Work Text:
Lambert arrives at the gates of Kaer Morhen on the ass-end of autumn carrying another witcher’s swords across his back.
“Oh, Lambert,” you say. This is how you greet him most winters, whether he arrives with a feverish infection or a nose full of fisstech or just that spitfire anger he’s carried around since the last of his Trials.
“Fuck you,” he says, like he greets you most winters, but this time his voice breaks halfway through. “And fuck off.”
You step aside. He walks his horse to the stables and you see his own swords, his meager belongings, and a Cat school medallion hung up along her saddle.
“Come inside,” you say. “I’ll start a pot of soup.”
He stands in the horse stall and brushes out his horse’s mane until you turn and retreat back inside the fortress.
-
Lambert. Oh, Lambert. He has all the heart of your protege Geralt with none of the caution; all the sharp wit of their dear friend Eskel without the hardened skull.
You’ve seen men with their hearts broken, but not like this. Never like this.
-
At night you hear how he rages. The whole castle hears how he rages--how he throws his things against the wall, smashes bottles and screams over the shattering glass as if he can channel all that pain into something worthwhile. You know he can’t; he never learned how, or he wouldn’t be Lambert.
But he wants to so fiercely. He cries at night. He cries in the day. He avoids you, even does chores to keep out of your sight. You wonder, not for the first time, whether he might hurt himself--but he is nothing if not consistent, always stuck in a loop of not this time.
He gets drunk enough on White Gull one night that you learn his name: Aiden. You hear it when you find Lambert kneeling in vomit in front of the chamberpot, whispering I’m sorry, Aiden, I’m sorry.
After you make him clean it up and give himself a bath, you watch him until he makes it to his bed.
He pulls the covers over himself, breathes, “I wanted to bring him here this winter,” and sleeps for the next half day.
-
In fits and spurts over the winter he gets better, then worse, then better again. Come spring he’s got that look on his face he always does in spring--anxious to leave, and thinking he’ll never return.
As he’s saddling up to go, he asks you if you know where Geralt is; you tell him that you last saw him some months ago in White Orchard, chasing after just-go-on-and-guess-who.
“Suspect he’s still busy with that,” you say.
Lambert nods. “Suspect so,” he says, in a way that means I don’t much care.
You watch him ride off, two Cat swords clinking at the side of his horse.