Chapter Text
When Aiden finally makes it back to Kaer Morhen, late in the autumn two fucking years after he set out, he wants three things, in no particular order:
A fucking drink, because apparently no one in Skellige knows how to make liquor that isn’t fucking terrible;
A nice long soak in the fucking decadent hot springs, which are frankly the best part of having joined up with the White Wolf in his insane quest to make the North less horrible;
And an evening of shooting the shit with Lambert, because for some incomprehensible reason he’s actually missed that foul-mouthed asshole. Baffling, but there it is.
He drags himself through the gates around midafternoon, cursing the Wolves and their godsawful excuse for a trail - admittedly it’s better than it was when he first encountered it, back when it had really done its best to earn the nickname ‘the Killer,’ but it’s still long and winding and steep and generally unpleasant to climb when you’re already tired from two fucking years of travel. The first person he spots is Cedric, with Axel as always right behind him, and the other two Cats light up and pounce on him with glee. Aiden ends up on his back on the cold stone of the courtyard, swearing in Skelliger - it’s a horrid dialect but it does have good curse words - but then they do help him up and Cedric offers him a shoulder as they head into the keep, so he supposes he’ll forgive them.
“What’s new in this old stone pile?” he asks as they tromp in through the main doors, Axel considerately taking his pack and then wrinkling his nose at the smell of unwashed clothing that rises out of it.
“Well,” Cedric says, frowning a little, “actually you’ve missed...kind of a lot, brother. You left about six months after the songbird showed up, yeah?”
“Songbird?” Aiden says, wrinkling his nose. “Oh, the little bard? Yeah, I heard all sorts of fucking batshit rumors about him. Which ones’re true?”
“You missed him and the Wolf pining at each other like a godsdamned forest,” Axel chuckles. “And you’ll smell him before you see him, these days.”
“...Oh?” Aiden asks. The bard had mostly stopped smelling like fear by the time Aiden left; he can’t imagine what scent might have replaced that.
“Oh yeah,” Axel says, and grins without explaining himself further. Brothers, seriously.
“He’s the Consort now, that rumor’s true enough,” Cedric says, steering Aiden towards the stairs down to the hot springs. “Also he and the Wolf and Eskel are…” he trails off and waves a hand like he can’t find the words.
“Fucking adorable,” Axel opines. “Also, fucking.”
Aiden blinks at both of them. “Fuck,” he says at last. “Who won the pool?”
“Fucking Merigold,” Cedric sighs. “I lost fifty orens on that one.”
Axel grins. “I keep telling you not to bet against her. Anyhow. Songbird ended up Consort, got stabbed, got better, we almost went to war with Temeria, songbird got kidnapped in Oxenfurt and we almost went to war with Redania...what am I missing?”
“Lambert and his pretty swan,” Cedric supplies.
“...Lambert got a pet?” Aiden ventures. He can’t imagine Lambert keeping any sort of pet, much less a swan. Bad-tempered things, in his experience. Which...actually might make them more appealing to the prickly asshole, come to think of it. Still, the last thing this keep needs is more bad-tempered waterfowl.
“Nah, if you call her that he’ll probably try and gut you,” Axel advises him. “Got a lover.”
Aiden considers that carefully as they reach the entrance to the hot springs, turning the thought over a couple of times and looking at it from different angles. “Lambert,” he says at last. “Prickliest asshole this side of a hedgehog. Swears like a sailor. That Lambert. Has a lover.” The man might be his best friend, but Aiden has no illusions about how much of an ass he is.
“Yep,” Cedric says. “Sweet little thing, too. Noblewoman out of Redania. Milena, her name is.”
“Sweet little thing,” Aiden says, wondering if he keeled over on his way up the Trail and bashed his head in and is now hallucinating. Or - oh, no, there’s an even more obvious conclusion. “You’re having me on.” It’s not nice to play pranks like that on a man who’s just gotten back to the keep.
“Keep thinking that,” Axel says, shrugging. “You’ll see.”
Aiden makes a rude gesture at them both, strips off his travel-stained clothing, and slides into the hottest spring available with a sigh of utter relief, sagging back against the side and closing his eyes in bliss. Oh fuck yes, he’s not going to move until supper.
“I’ll tell the Wolf you’ll report tomorrow, hey?” Cedric says, chuckling, and Aiden nods without opening his eyes. Nothing he’s learned is so urgent he needs to report immediately.
Cedric tosses a bar of soap down next to him, and he and Axel leave again, taking Aiden’s bag with them. Aiden closes his eyes and basks. There’s hardly anyone here right now; it’s quiet, the water is hot enough to scald a normal human and therefore just about perfect; and he’s home.
He’s pretty sure he dozes off for a while, because the next thing he knows, there’s a sudden uptick in the level of sound in the room, and he sits up a little further to see the Witchers of Kaer Morhen pouring in through the doors, shoving and laughing and jesting. Ah, afternoon practice must be over. He waves a lazy hand as half a dozen Cats come piling into his pool, all of them grinning wildly, and puts up with being thumped on the shoulder and having his hair vigorously ruffled, returning the gestures of affection easily. Cats can actually express their feelings in something like a healthy manner, unlike some Wolves he knows. Or Bears. Bears are all deeply repressed assholes.
“Cedric said you looked like something the cat dragged in,” Kiyan grins. Everyone else groans.
“That joke wasn’t funny the first time you told it, either,” Aiden informs him.
“Nah, it’s funnier every time,” Kiyan says, and Treyse thoughtfully pushes him under water and holds him there for a minute or so. Kiyan surfaces with a snort and a splash, and Aiden sighs as his peaceful soaking pool turns into a very small brawl.
He hauls himself out after a moment - brawls are fun and all, but he’s fucking tired - and drags himself off upstairs to find that his rooms are just the way he left them, apart from being clean, blessings on Jan and the chambermaids, and his spare clothes still pretty much fit and don’t smell like they’ve been dragged across the ass end of Skellige for two years, unlike everything he brought back with him.
The great dining hall is pretty much the way he remembers it, apart from the double-wide chair up at the head table - Aiden’s not entirely sure what that’s about until the bard comes in between the White Wolf and Eskel, and settles into the big chair pretty much on the Wolf’s lap. The Wolf wraps an arm around his waist and looks smug, insofar as he ever looks anything but grumpy. Huh. That is new. And, as Axel said, fucking adorable. Aiden slumps down in his usual seat and pillows his head on his arms and dozes as the hall fills around him, the noise of happy Witchers a dull rumble quite unlike the constant roar of the ocean on Skellige’s rocky shores.
“Hey,” Axel says, sitting down beside him and nudging him with an elbow. “Wake up, sleepyhead, before Kiyan decides to put gravy in your hair.”
“He can try, if he wants to die in his sleep tonight,” Aiden grumbles, and sits up. The tables are full, and the servers are coming out of the kitchen, and he’s abruptly starving. The food in Kaer Morhen got a fucking hell of a lot better after Marlene took over the kitchens, and Aiden has spent much of the last two years eyeing traditional Skelliger dishes dubiously and dreaming of Marlene’s skill with a roast or a soup, or the egg pies she sometimes makes for dinner.
He eats himself full almost to bursting, and only then looks up at the Wolf table again to see if he can spot Lambert. He’s right where he ought to be: two chairs down from the Wolf and the songbird, right next to Eskel. Or at least, he’s right where he ought to be for a scant moment, before he drains his mug and gets up and goes wandering down the table to the chair next to Merigold, where a dainty little noblewoman in green silk, dark-haired and dark-eyed and pretty in a way Aiden would have expected to be ruined within hours in Kaer Morhen, looks up at him and smiles so sweet it’s genuinely startling.
Lambert kisses her, and then picks her up and sits down in her chair and puts her on his lap, and she laughs, like this is completely normal, and Merigold rolls her eyes and chuckles, and Lambert nuzzles at the girl’s throat and looks so contented and calm that Aiden has to rub his eyes and look again to make sure it is Lambert, and not some other Wolf Witcher who just happens to look exactly like Aiden’s best friend.
“What the fuck,” Aiden says.
Axel snorts. “Lambert and his pretty swan-maid. We told you.”
Pretty swan-maid, huh? “Are we sure she’s not a sorceress?” Aiden asks, watching in frank disbelief as Lambert starts playing with the girl’s hair, twirling a lock of it around one finger idly as he talks. “Part-succubus? Something else with compulsion powers?”
“Nah, she’s a nice little thing,” Cedric says. “Smart, honest, friendly. Little stabby if you kidnap her.”
“Well, that’s fair,” Aiden says, because he’d be a little stabby if kidnapped, too, and agreeing with logical statements seems like a rational thing to do in the middle of this moment of complete insanity.
“Completely human as far as anyone can tell,” Axel says. “And mostly sane, apart from being utterly besotted with Lambert. Nobody’s come up with a decent explanation for that.”
“Lambert’s a good man,” Aiden objects, because Lambert is his best friend, dearer to him even than most of his brothers.
“Yeah, under all the asshole,” Cedric agrees. Up at the Wolf table, the girl laughs - apparently at something Lambert said - and twists around in his lap to kiss him. Lambert leans into the kiss, closing his eyes and looking like he wants to fucking purr.
“What the fuck,” Aiden whispers.
Axel pats his shoulder. Cedric shrugs and offers him a honeycake. Aiden nibbles at it, staring up at the Wolf table, watching Lambert smile and cuddle his pretty swan-maid and look - happy. Happy like he looks, sometimes, rarely, when it’s just him and Aiden out on a hunt together and Aiden manages to get past all the asshole to make him laugh.
Maybe it’s the staring, but as Aiden finishes the honeycake, Lambert looks up and meets his eyes. And Aiden - well, to be perfectly honest, he was starting to worry that now that Lambert has his pretty swan-maid, he won’t need a beat-up Cat anymore - but Lambert grins, all teeth and glee, and stands up, putting his pretty swan-maid back in her chair with another kiss, and vaults the Wolf table to come trotting over towards Aiden. Aiden stands, and Lambert slams into him, an embrace that’s half a tackle. Aiden staggers a little, but doesn’t fall over, mostly because of Lambert’s arms around him.
“You fucker, when’d you get back?” Lambert demands.
“This afternoon,” Aiden replies, thumping Lambert’s back enthusiastically. “What, gossip chain breaking down already?”
“Fuckers probably thought it’d be funny to surprise me,” Lambert says. “You look like shit, Aiden.”
“Yeah, well, food in Skellige is godsawful,” Aiden says. “You look...good.” He does, is the thing. He’s as brawny and healthy as a Witcher should be, and his tunic has embroidery along the hems, and he smells like - like contentment and roses. Which is very different from his usual scent, before Aiden left, of constant mild anger, a sort of aura of prickiness like the spines of a hedgehog, a warning and a threat.
Roses have thorns, too, but they’re a lot less obvious about it than hedgehogs are.
“Fuckin’ Skellige,” Lambert agrees, and plops down on the bench next to Aiden, hauling him down to sit again. “Any good hunts?”
“Ice troll,” Aiden says, and half the Cats break off their conversations to pay attention. Ice trolls are rare, and unpleasant to fight. “For some fucking reason it decided people tasted better than sheep. Big fucker, too.” He shrugs. “Not really much finesse to it, though. Just a bunch of Quen and Yrden and hacking at it until it fell over. Next time I have to fight one of them, I want a couple of Bears with me. More their speed.”
“Ick,” Cedric says, wrinkling his nose. “Remind me not to go to Skellige anytime soon.”
“Remember that time a troll thought you’d make a lovely cave decoration?” Kiyan asks Treyse, and the conversation goes off into trolls-I-have-known. Lambert shakes his head and nudges a shoulder against Aiden’s.
“Come meet Milena,” he says quietly, under the rumble of conversation.
“Sure,” Aiden says, wondering how terrible an idea this is, and follows Lambert up to the Wolf table, as wary as he always is before a battle.
What if she doesn’t like him? What if she convinces Lambert not to like him anymore? Aiden’s seen enough of that sort of thing - always from a distance, eavesdropping on normal humans and laughing at their antics, but still, he knows it’s a thing that happens, a new beloved distracting their lover from all their former friends. And what’s Aiden got to offer, compared to a dark-eyed, dainty little swan-maid who smells like roses and looks at Lambert like he hung the moon?
She rises when she sees Lambert approaching, steps back from the table a little, away from the commotion that is Witchers at their leisure. Aiden stops a little ways away from her, far enough that he won’t loom, won’t scare her. Lambert doesn’t bother; he goes right to her, looping an arm around her waist. She settles against his side like a missing piece, like she’s meant to fit there, tucked safely under his arm.
“This’s Aiden,” Lambert says. The pretty swan-maid smiles, broad and bright, and holds out a hand without hesitation. “Aiden, this’s Milena.”
“Lambert’s told me so much about you,” Milena says. Her voice is just as pretty as her face, sweet and pleasant to listen to. Aiden takes her hand very carefully, and is promptly surprised: there are knife-calluses on her soft fingers, and an astonishing amount of strength in her grip. Not Witcher strength, of course not, but a lot more than he expected from a dainty little noblewoman. “It’s very good to meet you at last. Welcome home!”
“Thanks,” Aiden says, baffled. She doesn’t smell scared at all. She smells happy - contented, just like Lambert does - and very much in love, all sweet honey and roses. And she smells like Lambert, of course; lovers always smell like each other, at least a little, and she and Lambert both smell like they spend hours every day in each other’s company. Aiden expected that. But the lack of fear - that’s extremely odd. Sure, the humans who stick around, servants and lovers alike, lose the fear-scent after a few months, but Milena looks like she should be afraid, pretty little noblewoman in a keep full of Witchers. And she isn’t.
“I am sure you and Lambert have a great deal of catching-up to do,” she says, smiling up at him. “Would you prefer I went and bothered Jaskier for a while, and let you talk?”
That’s...a lot more generous than Aiden really expected. “If you don’t mind,” he says, listening hard for a lie, and Milena chuckles.
“Not in the slightest,” she says, apparently honestly, and goes up on her toes to kiss Lambert’s cheek. “Go and catch up with your friend, my love; I’m going to go tease Jaskier about the last book he loaned me.”
Lambert turns his head and kisses her, soft and sweet, and nods. “Don’t wait up,” he says, and she nods and goes wandering on up the table towards the songbird. Lambert snags a flagon of mead off the table and gestures for Aiden to lead the way.
They’ve had a spot, him and Lambert, since the Cats came to Kaer Morhen to join the White Wolf’s army: an old blocked-up window or something, high up on the battlements, tucked into a little corner out of the wind, where they can see and hear anything approaching, and where they can talk in actual privacy, which is rare in a keep full of Witchers. No mere human could make the jumps necessary to reach it, especially not at night, but there’s a half moon, which is plenty of light for Witchers, and Lambert doesn’t even spill the mead. They settle into the little alcove, shoulders pressed together, and pass the flagon back and forth for a while, watching the moonshadows move across the pastures behind the keep. Finally Lambert says, “So. Fucking Skellige, hm?”
“Fucking Skellige,” Aiden agrees. “Fucking cold-ass rocks, and they still think sheep guts are supper.”
Lambert snorts. “Learn anything useful, or did you just spend two years fucking around and fighting ice trolls?”
Aiden takes another swig of mead and leans back against the cool rock of the wall. “Made a lot of contacts, talked to a lot of people,” he says. “Killed a lot of sirens. Long and short of it is, if the Wolf takes Cintra, he’ll get Skellige too. And then we can send a whole bunch of those fucking insane Cranes off to sail around killing sea monsters. But they’re in too tight with that bitch of a Lioness to turn to the Wolf before he gets around to taking Cintra.”
“Huh,” Lambert says. “Makes sense. What’s his name, the jarl who married the Lioness?”
“Eist Tuirseach. His nephew is the jarl now, Crach an Craite he’s called. Not a bad sort, really; got enough sense to know that if the Wolf’s got the whole damn seacoast, Skellige’ll do better to be part of it than try their luck trading down south with Nilfgaard. He’ll swear to the Wolf if it comes to it, and his jarls will back him.”
“Makes sense,” Lambert says, nodding, and steals the mead for another brief swig. “Well, fuck ‘em, if they don’t bother us we won’t bother them, and Skelliger jarls don’t tend to be the sort of nasty fucks that piss Geralt off, so with luck we won’t have to invade. Fuck it, politics are boring. C’mon, asshole, you must’ve seen something more exciting than ice trolls out there.”
Aiden grins and steals the mead back. “Oh, you bet your ass I did.” He’ll tell his brothers about this sooner or later, but he wanted to tell Lambert first. “Lam, I saw a sea serpent.”
“No shit,” Lambert says, turning to stare at him. “I thought those were a fucking myth!”
“So did I,” Aiden says, and waves his free hand, trying to sketch the glorious moment in the air. “I was out in this dinky fucking little boat - town had a siren problem, fucking sirens, hate ‘em -”
“Annoying fuckers,” Lambert agrees.
“Yeah,” Aiden says. “So anyway, I’m out in the middle of fucking nowhere in this dinky little boat, and there’s this - sound, I can’t even describe it, comes up through the bottom of the boat, through the water, like - like whalesong, you ever heard whalesong?”
“Yeah,” Lambert says. “Creepy as hell, but pretty, sorta.”
“Yeah. So, like whalesong, but louder. And it keeps getting louder and louder, and then this - this thing comes up out of the water maybe a furlong away from me. Like a snake, but it coulda wrapped itself around Kaer Morhen, and it had fins, and it was this - this incredible blue-green color, never seen anything like it before. And it comes up out of the water, all the way out, like whales do, breaching or whatever the fuck it’s called, but straight up, and its tail comes out of the water before its head comes back around. And I swear to fuck, Lam, it looked at me.”
“No shit,” Lambert breathes.
Aiden nods and closes his eyes, remembering that astonishing moment: sitting there in the awful little boat, looking up and up and up at the impossible, beautiful, terrible thing above him. “Its eyes were the deepest blue in the world,” he says at last. “The blue you see when you look down into the ocean, where it’s deep enough to go down forever, and it’s almost black but not quite. It looked at me,” Aiden repeats quietly. “It saw me. Saw right through me, maybe. And then - swear to fuck, I’m not making this up - the water opened for it, it didn’t make a single splash, and it went right back down, straight as an arrow, and by the time I made it over to where it’d gone in, it was long gone.”
There’s a short silence, and then Lambert says, “Holy fucking shit, Aiden.”
“Yeah,” Aiden agrees.
“You should tell Buttercup about that,” Lambert says. “He’ll put it in a song.”
Aiden blinks at his friend. Finally he says, “What the fuck happened here while I was gone, Lam? Wolf’s got a mate, and he and Eskel have finally figured out whatever the fuck’s going on with them, and you’ve got your - your pretty swan-maid, and - what the fuck happened?”
Lambert takes the pitcher of mead and tips his head back for a long swallow before he hands it back. “Buttercup happened,” he says at last, thoughtfully.
“He sure as hell wasn’t the Wolf’s mate when I left,” Aiden prods.
“Yeah, no, that was...what, six months after you left? Seven? Something like that. After that fucking nasty little war in Kovir, you heard about that?”
“Yeah - Skelligers all thought the Koviri king was a fucking idiot for provoking the Wolf.”
“Such a fucking idiot,” Lambert agrees. “I have met smarter rocks.”
“Right, so, idiot Koviri king, and then what, songbird just...fell into bed with the Wolf?”
“Basically,” Lambert shrugs. “And then there was the whole mess with the Redanian treaty, and the fucking husband-hunters.” He grins. “And Milena.”
“Milena,” Aiden echoes, and falls silent. He doesn’t quite know what to say. How the fuck did you end up with a noble for a lover is the question on the tip of his tongue, but - Lambert’s a prickly asshole. Aiden doesn’t want to piss him off his first night back.
“You’ll like her,” Lambert says, leaning back and smiling - smiling - up at the moon. He smells like roses and honey and happiness. It’s fucking unnatural. “She’s...she’s just fucking wonderful.”
“What the hell,” Aiden says helplessly.
Lambert laughs, and it’s a surprisingly harsh sound. “Yeah,” he says, and his scent changes all at once, from happiness to something bitter and horrid. “Yeah. I dunno what she sees in me either.”
Aiden flails, nearly dropping the mead. “Fuck, no, fuck, not what I meant! I just - she’s all dainty, and I would’ve thought she’d have run screaming from a keep full of Witchers. Most people do.”
Lambert chuckles. “Yeah. Most people do. Not Milena. She’s fucking steel under the silk. Everybody calls her my swan-maid, but you’ve met swans. Elegant and beautiful and fucking dangerous.”
“Yeah,” Aiden agrees warily. “That’s your girl, then? Dangerous?”
“When she’s gotta be,” Lambert says. He’s smelling a little happier again, and Aiden suppresses a sigh of relief. “Killed a princess a few months ago. Well. Ex-princess, I guess.”
“Stabby when kidnapped,” Aiden says, recalling Cedric’s words.
“Yeah,” Lambert agrees. “Fuck, that was a bad night.” He waves a hand. “Her and Buttercup and Eskel just fucking gone - yeah, that was fucking awful. Almost went feral and killed half a dozen priestesses.”
“...Priestesses?” Aiden says, baffled. That wouldn’t have been his first choice of target, were he to have a kidnapped lover to go into a feral rage over.
“Fucking bitch Marta dressed up as a priestess,” Lambert elaborates, which actually explains very little. Aiden decides to corner Cedric and Axel and get the full story out of them as soon as possible.
“I’ll give her a chance,” he says, knocking his shoulder gently against Lambert’s. “If she likes you, she can’t be that bad. Weird as fucking hell, but not bad.”
Lambert laughs, a real laugh this time. “Yeah, alright, that’s fair.” He knocks his own shoulder against Aiden’s. “You’ll see. Now, gimme that mead.”
“Fuck you, it’s my mead now,” Aiden says, and Lambert tries to grab it from him, so Aiden vaults out of their little alcove and goes haring off down the battlements. Lambert howls with mock outrage and follows him, and Aiden is fast but - and he hates to admit this - when it comes to a straight footrace, Lambert is just that hair faster, and also Aiden can’t go up walls as easily with a half-full flagon of mead in one hand. Lambert corners him near the gates, pinning him to the wall and plucking the flagon from his hand, and Aiden hisses as his friend takes a long drink.
And then, to Aiden’s surprise, Lambert hands it back, and there’s even a decent amount left. Aiden stares at Lambert in baffled shock.
Lambert looks down at his feet and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Just drink it, asshole,” he mutters.
“...Thanks,” Aiden says, and drains the rest of the mead. It’s very good.
“Oh, shut up,” Lambert says, and leans against the wall next to him. There’s a long, companionable silence. Above them on the walltop, the night guards whistle the all-clear back and forth. Finally Lambert says, “Missed you. Good to have you home.”
“Good to be home,” Aiden agrees. He’s not sure when Kaer Morhen became home, but it is. All his brothers are here; his dearest friend is here; the servants know his name and smile at him when they see him; the food is magnificent. It feels disloyal to think that it’s better than Stygga ever was, but Stygga was cold and dark and angry all the time, Cats hissing and bristling at each other in the corners, all of them brothers but the sort of brothers who fight all the time. Even the ones Aiden liked, Cedric and Axel and fierce little Dragonfly, were all sharp edges and bristles. It’s probably why he was able to deal with Lambert so well: the man’s as prickly as any Cat. But in Kaer Morhen - in Kaer Morhen they’re not all pulling in different directions, like a bunch of unhappy cats on leashes. They’re all hunting together, like a pride of lions, and maybe it’s not natural for lions to follow a wolf, but - eh, the metaphor’s gotten away from him, but the heart of it still holds true. “Even with mead-thieves chasing me around.”
Lambert chuckles. “Fuck you,” he says cheerfully.
Aiden laughs, and then surprises both of them with a jaw-crackingly huge yawn. Lambert snorts and throws an arm around Aiden’s shoulders. “C’mon, bedtime for sleepy kitties,” he teases. Aiden elbows him as hard as he can, and Lambert yelps but doesn’t let go. “Asshole,” he says fondly, and Aiden sighs and leans against him and lets himself be led back into the keep and up to his rooms. Some blessed chambermaid has stoked up the fire, and Lambert pours him into bed and laughs at him as he tries to get his boots off, before yanking them off and tossing a heavy blanket over him.
“Sparring tomorrow,” Aiden slurs, feeling rather like he’s sinking into the bed, about to be swallowed by goosedown and furs. “Kick your ass.”
“Like to see you try,” Lambert replies, and pats Aiden’s leg. “Sleep, asshole.”
“Mph,” says Aiden, and is asleep before the door closes behind Lambert.