Julien was born with scars covering his body. He didn't care much about them growing up, he just hated the long tunics and pants he had to wear even on the hottest summer days, and that he could never swim with the other boys in the river. He's heard his father angrily tell her mother one day when he hid behind the old trunk:

"I'll never be able to find a suitor to a scarred brat like him. His soulmate must be an eighty-year-old soldier, if not worse. And he has your blood, insolent and disobedient."

"Be patient with him, Johan. He loves you, and he will learn, with time."

He asked his mother about it that night when she came to tell him his bedtime story. That was the time of the day he was allowed to ask anything, and mother sometimes told him secrets, like how he had elven blood. His mother sighed and brushed his hair from his face.

"You shouldn't eavesdrop, my little bird. I wanted to wait a few years before I told you about this, but maybe this is the right time. Everyone has a soulmate, someone who is perfect for them, connected by Destiny. Whenever your soulmate gets a scar, it appears on you, and the same goes for him or her."

"But I have so many scars, Mama! I had them since forever."

"Yes, you were born with them. That means that your soulmate has been alive for a while. I don't know why they have so many scars, it could be for many reasons."

"That is so wonderful, Mama! When can I meet them?"

"Not everyone meets their soulmates. Indeed, most people don't. And you are a nobleman. Your father will choose your betrothed, and I'm sure they will love you as if they were your soulmate."

Julien very much doubted that, knowing his father. And his doubt grew when his mother died a year later, and she wasn't there anymore to protect him. His father soon remarried, and his second wife gave him sons, sons that were noblemanly and obedient. So he dreamed about his soulmate, strong and kind, maybe a knight or a sorcerer, someone who could save him from there. He thought a lot about him or her, laying in the grass, during his lectures, or when his father was screaming at him and he had to shut his mouth, or after another failed attempt of his matchmaking. His soulmate was the reason he started composing, silly teenage love songs at first, but with time he got better.

And when he turned 17 he grabbed as much coin as he could and ran away to become a bard. There were no search parties, no reward on his head. His father had two more sons, better sons than him. Maybe he was even happy that he hadn't had to be the one to get rid of Julian. No, not Julian. Julian died the day he left his ancestor's home, and Jaskier, the traveling bard was born. It wasn't easy, once he had run out of coin. The common folk didn't want sophisticated poetry and courtly love. They wanted loud songs about pretty maidens, adventures, monsters, and drinking songs. So he delivered, and he got by. And he still wrote songs for his soulmate, ones he never performed. And he imagined meeting them, in an inn or during a festival, bonding over the stories of their scars. Unlike his soulmate, he only had a few. A little white scar running along with his temple, when his father stroked him and he fell and bumped his head into the corner of a table. A fencing injury on his arm and a small circle-shaped burn mark on the back of his palm. So he dreamed and prayed to Melitele to keep his soulmate alive because he was receiving more and more injuries as time went by.

Then one day he woke up to screams. He was laying in a dirty inn's room, somewhere in Brugge, the pretty kitchen girl beside him. It wasn't unusual for him to wake up to screaming, an angry lover or husband barging in, but this time it was the maiden screaming, and she was looking at him. Before he could have asked what was going on, she ran out of the room, so Jaskier just shrugged and gathered his things. When he went downstairs he got odd looks and whispers behind his back, so he decided to leave the village in a hurry. He went through the woods and spotted a river, clean and rippling. He stopped for a drink, and when he leaned over it he suddenly understood why the kitchen girl was screaming. The right side of his face was horribly strained, with red scars. It started at the corner of his forehead, ran over his eyes, lifted the corner of his lips in a grotesque smile, and went down his chin. The water splashed all around him as he hit it with his fist. Tears welled in his eyes, and Jaskier was sobbing and punching the water screaming at his soulmate. For a minute he hated them. They ruined his face, his body, and now marked forever, something that can't be hidden with clothes. The next minute shame overcame him. How could he be angry at them, when they were the one receiving the pain, and the same scars? He wiped his face with his sleeve. "At least now I'll be able to recognize them at first glance." He thought. He picked up his lute and started humming a sad love song, heading towards the next village. And he encountered his next problem there. When he asked the innkeeper if he could play there for the night, he practically laughed into his face.

"I don't want to scare my customers away, son. Take that ugly mug of yours somewhere else."

He had the same problem in the next inn and the one after that. People didn't care how good he was at singing when he wasn't pleasant to look at anymore. So after months of starving and doing odd jobs instead of singing, he made a decision: he had a mask made. It was covered in blue silk and hid the scarred half of his face. The people ate it up, and suddenly he was more popular than before. They loved a little mystery. They called him the Masked Bard and constantly asked him about why he hid that pretty face of his. He always gave a different answer.

"I took a holy vow to Melitele that I wouldn't show my face for twenty years."

"A childhood injury, one you wouldn't want to see."

"The gods have blessed me with such a beautiful face, it would drive anyone mad with lust if they saw the whole of it."

"I got cursed by a beautiful sorceress for writing a nasty song about her, now it's stuck to my face and I can never remove it."

He got more secretive and self-conscious about it as time passed, never even removing it in front of his lovers. Only when he was alone did he take the mask off for a quick wash, or to examine his scarred face in the mirror. And he wondered while running his hand over the red welts, where his soulmate was if they were as afraid to show the word their scars as Jaskier was. If they thought about him.

And then he met Geralt. Geralt didn't ask about his mask, which was refreshing, although Geralt didn't really ask about anything related to Jaskier. But he smelled of heartache and a little onion, and he was damn good looking, so Jaskier followed him, only for inspiration, of course.

It didn't take long for him to fall utterly and hopelessly in love with Geralt. Yes, he was broody and emotionally stunted, grunting at everyone and pulling away at the smallest sign of affection. But Jaskier saw that Geralt was wearing a mask, just like him. He saw with how much love he treated Roach, that he avoided killing sentient beings at all cost, even if he got injured or lost coin because of it. He saw the way he hid his smile whenever Jaskier managed to say something truly funny, or how he still struggled with the shadows of his past.

And Jaskier fell in all of him. And it was okay that Geralt didn't love him back. He would, someday, he was sure of it. The only problem that bothered Jaskier was Geralt's lack of scars on his face. Maybe Destiny made a mistake? Maybe he was supposed to have a slash on his neck left by a striga instead of those on his face? Maybe, just this once, Destiny was wrong. He wanted to believe it so hard, he almost did sometimes. They became the White Wolf and his Masked Bard, and Jaskier's fame grew, but that was not what he wanted anymore. He wrote songs about Geralt, not his soulmate anymore, and he hoped if he wrote a song beautiful enough, Geralt would fall in love with him.

Of course, that never happened. Instead, they ended up in Rinde because Jaskier was so fucking stupid, with a djinn and a purple-eyed sorceress. And she had the striga's mark on her neck, and Geralt had the two red lines on his link, and Jaskier's heart broke a little when he saw them fucking in the dust. But he was an idiot, an idiot deeply in love, so he kept following Geralt, hoping for crumbs of his love. But he couldn't have nice things, not for long, and he learned that the hard way.

"If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands."

That sentence broke his heart and shattered it into tiny pieces. By the time he reached the piedmont, his mask was soaked with tears. Twenty years of his life, of his art, but most importantly his heart. All wasted on a person who never loved him, not even a tiny bit. He drank for a week until he ran out of coin, but it didn't heal his heart, just gave him a massive headache. Then he picked up his lute and started composing.