Chapter Text
The bedroom light was still on when Lambert made it home. Gascon liked to wait up for him on the nights they weren’t out fighting together, and it never failed to warm Lambert’s cold, dead heart knowing that there was someone that cared enough to sit up waiting for him.
He shed his armour and swords on his way through the apartment with a small smile on his face.
Gascon was sitting on the bed, fiddling with his phone and staring at the wall.
“Hey, fuckface,” Lambert said, flopping onto the bed with a tired sigh. Gascon barely even twitched.
Lambert frowned at him, sitting up to take in Gascon’s strange distraction. He’d left a nearly full cup of coffee on the side table, and he hadn’t bothered changing for bed.
“Hey, Gascon? Everything okay?”
Gascon finally met his eye, seeming to only just have noticed his presence. He leaned into Lambert’s side, sighing heavily.
“Reynard called today,” he said quietly.
Lambert felt his heart stop for a moment. Surely he would have heard if something had happened to Meve. He might not have been particularly close with others in the vigilante community, but news spread fast when one of their own was injured or worse, and he hadn’t heard anything about her being in a major fight. But if not Meve, what could have driven Reynard to reach out to their former ward?
“He wanted to talk,” Gascon said. “Said he’d like to get together and talk things out. He says the boys miss me.”
Lambert could certainly understand why that would leave Gascon feeling conflicted. The falling out between Gascon and his mentor had left a rift between him and the rest of the family. He’d had basically no contact with Meve, Reynard, or the boys for the past two years. What little contact there was was… strained.
Given the same opportunity to mend that rift with his family, Lambert wasn’t sure how he’d feel. How much compromise would be required of him to make that happen?
“And Meve?” he asked, knowing that she was always going to be the sticking point. It wouldn’t ever matter what Reynard wanted, as long as Meve was still angry.
Gascon shrugged, finally dropping his phone onto the bed.
“We worked together on that Nilfgaard case a couple months ago,” he pointed out. “Made it through that without killing each other. I figure that’s probably as good as it’s gonna get.”
Lambert nodded slowly. Managing to be mostly civil with estranged mentors was nothing new to him. He’d been biting back insults any time he had to work with Vesemir for years.
"You gonna go?" he asked, curling an arm around Gascon's shoulders.
Gascon shrugged again. "I… should I? Or am I just getting my hopes up for no reason?"
Lambert leaned over and pressed a kiss to his temple.
"I think you should go," he said. "If you don't, you'll always be left wondering. And if Reynard really means to include you in the family again, then you deserve to have that. You always did."
Gascon gave him a wobbly smile, and Lambert leaned further in to brush their lips together in a chaste kiss.
"Go grab lunch with him," Lambert said. "Catch up on what's happening with the boys, and see all the pictures I know he has. Maybe arrange to meet up with them soon too."
Gascon nodded, smiling just a little. “I think I will,” he said.
Lambert was woken by the blare of an emergency alert. He bolted upright at the sound of it, instantly awake. He'd always been a light sleeper, even before his training, so he kept the volume on his phone low, to keep from waking Gascon if it wasn't necessary, though it was hard to tell if something might wake him or not.
Gascon made a soft noise, but turned over and kept sleeping, the sheet falling lower as he turned, leaving his lean muscles on display. It was a sight that had often distracted Lambert in the past, but he shook off the urge to kiss his way down Gascon's spine, and instead picked up his phone.
He had a message waiting from Erland.
Erland was never the one to send out alerts. He left that to whoever held seniority in the area, which was almost always Vesemir where Lambert was concerned.
All hands. Morgraig.
Lambert had been prepared for a message from Vesemir demanding he drop everything and help Geralt or Eskel with a case. Erland, Griffin himself, one of the founders of their fucked up order of vigilantes, putting out a call for everyone to go to the headquarters that had been abandoned back when the original league split…
This was the kind of message Lambert didn't ever think he'd be responding to. This was world ending.
He'd pressed the "call" button before he even registered dialling Vesemir's number, standing from the bed to take the call out of the bedroom, sparing a glance for Gascon to ensure he was still sleeping.
"Tell me what's happening," Lambert demanded the moment the call connected.
Vesemir sighed on the other end of the line. Lambert could clearly see it in his mind's eye: the way he was surely rubbing his eyes, exhausted already, the way he always was with Lambert.
"Ivar's been having visions," Vesemir said, voice heavy with trepidation. "They've been getting worse lately. He kept saying the Wild Hunt was closing in. Nobody else realised how urgent it was until about an hour ago. They're coming, and they're after Ciri."
Lambert’s heart froze. Ciri was special. They all knew that, even before she learned how to hop between worlds and timelines. She'd brought back horror stories once, of a world destroyed by the Wild Hunt. If they were after her, then they wouldn't stop until they had her, and then they'd just keep going.
He glanced through the bedroom door, eyes drawn to Gascon's sleeping face. He looked so at peace. He'd spent the past few weeks getting lunches with Reynard, Villem, and Anséis, and had spent fewer nights out beating criminals bloody with Lambert. Gascon had finally found some happiness in life, and now they were facing the Wild Hunt.
"O'Dimm's popped back up too," Vesemir added, sounding about a thousand years old. "He seems to think it's time. Says the Hunt will be here in a matter of days. Says this is how his world died. Wouldn’t say much more than that, the slippery fucking shit that he is."
Lambert couldn't argue with that. Gaunter O'Dimm was a wily bastard that always had to be one step ahead. But for him to be offering them any information at all was… ominous. If he was really that worried about the Wild Hunt, then this was going to be a bigger fight than Lambert thought. And he'd already set his expectations pretty damn high.
"I'll meet you at Morgraig," Lambert promised. "If they want Ciri, they're gonna have to go through all of us."
That was… actually kind of the problem, really. The Wild Hunt would go through all of them. The chances of everyone making it out alive were practically nonexistent. Lambert wasn’t stupid enough to bet on being one of the ones who might survive.
"We'll see the two of you when you get here," Vesemir said, hanging up without waiting for a response.
Lambert took a deep breath and stepped back into the bedroom, reaching out a hand toward Gascon's shoulder, intending to shake him awake. Something in him stopped his hand. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tear Gascon away from his happiness again for a fight they might not win. He couldn’t ask Gascon to give up the small amount of normalcy he'd carved out for himself. He couldn’t let Gascon, regular, human Gascon, walk into a battle that would likely kill him.
Lambert pressed a gentle kiss to Gascon's brow, and turned away, feeling the hot sting of tears in his eyes. He would leave a note, explaining why he was gone, but he couldn't drag Gascon into this with him.
Morgraig was teeming with life, in a way it hadn't in years. Even back in its heyday, it had never seen so many of their kind in its halls.
The founders were all there, as well as Lambert’s brothers. The sorceresses had arrived before Lambert did. And in the centre of all of the chaos was Ciri.
"Hey, kiddo," Lambert said, pulling her in for a hug. It had been far too long since he'd last seen her. Or any of them, really.
"Uncle Lambert!" Ciri cried, throwing her arms around his neck. "I'm sorry this is happening. If I hadn't kept jumping between worlds, they never would -"
Lambert cut her off before she could finish.
"Nope, we're not doing that," he said, slapping a hand over her mouth. "This isn't your fault. And I promise you, we're gonna stop them. They're not getting to you."
Ciri gave him a shaky smile and nodded, turning to greet Cerys as the other girl marched into the room.
Lambert sighed, and turned to face his brothers. They each gave him a sharp nod, all business in the face of the Wild Hunt. Lambert missed the quips.
“No Gascon?” Eskel asked, glancing around the room as though he could have possibly missed Gascon and his ridiculous hat.
“He’s not coming,” Lambert said plainly. “He’s been getting out of this life.”
Geralt looked ready to argue with him, but Vesemir cut him off, joining the conversation as abruptly as always.
“Good for him. Somebody ought to wise up and get out,” Vesemir grumbled, eyeing Eskel and Geralt both like he wished at least one of them would grow the good sense to start having some semblance of self preservation. He turned his critical gaze on Lambert next. “I’m surprised you agreed to come. Last we saw each other, you seemed determined you wanted nothing to do with us.”
Lambert felt his fingers curl into fists. Even now, Vesemir just had to needle at him. Lambert would never be enough for him.
“Don’t get it twisted,” he snarled, “I’m only here for Ciri. As soon as this is done, I can get back to staying the hell out of your way.”
Erland arrived to call them all into the briefing room before the argument could escalate any further, and Lambert breathed a sigh of relief, slinking off to sit by the Scoia’tael team. Letho’s massive bulk on his other side made for a good buffer against any of his family trying to talk to him anymore.