lambert doens't have a stellar relationship with Vesemir, but if he lost the old wolf... He doesn't know what he would do...
He doesn't tell them. Not at first. All the wolves (and one lone gryffin) know is that he's Lambets cat, and he's in pain. He tells them eventually. The wolves are talking in the dining hall. The topic of the legendary Julek comes up.
Vesemir mentions that if anyone ever took any of his pups away, he'd kill the fucker. Aiden almost sees red from anger. He tells them. And he tells them that they don't know what the fuck they are talking about (i really wanna write this scene)
And information travels fast after that.
The rest of the witchers know in no time.
Julek, Kin killer, Grandmaster Slayer, kit stealer (because nobody ever realized that he saved Aiden instead is stealing him) is dead.
Julek is alive and he is cold as fuck. Everything is awful and all his bones hurt holy shit.
It takes him weeks to somehow claw his way out of the hole made of ice he fell into, surviving of snow hares and frozen roots.
Allas, he's too late. When he comes back to the land of the living to tell his son that he's alive. he's too late.
All he finds is a farmer that tells him what happened. He shows him the fake job listing, covered in blood, aiden's blood. He even told him about the other witcher (the wolf, Aiden's wolf was here) that wept in to his dead friends armor and swore revenge.
And just like that, only weeks before having died, Julek wishes he was dead again.
He couldn't do the one thing he had ever done right.
He couldn't save his son.
And now his boy is dead. His boy, his baby boy, whom he had raised and taught and cherished. Whom mean the whole entire world to him, was gone.
After days and days of grief and tearing himself apart, he realizes that he has a choise to make.
he crawls into a hole of alcohol until he finds himself dead in a ditch
he goes back to the caravan and becomes the monster everyone thinks he is, because a wold without his son is undeserving of his selfrestriant and he's about to go on a cat-madness fuled rampage
he becomes the man Aiden always belived him to be
he can remember it so well. The song and music he had taught his precious boy after he regained his ears. At first, his sensetive ears could only handle the faintest of sound, just the rumbeling purring of his chest. then humming. then words, then rymes and sentnches and conversation. and then music. Aiden, apparently, loved music. and he had missed it so so much after going deaf.
So, Julek spend Aidens entire childhood teaching himself as many songs as possible, he even picked up a lute (read: stole) and started composing his own songs for his boy. He was bad at it, but he enjoyed it as much as Aiden did and he had gotten better fast. Now, after 70 odd years of practice, he knew his instrument better then any (except it was gone now)
When he was still little, Aiden had always told him with childlike wonder that if Julek hadn't been a witcher, he surely would have been a bard with a voice that pretty.
He wasn't a bard then. But now. maybe now, now that his boy was gone, he had to live out that part. For Aiden if not himself. Because the path without his son wasn't worth walking. He had to be what he son thought him to be, or he would not be at all.
There was a witch that owed him a favor. She was powerful, but had been plagued with a creature that hunted her wherever she went. her spells did nothing, but his swords had. He had killed it but she had nothing to give him, so she gave him a boon.
And now it was time to collect.
The glamour was intracate. A golden stone sat between his colarbones with twine woven around them, and tread knotted in intracate paterns wraped around his neck to faster the stone to him. And just like that, his eyes were blue. Just like that his scars were gone and his scent lost it'd distinct Witchery tang.
But all that gives, takes as much. Julek couldn't sighn spells anymore, and his sences were reduced. Not as much as normal human senses, he was still better at seeing, smelling and hearing then people were, but he still felt deaf and blind with it.
And do, Julek was dead Jaskier was born.
Both witcher and bard grieved on other ends of the continent. thinking that they would never see the other again. Both thinking that they were to blame for the other's death. Both unable to forgive themselves.
EDIT: here's the link to the series!
https://archiveofourown.org/series/4746067
