Chapter Text
Lambert manages to escape the mob and runs until he can’t anymore, until the blood loss catches up to him and he stumbles, falls, and cannot get up again.
He tries to catch his breath, laying in the leaves and twigs, listening for any sound of movement beyond the rushing of blood in his ears. He doesn’t think they followed him out of town. If they did, he was fucked.
He was riddled with stab wounds. He’d taken a pitchfork clean through his shoulder, and knives to his thigh, his stomach, his kidneys, his arm…Not to mention the wound from an arachas that’s festering, the reason they were able to get the drop on him in the first place. It’s difficult to get an infection as a witcher, but getting dragged through a sewer with an open wound was really tempting fate. In the rush to escape, his bags had been abandoned, which means he now has no potions at all to even have a chance at healing.
He’s going to fucking die. It pisses him off to no end.
The forest is quiet except for the beating of his heart, helpfully pumping all the blood out of his body. He’s not sure how long passes like that, not quite conscious, not quite dead yet, before he hears the unmistakable sound of someone walking through the underbrush loudly.
Can’t even let a man die in peace. Lambert weakly fumbles for the knife in his belt, gripping it like that was going to give him a chance in hell.
“Oh shit,” a man’s voice says softly. There are footsteps approaching quickly, snapping twigs underfoot, and then a hand on his shoulder trying to turn him over.
Lambert lashes out with his knife with a snarl as he’s pushed onto his back. He feels the blade catch something, sees the figure stumble back with a yelp.
“Hey! Hey, I’m a friend,” the man says. He leans over Lambert cautiously. He’s young, and handsome, face pinched with worry. He’s clutching his bleeding arm in one hand.“You must be Lambert? I’m a friend of Geralt’s.”
Lambert tries to swipe at him again. This time the man dodges out of the way in time, the little dick. “I’ll fucking kill you if you touch me, you son of a bitch.” He slurs as he says it, which probably undermines the threat.
“I’m trying to help you,” the man says. “You’re bleeding too much - it’s frightening, quite frankly. Please let me help. I told you, I’m a friend of Geralt’s, I mean you no harm.”
“Geralt hasn’t got any friends.”
The man lets out a little laugh, strained. “Well, he’s got at least one,” he says. “My name’s Jaskier. Surely you’ve heard of me?”
“The bard.”
“Yes, the bard,” and the ballsy little shit is slowly entering his field of vision again, because two attempts on his life weren’t clear enough.
“Piss off, you - weird little fop.” Lambert did not want to spend his last moments with this man.
“I’ve got your potions.”
And he lifts up what is unmistakably Lambert’s potion bag. He shakes it a little, the bottles clinking together lightly. It’s so clearly a threat, Lambert considers trying to kill him again - except if he does, the bag will drop, the potions might break, and Lambert is dead. He’s dangling Lambert’s fucking life over top of him, and its very effective blackmail.
“Give me that,” Lambert tries to sit up and fails, landing hard on his back again. The pain of the impact makes his vision go dark at the edges. The knife is heavy in his hand and he decides to throw it, fuck it, he’s not making it out of here anyways.
The knife goes wide, the bard ducking with a yelp. He probably should have waited until his vision cleared before throwing it.
“Give me my fucking potions.”
“I’m trying to! Stop trying to kill me!” Jaskier snapped. “I don’t want to have to tell Geralt his brother’s dead because you were too stubborn to accept help.”
He’s holding Lambert’s only chance at survival, thin as it is, in his hands. Lambert doesn’t have much time left, he knows that. If the bard wants to slit his throat or rob him or whatever, in a few hours Lambert’s gonna be dead so it’s not gonna matter much either way.
“Fine,” he grits out.
Jaskier sets the potion bag aside and Lambert tilts his head to watch him shuffle through them. He pulls out a vial of Swallow, opens it, sniffs it and makes a face, before bringing it up to Lambert’s lips. Lambert snatches it out of his hand, even though his own hands are unsteady, and manages to not choke on it.
The entire time, Lambert is braced for it to be a trick of some kind, but nothing happens. The Swallow burns the way it always does, and the bard turns to go rifling through his bag again.
The Swallow might not be enough, Lambert knows. He wonders if the bard does too.
He loses bits of time. He thinks he feels the bard maneuvering him out of some of his armor, if only because every bit of movement lights him up with pain. He blinks and it’s cold, even though it’s midsummer and it shouldn’t be cold at all - he’s shivering. That’s a bad sign.
The bard is tipping something else into his mouth - it’s Kiss. Oh that’s good, that’ll help with the bleeding.
He blinks again and the bard is… throwing pine boughs over him?
Is the bard trying to bury him before he’s even dead? How is this Lambert’s fucking life?
He throws a few more branches over him, and then a log is being dragged in front of him. Through the branches, Lambert can see the bard has piled up his bags on the log, and is sitting with his back to Lambert. Jaskier’s heart is pounding so hard, Lambert thinks he’s going to have a heart attack.
And then Lambert catches the sounds of several people moving through the woods, people he should have heard long before they got this close. They’re loud and if he had to guess, drunk.
“Oi! You there!” A strange voice calls over. A branch snaps in two nearby. They’re in the clearing with them, by the sound of it, but Lambert can’t see anything except the branches and the bard’s back. “You see a dead witcher anywhere?”
“No, sir,” says Jaskier calmly. His heart is still pounding.
“Hey, you’re the fucking bard from a while ago!” A second man.
“So what if I am?”
Someone spits on the ground. “You fucked off in an awful hurry, didn’t you? Our inn not good enough for you?”
“I’m not one to celebrate death,” Jaskier says quietly. “No matter whose it is.”
There’s laughter, loud and grating, multiple voices overlapping. There’s at least five other people in the clearing with them. “Aw, you mournin’ for the poor little beast? Mad we put that mutant in the ground?”
Lambert hates them. A bunch of stupid, drunk idiots, the kind that sees an injured witcher and sees an animal to be put down. He hopes they all drop dead. He hopes they catch the fucking plague.
The only thing standing between him and a drawn out, humiliating death is a few pine boughs and strategically placed bags, and a bard lying through his teeth. A bard who might decide at any moment that he is not worth the risk of helping.
“I’m not looking for trouble,” says Jaskier. It’s incredible how calm he manages to sound while stinking of fear. “Just a quiet place to rest. I haven’t seen your dead witcher, but I wish you good luck in finding him.”
“I’m sure you do, monster fucker.”
The bard doesn’t react. The men seem to find this satisfactory and continue on their way. Jaskier doesn’t move until they are well out of even a witcher’s earshot.
And then he lets out a shaky breath. “You awake?” he asks, barely more than a whisper.
Lambert grunts.
“Are they really gone?”
“Yeah.”
At that confirmation, Jaskier turns and unburies Lambert from the pile of branches, though he keeps them nearby. He helps Lambert drink water and then sits heavily on the log.
“Your heart’s - too fuckin’ fast,” Lambert grits out.
Jaskier cracks a smile at that, an uncertain wavering thing. “Yes, I know.”
“Fucking - die of a heart attack.”
“I’m not going to die of a heart attack,” Jaskier rolls his eyes. “Get some rest. I’ll keep the watch.”
Lambert’s not really in a position to refuse.
*
The next time Lambert wakes up, he is sweating and freezing, unsure of how much time has slipped away from him again. The bard is cursing as he changes the bandages on Lambert’s leg where the arachas took a bite out of him.
“S’infected,” Lambert croaks.
“Yes, dear, the pus and the smell gave me a clue,” says Jaskier. “I - I don’t know what to do for this. Geralt’s never gotten an infection before, I didn’t even know witchers could.”
It’s not surprising. The bard’s only known Geralt for a few years, and Lambert can count on one hand how many infections he’s gotten in fifty-odd years of walking the Path.
“You need a healer,” Jaskier says, voice quiet and wobbly. “It’s not fair.”
Ha. It really wasn’t. It was just about what he’d expected in terms of how he would die - a very shitty way to die, but a very witcher way to die.
Well, minus the fop trying to keep him alive. That was fucking weird.
But still, he had to face that if the infection was bad enough to cause a fever in a witcher, the kind of fever where it felt like Lambert’s brain was going to melt out of his ears, if the potions hadn’t already counter-acted it…
“Give this to Geralt,” Lambert says. He fumbles to grasp his medallion and pulls it off his head clumsily, tossing it in the general direction of the bard. He hears it land in the dirt.
Okay, there, that’s his duty done. Word will get back to the Wolves that he’s dead, and his medallion will be laid to rest in Kaer Morhen with all the others.
“You are not dying on my watch.” But his voice shakes, the saltwater scent of tears appearing in the air.
What kind of man cries over the death of a witcher he only just met? A soft one, no doubt. Lambert doesn’t even really mean it as an insult. There are worse things to be in the world than soft.
The thought strikes him that he’s never going to see Aiden again.
They were set to meet in two weeks, in Tretogor. They’d only split ways for a short while, less than a month, to try and replenish their waning coin purses. Instead Lambert’s dying, and Aiden’s never going to know what happened because no one knows about Aiden.
And if there’s one person on this godsforsaken Continent that deserves to know, it’s him.
“The D-Drunken Eel,” Lambert pushes the words out. “In Tretogor. Can you - can you send a letter? Tell him – Tell him if I die.”
The bard leans over him, expression pinched. “Tell who?”
“Aiden,” says Lambert. “His name’s Aiden.”
“The Drunken Eel, in Tretogor. You want me to leave word to someone named Aiden that you’ve - you’ve passed.”
“And my medallion -”
“Medallion goes to Geralt,” says Jaskier. “Yes, I promise. If the worst should come to pass, I’ll make sure - I’ll take care of it.”
The words are gentle and warm and sincere, and Lambert has to be content with that. Maybe the bard’s lying, just saying platitudes to a dying man. But it’s the best he’s going to get.
The bard sits besides him, one hand coming to rest lightly on his shoulder. What a sight they must make, a half dead witcher lying amongst the pine boughs and an exhausted human sitting in the dirt beside him, offering what little comfort he could.
Lambert passes out again.
*
The night and the next day pass in flashes of pain and wakefulness, of the bard pressing him to drink or eat or take another potion, of cold cloths being pressed against his temple like he’s a feverish child.
Somehow, by the skin of his teeth, Lambert survives.
The fever breaks. He wakes and the pain is still a bitch, but at least all his wounds have stopped bleeding, and he manages to sit up with great difficulty. The bard is passed out cold, slumped against a tree with his arms crossed, chin resting against his chest.
“Thought you were keeping watch,” Lambert says loudly.
The bard jumps awake, grabbing a knife from where it was resting on the ground beside him - an instinct that immediately makes Lambert respect him a little more. “Oh, you’re awake,” he says, dropping the knife and rubbing the sleep out his eyes. “Fuck, I really didn’t mean to fall asleep. How are you feeling?”
“Like I got used as a pin cushion.”
Jaskier grimaces. “Well, I counted nine stab wounds not including the pitchfork so…”
Yeah, that sounds about right. “The morons from last night come back?”
“From last night? From two nights ago, you mean,” says Jaskier. “No, they didn’t. Pretty sure we’d both be dead if they did. So! You’re clean out of Swallow, and Kiss, unfortunately. Pretty low on potions in general, though I'm sure I don’t have to tell you that. Hungry?”
“Yeah,” Lambert says, and the bard gets started cooking something. He looks exhausted, and Lambert’s willing to bet that he really had tried to keep his promise to keep watch and not sleep.
Pretty sure we’d both be dead. Hell of a risk to take for a stranger.
He notices, too, the bandage that he’s got wrapped from wrist to elbow, where Lambert had swiped him with his knife. It makes something uncomfortable stir in his stomach. It’s not like accidentally nicking one of his brothers in training. He’s human, it’s going to take weeks to fully heal, and it’ll leave a scar.
“How bad is it? Your arm.”
Jaskier looks at his bandaged arm and makes a face. “Truly? It’s awful and it probably needed stitches but I didn’t have the stomach for it. I know you witchers are out here performing surgery on yourselves with no issue, but normal people get queasy trying to stick a needle into themselves.”
No stitches meant it was definitely going to scar heavily. Damn.
“How’d you find me, anyways?” he asks, dodging his guilt deftly.
“They were bragging about it when I arrived,” says Jaskier, voice going quiet. “I went to the tavern looking for work and they were…celebrating. I went looking for your horse in the stables, went through your bags and got what I thought I could sneak out of there unnoticed. I will be forcing Geralt to give me potions to carry on me from now on, let me tell you that much. Sorry I had to leave your horse behind.”
“S’alright. It’s just a horse,” says Lambert honestly. It’s just a horse and he’s alive, and it is entirely due to the weird little fop sitting across from him.
Weird little fop with balls, Lambert will give him that.
*
It takes another day before Lambert trusts his legs to get him somewhere without collapsing, and the bard is annoying and chattering the whole way through it. Lambert mostly tries to tune him out, because the alternative is strangling him, and that seems like poor repayment for saving his life.
When they’re set to part ways, he looks at the bard and says: “So what do I owe you?”
Jaskier looks at him oddly from where he’s finishing packing his own bag. “Uh…nothing?”
“Don’t fuck with me - what do you want?”
“Nothing,” says Jaskier. “What was I going to do, leave you there? Go back and tell Geralt “I knew your brother was dying in a ditch somewhere, but I didn’t bother to go look or do anything to try and save him. He’s dead now! Sorry for your loss!”? No, obviously not.”
It doesn’t make any sense. Lambert huffs in frustration. “You saved my life, I cut you, you stuck your neck out for me, you didn’t sleep for two days keeping my ass alive, and what? That’s just out of the goodness of your heart?”
Jaskier gets to his feet, shouldering his bag and looking bewildered. “Yes?”
“You’re fucking weird,” Lambert says. “Whatever. I still owe you a favor.”
“I appreciate the offer, Lamb darling,” says Jaskier.
“Don’t call me that again, life debt or no I’ll stab you for real this time.”
*
This is how it begins. There’s a general code, across all witcher schools, that if you find people and places that are safe for witchers, you pass it along. Healers that don’t charge extra, temples that will let you sleep off an injury, mages that can be trusted to keep their word.
So despite the fact that it injures his pride, Lambert tells Aiden the whole sordid tale. “I think we can probably count on the bard, if we ever needed to,” he says. It’s no small thing for him to say. The list of people Lambert trusts is extremely short. But he thinks, as tests of characters go, that was a pretty revealing one. In Lambert’s opinion at least.
“I’ll buy him a drink, if we ever cross paths,” Aiden says lightly. But there is an edge of desperation in the way he kisses him afterwards, the knowledge of how close Lambert came to death hanging over both of them that night.
When Lambert gets home for the winter, that first night in the hot springs, they trade stories of scars and hunts. It’s hard to ignore the fact that Lambert has acquired a lot of new ones this year, even by their standards. He tries to play it off, but he suspects that Jaskier told Geralt the real version of events, from the expression on his face.
“The bard’s decent,” Lambert says, the only sincere thing he’s said that night so far, and the only sincere thing he plans on saying. “You can trust him at your back.”
So begins the rumours of the witchers’ bard.