[ That's a sigh he's given before. He shifts atop the table entirely, hooks a foot around a chair and plants it on the scratched wooden seat. ]

Not by age. [ Functionally? He'd say as much. No one else was out there, dragging his brothers into getting things done around the keep. ] I'd hardly pledge myself as obedient. But I learned to pick my battles.

[ He gives a half-shrug. He's as stubborn as they come; he won't pretend he isn't. It's just been tempered with age, with a desire not to turn everything into a fight merely because it can be. He's never found a time when it helped. Not when they only have each other, when they're the few remaining. ]

Bitterness is the quickest monster to seed for those like us. [ It's a life none of them asked for, and it's one that can only ever lead to more losses. He knows how it is, to be surrounded by the people you love at the same time they remind you of all the things you never asked to become. (They may or may not be reaching that stage of inebriation that occasionally gives rise to sentiments Jaskier would call fucking maudlin.) ] For some, it never stops growing.