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“I’d not recommend it, little one,” Kiyan mumbles, eyes still closed and looking for all the world like he’s napping in the afternoon sun. He’s lounging with his back to one of the wagon wheels, facing out away from camp; presumably to keep watch, though it may not look as though he’s very observant.
“You know, we’ve been the same size for upwards of twenty years now, Ki. I don’t think little one is really an appropriate title for me, at least not coming from you,” Aiden complains, pushing through the brush he’d been stalking Kiyan from. Twenty years and Aiden still can’t quite manage to sneak up on the older Cat.
One golden eye, a droplet of emerald resting in the lower left curve of the iris like an ink stain, slips open to peer at Aiden for a moment.
“Been the same little runt all that time, too, always underfoot,” he counters without any heat.
“Fair enough,” Aiden plops down beside his brother, leans into his side to feel his warmth and the rumble in his chest. “How was your season?”
“Same old shit,” Kiyan sighs. “Miserable work for miserable pay, but I got by. How much trouble did you get in with that wolf of yours?”
Aiden’s grin is mischievous and self-satisfied. “ Plenty. ”
Kiyan rolls his eyes briefly before letting them slip closed once more. “I’d recommend it even less for you, Gaetan…”
“ How do you fucking do that? ” the young menace gripes from several feet away. “Every fuckin’ time, it’s unnatural, is what it is. You’re cheating.”
“Perhaps neither of you are as clever as you believe, little ones.”
“Hey now, I got way closer than he did,” Aiden protests, ducking a swipe from Gaetan as he wriggles himself down to sit in the scant space between the older Witchers.
Kiyan remains pointedly silent until the kittens get the hint; he lets himself drift back into his own mind, seeking the deep calm he’d been floating in before he’d caught the crunch of rock beneath the sole of Aiden’s boot. He can feel the whisper of his brothers’ breathing, the steady thump of their hearts. He can hear the wind as it whistles through the trees, a raucous cheer from deeper in the woodlands where the Caravan has spread out to camp. He’s nearly there, that fathomless place of just being that he strives towards each time he meditates, but Gaetan fidgets; shifts and knocks their shoulders together, moves a leg and knees him in the thigh.
“Tell me, little one, how have you still not learned the value of patience?”
“I’ve got plenty of patience, Ki, I’m just fucking bored,” Gaetan intones; Aiden rumbles a quiet laugh from his other side and Kiyan merely offers him a raised brow and a glance. “I do. ”
“Sure you do, little one. Do us a favor though and go be bored somewhere else for a while,” Kiyan says, not unkindly.
“Yeah, sure, but you’ve still gotta show me that new crossbow diagram you found, remember? And I’m still shit at brewing Golden Oriole, so I was hoping you could help me figure out what I’m doing wrong, and-”
“Just give me an hour, kid, I’m practically an old man. I want to be lazy for a bit, before I play teacher. Nevermind that I leave for the Path again at the end of the week.”
“Where are you headed?” Aiden asks.
“Redania, think I’m gonna work my way to Novigrad, see what I can find.”
“Sure there’ll be plenty of drowners in the sewers there, always are.”
Kiyan grimaces.
“Steady money,” Gaetan chides.
“Not the point, little one. Now, both of you go away. One hour, that’s all I ask.”
“Sure thing. C’mon Gaetan, bet we can goad Axel and Cedric into a brawl. We still owe them an ass-kicking from last summer.”
Kiyan’s chuckle doesn’t make it out of his chest because he’s already slipped way, way down; heart beating slow and steady, breath whispering in and out, the rustling wind and the thrum of life through the forest. Of all the things he’s learned, finding this profound space in his mind is the one he’s truly thankful for.
# # #
Kiyan does not return to the Caravan again.
# # #
Years later, when Lambert finally gathers whatever courage he’d needed to mutter out an invitation to winter with him in Kaer Morhen. When he’s finally done it more than once and Aiden is fairly certain he’s been adopted into the pack, Geralt comes to him at the start of one winter.
He’d been in Redania, he tells Aiden, and he’d taken a contract for sirens near a wrecked ship. He’d explored the ship, came across some notes that were strange enough to peak his interest. He tells Aiden that the clues he unearthed led him to a laboratory beneath Novigrad, and of the creature he’d found inside.
“I’m sorry, Aiden,” he murmurs. “I don’t know if you knew him, but I thought you should know, at least. And then, there’s- well… this,” and he holds out a slightly tarnished medallion in the shape of a hissing Cat.
Aiden takes it. “Did you keep the journal?”
“Um… yes, but, Aiden, I really don’t think you’ll want to-”
“I need to know, Geralt. Please.”
The White Wolf drops his eyes to the floor for a moment before dipping his chin in a nod. “I’ll get them for you.”
Aiden takes his brother’s medallion, clutched tight in his left hand, and wanders into the deepest recesses of the keep. He settles somewhere near the caverns where the hot springs hide, where he can hear the rumbling flow of water from deep within the mountain, where it’s dark and he is utterly alone.
Lambert finds him hours later and makes no comment on the scent of tears nor the jerk and stutter of Aiden’s shoulders.