I came across a quote on tiktok of all places, but I cant get the idea of Jaskier saying it to any of the witchers out of me head, and I'm really hoping you'd be up to taking a crack at it. If not that's fine, I'll be happy just pass in the thoughtful feels it provokes. "And if I asked you to name all the things that you loved, how long would take for you to name yourself?"
Jaskier worked out pretty quickly that the Witchers love their friends and family fiercely. But how can he show them the beauty within?
Lambert said he ‘fucking loved’ many things. He fucking loved Geralt and Eskel. Hugged them openly when he was drunk while calling them blowhards and oafs, rubbing his knuckles into their head and putting huge, wet kisses on their cheeks. He fucking loved beer, and a new sword, and comfortable boots, and a warm fire, and Jaskier’s saucy poetry, and Aiden, and a successful hunt, and Ban Ard, and the south—because it was warm—and so many other things.
And he meant it. Lambert was an emotional man. Not a criticism. He wore everything on his sleeve. An open book. You knew exactly where you stood with Lambert in the very first instant he met you. Many didn’t like that. They were used to dealing with others like themselves; their emotions, their opinions, hidden behind a veneer of polite banality. Not Lambert, though. He felt unabashedly, and showed it, including his contempt, his anger, and his self-hatred. Because if there was one thing Lambert didn’t ‘fucking love’. It was himself.
Jaskier noticed how he avoided looking in mirrors, was probably a little rough when seeing to his injuries—needles jabbed, bandages lashed tightly, deep gashes scrubbed violently—used the same soap he used for his laundry on his hair, face and skin. He didn’t allow himself even small luxuries; he slept in the wilderness even when he had enough coin for a room, good food and a bath.
As the years went by, Jaskier grew close to Lambert. He found in him a kindred spirit. Someone who he could sit next to and raise eyebrows at the other two, drink with until they could barely walk, and scream bawdy Skelligen ballads on the top of a mountain until they were both hoarse. And if they fell into bed with each other sometimes for a really good, feral, passionate tryst? Then Jaskier wasn’t going to complain about that either. Yet, he just couldn’t shake the concern. If Lambert couldn’t love himself, could he really ever accept love from others? He was so besotted with Aiden—pined, yearned, fawned over—but when Aiden returned those affections he always looked a little nonplussed. As if he wanted to ask, are you sure?
So, one spring, when Jaskier found himself travelling at Lambert’s side for a few weeks, they sat around the campfire. Lambert had purchased a new whittling knife, and he was carving himself a new chess piece for the collection he was building at Kaer Morhen. This one was a Rook. “Hmm, I love a good knife. Look at that cut,” he showed Jaskier briefly, “fucking perfect.”
Jaskier smiled, thumb running down the top two strings of his lute. “You know, you should make a list.”
“Eh?” Lambert glanced up as a curl of pruned wood fell to the floor at his feet.
“Of all the things you love. We could use a scale from ‘fucking love’ to ‘like mostly’. It’d wrap around this tree here about a hundred times, I bet,” Jaskier tapped the big old oak they’d settled beneath.
“Ha, yeah, then we can do a second of all the things that piss me off and it’ll be four times as long,” Lambert chuckled, leaned to the side to grab the bottle of dwarven ale he was steadily working his way through.
“Hmm,” Jaskier smiled up at the glittering stars, and then tilted his head towards his Witcher companion. “I wonder, how many reams of paper—how many pots of ink—would it take before you wrote your own name on that first list?”
The whittling stopped. The incessant ‘shtk, shtk’ of metal on wood faded into silence. Lambert stared at the slowly forming game piece in his hand. For a while, Jaskier didn’t think he would answer. He’d pretend he hadn’t heard despite the absurdity of such a lie. “I love all the things I do ‘cause I have a choice in it.”
Jaskier didn’t say anything, he sat up to indicate he was listening, and Lambert sighed heavily through this nose.
“I can choose to—,” he ground his teeth. “I can choose to love beer, and chess,” the new playing piece waved in front of his face, “but I never got a choice in me. Who I am, what… I became. When I look in the mirror, all I see is this fucking…” He didn’t have the words, so trailed off. “Truth is, bard, I wouldn’t be on the first list. I’d be on the second. First thing. In bold. Underlined. There isn’t anythin’ here to be loved.”
The whittling continued. More furious, focused, and Jaskier watched Lambert’s face while he carefully constructed what he wanted to say next. “Then you must think us all fools,” he said finally. “All of us who love you.”
Lambert swallowed, but he didn’t look up.
“One day, my dearest wolf,” Jaskier kicked his long legs out across the bedroll beneath him. “One day you will look in that mirror and see the man we do. The one that deserves all the love our hearts have to give. And you know what will happen? That first list? Of all the things you love? It’ll get longer, and longer, while the second will crumble into disuse.”
Lambert grunted and focused on his task. It would take more than a single conversation to change Lambert’s perspective on himself, but that was the point of loyal family and friends, wasn’t it? They’d keep repeating the same fucking mantra until they were blue in the face and beyond. And one day—one glorious day—you might even begin to believe them.
