Work Text:
Ivar Evil-Eye spent most of his free time (and some of his working time) in the Solarium at Kaer Morhen. Even (especially) in Winter, it was the warmest room in the keep and the favored basking space for his fellow vipers and snakelets. Aside from that, it was the best, calming, most meditative place for him to see.
Which was as often constructive as it was…not. He could see many future outcomes with a subject to anchor his sight to—he could tell when one decision would be more advantageous than another, he could tell when, or rather, who would need to make a decision that would impact which way future patterns would move. An empire or a country’s movement might sometimes be the determiner. Less often, it could be someone innocuous-seeming. More recently, it had been the Wolf. But every now and then, when the old viper seer sat down to meditate, he saw futures that weren’t. Futures that were no longer possible—alternate timelines where a different important decision had been made (or not made).
This particular day’s visions took him to one of his snakes, whom Ivar had definitely seen at morning’s training sparring with some griffins, having an extremely unfortunate day ending with his beheading by a beekeeper followed by his no frills burial in a wraith-infested crypt. It was as insulting as it was enraging. But Kolgrim wasn't dead. He would be the anchor for further investigation in this vision, however. Ivar watched as years passed, perhaps a century or more with the crypt remaining empty except for the wraiths and Kolgrim's bones. Until no one other than the Wolf entered.
Ivar snorted in his dream state. Geralt of Rivia just had to be involved somehow. Of course he did. The White Wolf dispatched the wraiths handedly and burned everything in the dank place remotely resembling a corpse. Save for Kolgrim. Geralt took the time to find an empty tomb, and first, picking up his skull, arranged his bones in a dignified manner with his medallion over his chest before closing the heavy lid. Then, he carefully etched the symbol of the viper school on the top along with Kolgrim's name. For so long, no one had held Kolgrim except for himself, in a morbid sort of way, with his head in his lap. When along comes the craziest Wolf with the biggest heart to grant him some peace.
Never had Ivar (or as far as he knew any of his snakes) come to regret following the Wolf in his mad plan to warlord across the North, but something about seeing him still being kind in a world much less so to him, with a completely different set of circumstances, meant something. The Wolf was the Wolf to his core. He was genuinely good. It was of course, at that moment of epiphany that their fearless leader took the time to raid some nearby chests and Ivar had to chuckle through his other, nameless emotions. Practical to a fault as well. How very Geralt.
And that was before Ivar could see what had been in said chests. Would wonders never cease! Laughing, the old school head untethered his sight from the crypt and floated. When Ivar "woke," he was smiling.
■
The next time the shifts for patrol came out to head through Temeria, it was Kolgrim's turn. And Ivar knew his snake would be passing through the same orchard whose people had once, in another lifetime, wrongly accused him of kidnapping and murder, and responded with murder in kind. But those people were long gone, while their orchards (and crypts) remained. And witchers no longer walked the path alone. Going with him were one of the far-too-polite griffins he was apparently friends with, a twitchy cat (even by cat standards, apparently), and a bear. Ivar had pulled Kolgrim aside and mentioned the possibility of finding old viper gear diagrams, and had he been from any other school than the vipers, he might have scoffed. As he was, and had seen the truth in the Evil-Eye's sight, he promised to look for the symbol they used to indicate a cache to each other.
When months later, the group returned with the diagrams, and tales of a crypt bursting to the gills with wraiths, Ivar wasn't surprised. He simply directed his snake to the forge dwarves to see what they might be able to make of it and promised that he himself would go the next day to discuss with them. While he'd some idea what the diagrams contained, it'd be nice to speak with the smithies directly.
Looking around the main hall of the keep where the wolves opened their doors to all of the other witchers, seeing his snakes and snakelets well-fed and happy, thriving, was a kind of joy that still knocked the wind out of the old school master sometimes. Ivar had seen the alternatives to accepting the White Wolf's call. Had seen the alternatives to the White Wolf not making a call at all. But even when he saw his school surviving in the snowy peaks of the Blue Mountains, he never imagined they'd be so at home. Never thought they'd have real friends among the other witchers or humans who didn't fear them. Humans who fed and clothes them, even!
Glancing at the head table, he saw the Wolf smiling at the cub while she relayed some story or other to the bard. The Wolf who would retain his kindness in an alternate world that killed most of them and shunned the rest. But this, here, in this loud keep, full of life, with his siblings and cousins, lovers and child, was what Geralt deserved. He was a good person, afterall. And good people deserve good things. Or so the bard kept telling them in his songs. Kolgrim certainly deserved this life better than the one that might have been. Who knew? Maybe someday, Ivar Evil-Eye might believe he deserved nice things too.