Archive of Our Own

Kaer’s Morhen’s library is a vast and overall boring collection, if Aiden is being entirely honest. Perhaps if he liked bestiaries and histories, it would be somewhat interesting, but when Aiden thinks of a library, he thinks of stories and adventures and the terrible romances Eskel sneaks to him when he gets sick of Aiden’s complaining.

Still, there are some stories scattered among the old tomes. Aiden just has to find them.

Jaskier and Eskel and Vesemir sit around one of the tables, talking quietly among themselves. They’ve been there since training finished, hours and hours ago now. Aiden is still exhausted from it. Vesemir pushes him, he always does, no matter what kind of day he’s having. He pushes him harder than the rest of them, doesn’t matter than it’s been five years since his first winter now. Doesn’t matter that, for the most part, he has adjusted to the limitations of his body, to who he is now.

Today is a bad day, comparatively. He’d had a nightmare, a vague thing filled out with sound and the knowledge that the person talking to him was Jad godsdamned Karadin. He’d stared at the ceiling for a long time, even after Lam had woken, curled against his side and checking on him in the brash but sweet way he always does. And then it had taken him more than an hour to get out of bed, even though he knew he needed to, even though Lam bought him breakfast and sat on the edge of the bed until he ate it all.

At least he hadn’t yelled today. He hasn’t for a few months now.

Training had been difficult after that, and all he wants to do now is sit amid the furs and read. He’s ended up in the section of the library that holds the old witcher journals, listening to Jaskier talk about some messy hunt Geralt was on. All of his hunts are messy, from the sounds of things, and Aiden can’t tell if it’s Jaskier’s exaggeration or if Geralt’s just like that.

Granted, he and Lam had not been back last winter, not after the awkwardness that had been the one before. There was only so much of watching the terrible trio not fucking communicate with each other that both of them could take. And they’d known it would linger into this winter. Why wouldn’t it, when Geralt had nearly gotten Jaskier killed with a Djinn? Eskel was angrier than Aiden had ever seen him.

And that was if Jaskier’s drunken rambles could even be trusted. Neither he or Lam were sure, and it wasn’t like Geralt or Eskel were going to spill anything. Something about a Djinn, something about a sorceress, something about not fucking telling each other anything. All of it culminating in an Eskel determined to avoid Geralt and a Jaskier slinking between the two of them. Exhausting.

If there was one good thing about not going back to Kaer Morhen last winter, it was that Aiden and Lam actually had time to go down to Metinna and get proper armour. Coën’s armour had been good, and he’d gotten used to it, but it wasn’t quite the same. He felt more like himself in familiar lightweight blue.

So many years spent travelling to Beauclair and back meant they had little time for much else, but it was worth it. All of Aiden’s journals, old and new, sit in his and Lam’s room now, so they’re free to go wherever they want again.

It's good to be back, even though he’s already worn out from the constant training and Vesemir’s constant pushing to be better.

He picks a journal out at random. Some of them are interesting, in a sad way, looking at the lives of people long dead. Coën had shown him the Griffin journals in his second winter, and he doesn’t think it will ever stop hurting that Coën will be the only Griffin he will ever know.

The journal in his hand is a worn thing, the leather cracked along the spine. Aiden flips to a random page and blinks down at the sketch on the yellowed parchment. A boy’s face, and another on the opposite page, intricately drawn with a realism even Aiden had never quite been able to master. A serious face, slitted pupils and mouth turned down in a frown, but still so very young. It’s an impressive drawing, to say the least, done by a very skilled hand, one Aiden can’t help but be a little jealous of.

There aren’t many witchers who draw the way Aiden does. Not even when he was still with the Caravan, surrounded by infighting and instability and madness. But he’s found one here, of all places.

“Vesemir?” he calls, walking back through the tall shelves. The oldest of the Wolves sits at the table with Eskel and Jaskier, meticulously binding a book together. He looks up at Aiden’s voice—all three of them do—and Aiden holds up the journal for him to see. “Which witcher drew this?”

Vesemir barely needs a second to look at it before he answers. “Varin,” he says. “He was our Grandmaster, very briefly. Between the tournament and the sacking.”

“Lambert’s trainer,” Aiden replies. He hates that both Vesemir and Eskel looked surprised by it. As if Lam wouldn’t tell him.  Roughly twenty-five years they’ve been in each other’s lives now, and they really think he doesn’t know as much about Lam as he possibly can? That Lam doesn’t know equally as much about him?

The drawings are good, they cover every single page he flicks through, but Aiden can’t help but let his lip curl. Lam’s told him stories of his training days, but he’s also seen the old scars on his back, long since faded, and he knows they came from a whip. Nothing else could make lines like that.

Vesemir grunts as he stands. “Wait here,” he says, and he pushes past Aiden, wandering down into the shelves he just came from. It takes him a few moments to come back, in which Aiden sits down across from Eskel and Jaskier and waits.

There’s a familiar ache building behind his eyepatch. There’s nothing to be done about the headaches, and the pain is dull enough that he can handle it, but the first few minutes after one kicks in always leaves him a little woozy. It’s simply something that happens, like his uncoordinated hands, or his inability to find his words, or the itch he gets where his eye once was sometimes. It’s normal now.

There’s still a part of him, nearly eight years later, that wishes it wasn’t.

Vesemir returns with another journal, this one slightly less worn. “Varin drew all his boys before their final Trials,” he says, sitting down next to Aiden and flipping through the back of the book. Blank pages after blank pages, a man never given the chance to finish it. Aiden doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. “Ah, there we are.”

He turns the book towards him and the noise that splutters out of Aiden could be a laugh or a gasp or some choked combination of both. A double page spread, and the boy on the right is painfully familiar. Beardless, head full of messy hair and a little baby fat still in his cheeks, entirely scarless and so damn young, but Aiden would know that glare anywhere.

Tiny baby Lambert stares up at him, pissed off and pleased about it.

“Oh, look at him! He’s… naked,” Aiden says, then laughs at himself, at the look Vesemir sends him. As frustrating at it is sometimes, losing his words when he knows he knows them, the replacements his mind supplies are fucking funny. “That’s not right. Small?”

“Young,” Jaskier says, hand over his mouth to hide his obvious laughter. “Though… naked isn’t wrong. He looks strange without a beard.”

Aiden smiles. He can’t help himself. “Young,” he whispers, staring down at the boy that was once his Lam. “He’s hardly changed.” Still the same expression, still the same frustration with the world. Varin captured him well.

“How old is he in this? Fifteen? Sixteen?” Jaskier asks, hands reaching for the book like a toddler.

Vesemir hums thoughtfully. “Most boys are around twenty when they go through the final Trial,” he says, passing the journal over. “The mutagens slow our aging, remember?”

“Even then?”

“Even then,” Eskel says. He’s smiling down at the journal with a strange amount of pride. “He was a scrawny thing, back then. Squirrely, really bad at signs, constantly getting into fights.”

Aiden scoffs. “So, no real change, then?” he says. His Lam is a bastard sometimes, and it’s what caught Aiden’s attention in the first place.

He would have been happy to split the payment for the ogre in Ellander and be on his way, but he’d never met a Wolf before, and Lambert was intriguing in his brashness, his anger. And he did look so pretty when Aiden had a hand around his cock. How could he stay away? And then he only got more intriguing, more wonderful, with every single encounter. He was something to be learned, something to be understood.

“We didn’t think he’d survive long after the final Trial,” Vesemir says. “He is brilliant at alchemy, always has been, but that doesn’t always make for a strong witcher.”

Aiden’s lip curls without his control. “Proved you more than wrong, didn’t he?”

“And then some,” Vesemir says, bowing in head in something that might almost be supplication.

He’s glad Lam isn’t here for this, that Vesemir sent him and Geralt to check on a nest of forktails roosting a bit too close to the keep. If he knew Varin drew him like this, like he cared about him, Aiden could only imagine the anger, the yelling, the inevitable hiding in their room or the lab for days on end.

“Don’t know why you thought that,” Eskel says, and he gently pushes the book out of Jaskier’s grasp. “You saw him beat the shit out of Varin. You saw how fast he was. It took both me and Geralt to pull him off. He’s only gotten stronger since.”

Something ill pools in Aiden’s something, something like heartbreak, something like dread. The final Trial. Lam had pointed out the cave to him once, the first time he took him bomb fishing. His hand had shook, and his voice had been harsh and flat, and he hadn’t looked Aiden in the eye.

“There,” he’d said, and Aiden had only just seen the dark and overgrown opening. “That’s where Speartip was.” And he hadn’t said anything else until they were back at the keep. Aiden didn’t ask anything more. When it came to the Trials, he lets Lam tell him whatever he wants, in his own time.

But he has to ask here, because Varin drew each of his boys. “Which one is Voltehre?”

The silence that follows is stark. Eskel stares at him, mouth parted, and Jaskier looks between the three of them in confusion, but he doesn’t ask for elaboration, he simply waits, like Aiden does.

“You know about Voltehre?” Eskel asks.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, like a challenge. Because why wouldn’t he? Why wouldn’t Lam tell him about the boy he’d had when he was still a trainee, the boy he’d lost unfairly to a Trial that proved nothing?

It’s not a name Aiden has heard in years. Lam speaks of him so rarely, but the medallion about their bed does not ever move. And every time they come to Kaer Morhen, every time they leave, Aiden makes sure he says hello and goodbye, whether Lam is there to see him or not. It is respect. It is the only thing he can do to honour the person Lambert lost when he never should have.

Eskel takes a deep breath, pushing the journal back towards him and pointing at the left side of the double page spread. “This is Voltehre.”

Of course it is. Of course he shares space with Lam. Aiden should have known.

He swallows, a lump in his throat, and he takes the book back with gentle hands. Varin drew Voltehre smiling, just a hint of teeth, eyes crinkled at the corners. His hair is a wavy mop, and Aiden remembers Lam saying he was blonde, saying he was short. He looks tiny here, painfully young and optimistic, a scar on his chin and his slitted pupils the only signs that he had a hard life.

He looks painfully kind, and Aiden’s heart clenches at the sight of him.

“They had a spot up on the walls,” Eskel says. Aiden suddenly wishes Vesemir wasn’t here for this, that Jaskier wasn’t here for this, that it’s Lam telling him and not his brother. “Geralt and Gweld and I would see them constantly when we were home for the winters, lodged in there. Couldn’t tell them apart. Not all that different to what he does with you, actually.”

It hurts. It really fucking hurts. He doesn’t want to know this, not when Lambert isn’t the one to tell him. And still, there’s a part of him that likes knowing what his Lam was like when he was young, seeking affection and attention in a way he has so much trouble with even now. He freezes up, like he doesn’t think he deserves it, like he doesn’t want people to see how much he cares.

Aiden didn’t have anyone like this in the Caravan. That wasn’t how they worked. It was a competition, always, boys pitted against each other and trainers arguing over which of them was best. He remembers being lonely. He remembers aching for something more.

“Oh, he’s…” Jaskier says, but whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t finish. Thank all the gods.

“He would have been a good witcher,” Vesemir says. And, honestly, Aiden doesn’t think he would have been, not the way Vesemir expects a witcher to be. If this was a boy who went out of his way to be with Lam, then he never would have been a good Wolf.

Lambert hardly is, more often than not. But Aiden isn’t exactly a good Cat, either.

“He might have had a chance, if your final Trial weren’t so barbaric,” Aiden says. He doesn’t even bother trying to stop himself, glad that his words haven’t betrayed him this time.

He’s never stopped believing it to be cruel and pointless.

“All the Trials are,” Vesemir replies, like it doesn’t even matter.

And Aiden’s angry now. He can’t stop it, can’t control it, and he’s never liked it, this awful side effect of his head injury. But it feels useful here, it feels justified. “Treyse tested our skills. None of us were ever sent towards a monster without being prepared for it. You gave them a death sentence and were surprised when only one came back.”

It’s too much, but he won’t have Vesemir try to justify sending boys who look this young into a cyclops’ den. The kind of hunt the Cats were always told to find back up for, and they went in with nothing.

Aiden stares at Voltehre, at Lambert, drawn by the hand of a man who didn’t care about either of them, and he seethes.

He knows all three of them are looking at him, knows Vesemir is more than likely disappointed in him, but if any of them attempt to speak, they’re interrupted by a crash from the great hall, and Coën crying out in frustration.

“Eskel! Come get your damn goat!”

Thank all the gods for Lil Bleater, the chaotic shit of a goat and Kaer Morhen’s most recent resident. As if Eskel had decided that in revenge for a sorceress, he’d adopt the most annoying mountain goat he could find.

A goat that annoys even its owner. “Damn it, Bleats,” Eskel grumbles.

He’s gone a second later, running a hand down his face. Vesemir follows, even though he doesn’t need to, taking his half-bound book with him and not saying a damn word. Aiden couldn’t care less, honestly. He knows he’s right. Lam knows he’s right, even though they don’t talk about it anymore—fuck Stygga and all of Aiden’s mistakes. It wouldn’t surprise him if Eskel thought he was right too.

Now, it’s just him and Jaskier and the journal between them.

Jaskier smiles hesitantly at him. He’s waiting for Aiden to snap, to rage at nothing, but it’s been two years since they’ve spent any real time together—bar a brief run-in in Oxenfurt—and he’s been getting a better understanding of his temper. Most of the time. Slowly. It’s not easy, not when his mood shifts so suddenly.

He hates himself for the way he screams sometimes, for the way he reminds himself of the Caravan and the madness of the other Cats, the way they would scream and claw at each other over nothing. He hates himself the things he says to Lam when he’s like that, even though they both know he never means them. He goes for the low blows, the easy targets: his desperate clinginess, his constant deflecting, his hyperfocus on alchemy. Somehow Lam doesn’t hate him for it. Somehow, he understands him. Aiden’s trying to be better; he wants to be better.

It’s been a few months. It’s the best he’s ever been. Lam sticks with him, always.

Aiden sighs and slumps back against the chair. His fingers graze the journal, the edge of Lambert’s portrait. So small, both of them.

“Are you going to give it to him?” Jaskier asks, voice gentle and curious. He will soon know more about them than anyone really should, when they give him permission to write the song this winter, once he and Lam have picked apart the pieces of Lam’s journal to give to him.

In that journal is a conversation that will not ever go in the song, when Aiden first learned about Voltehre, tucked up in an attic in Beauclair. A conversation in which Aiden had asked a single important question, and Lam had told him that he didn’t remember what Voltehre looked like anymore. That had been heartbreaking. That had almost been the most painful part.

And for Aiden to give him this, something drawn by Varin, of all people? It would only make things worse. But he can do something else, something better, finally. Like he’s wanted to for years.

“No,” he says, closing Varin’s journal and climbing to his feet. “I’m going to do it myself.”

Aiden’s drawing skills will never be quite what they were, of that he is sure, despite Lam’s reassurances. Still, he is proud of the progress he’s made over the last few years, proud enough to attempt Voltehre. It’s ambitious, but with time and patience, like any other drawing, he can manage it.

Most of his drawings take weeks now instead of days. He does each one carefully, one slow line at a time, only working on them when he knows his hands can manage it. And on the days his hands are uncooperative, his mind foggy, he sketches small things to keep his body used to the movements. Books and bottles, bowls and swords, cushions and a rumpled fur in the light of the fire. Pages and pages of them.

And at the back of his journal are the beginnings of a face, the beginnings of Voltehre.

His hands and mind are the biggest barrier to getting the drawing done, but so is Lambert himself. Aiden has never had to deliberately hide a drawing from him before, but he hides this one because he must. If he fucks it up, he doesn’t want to have gotten Lam’s hopes up first.

If he fucks it up, and Lam doesn’t know, then he will have other years to give it a shot. Until it’s perfect.

He will never complain about spending time with his Lam, not ever, but sneaking around is a little difficult. And decidedly not fun. Lam spends less time in the labs in the early winter, craving the camaraderie of nights in the great hall or the library. Drinking games with Coën or comparing hunts with Eskel, pestering Jaskier about what competitions the songs about him won or simply just attaching himself to some part of Aiden and letting the sounds of the room wash over him.

Aiden loves it, the way Lam seeks him out whether they’re hear or on the Path. He’s always so quiet about it, a little uneasy, like he’s still not sure if Aiden will want his attention even after all these years. Aiden always wants his attention. He’s the sweetest thing Aiden has ever seen, kissing him softly or holding him close, hiding his face when he inevitably grows embarrassed.

When they met, he’d known Lambert would be tough to crack. He was brash and rude and clearly doing it so no one would get close. Unfortunately for him, it only endeared Aiden to him, made him want to know more, made him deliberately try to seek him out again and again. Still, when he cracked him, when he got under his skin, he hadn’t expected how soft he would be. Or how hard it was for him to let go.

But it’s been decades now, and Lam falls towards him whenever they’re together like he can’t think of being anywhere else. Aiden doesn’t want him to be anywhere else.

He has other drawings he does when Lam is around. A sketch of the terrible trio all cramped together on a loveseat. One of the hot springs, empty and steaming. One of Coën that’s nearly finished, but he waits for his really good days to add the details. Sometimes he sits at a table to do them, and Lam will kiss him on the cheek on his way past. Other times, he’ll be in the middle of the nest, and Lam will curl up behind him and sling his arms around his waist. Or next to him. Or drop his head into his lap and be inconvenient.

Lam’s project for the winter is the same as it has been the last few years: reading as many books as he can on medicine and tinctures and whatever else. All so that he can be prepared when they come off the Path in a few years’ time. He’s so focused on it, journals filled with notes and his labs filled with experiments that he sometimes brings up to their room to show off.

He never thought he’d think it about Lam, but it’s cute. It makes Aiden’s heart pound in his chest. When he imagined stopping, going to an academy and doing something for himself, he never imagined he would have someone at his side. Now, it’s the only thing he can think about.

“Got no idea if any of this actually fucking works,” Lam always grumbles.

“Just send Jaskier out into the cold for a couple of hours,” Aiden always suggests.

“Yeah, I like my head on my shoulders, thanks.”

Winter days pass as they always do, filled with training and whatever tasks Vesemir gives them, their afternoons and nights spent doing whatever they wish. When Lam goes down to his labs, Aiden sets himself up in the library with Varin’s journal and his own, and he works on Voltehre.

The others pay little attention to what he draws unless it’s obvious that they are the subject. Except Jaskier, who seems infinitely curious about everything and anything, always asking what he’s working on. He’s kin, in a different way to the witchers, but kin nonetheless. Even if he knows fuck all Elder.

He’s a useful partner in crime though, as Voltehre’s face slowly develops into something with discernible features, as Aiden sits there day by day with a journal with Lam’s young face bright and open on its pages. He sits across the table from him most afternoons, writing in his own journal and humming lyrics under his breath. A comfortable companionship, one Aiden does not have to pay much attention to.

On an afternoon not unlike the first, with the terrible trio scattered throughout the room with him, he has both journals spread out on the desk. Geralt and Eskel are talking about the pen they’re trying to build Lil Bleater, one she is determined to escape from, and Jaskier plucks a new tune on his lute.

It’s a good day, an almost normal day, where it feels like nothing at all has changed. His mind and body have grown used to working with a single eye by now, but he does remember the struggle of the early days, trapped in the confines of a sorceress’s home in Maribor. Even now, he has to be careful when walking up and down stairs, when pouring something, when he’s training and sparring with the Wolves. Everything is still a little bit off, but he knows now.

Even when he’s drawing, he has to stop sometimes, wait for his eyes and his brain to catch up and figure out where his journal is in relation to his hand. Sparse seconds, but they feel long. It’s not so difficult, but it does take more thought than he wishes it did.

Three weeks in, he’s working on Voltehre’s eyes. They’re not something Varin put as much focus into, but they’re some of Aiden’s favourite things to draw. There’s a lot that can be seen in the eyes, in a single look—in the crinkle at the corners and the slight widening of his pupils.

He wants to capture the kindness he knows Voltehre had, if nothing else.

And then he hears the familiar sound of Lam’s footsteps in the hall outside, the thudding in time with a gait Aiden had memorised years ago.

He makes eye contact with Jaskier over the table, flipping his journal back to the drawing of the hot springs, and sliding Varin’s one across to him. Jaskier says nothing, just shoves it underneath the stack of his own like nothing is amiss.

It’s always jarring to so suddenly stop working on one thing and swap to another. It’s not the first time, considering how often Lam comes to find him. He takes the precious few seconds he has left before Lam comes in to remember where he was up to with it.

Lam shoves the door open, and Aiden knows the moment he steps in that he’s got a single goal in mind for being here. It’s the same expression he has when he talks about his potions or tinctures or salves, when he shows Aiden something he learned from his books, when he’s brewing them something on the Path. Focused and excited and thinking about little else. A sharp gaze and a twitch to his lips that might bloom into a blind and manic grin, if Aiden’s lucky.

He watches with a fond smile as Lam makes straight for Jaskier, a bottle in his hands. Jaskier looks up from his scribbled lyrics as he approaches, a confused frown on his face. “Can I help you, dear?” he says.

Lam shoves the bottle at him. “Taste test,” he says, and Aiden can’t help but chuckle at him. “You wanted new vodka.”

“Oh, I did!” Jaskier replies, and he snatches the bottle. He takes a long sip and pulls the bottle away from his mouth with a disgusted sound. “Oh, that’s terrible!”

Lam frowns. He looks like he wants to punch him. “You picked that shit, bard, blame yourself,” he growls. Aiden can’t reach him from here, can’t put a comforting hand on his wrist like he so badly wants to.

“I am, trust me on that. How unfortunate,” Jaskier says, he’s frowning at the bottle, not even looking at Lam when he hands it back. “There’s still plenty of the regular stuff, isn’t there?”

“What happened to the wine I brought you?” Eskel asks, heaving himself up from the nest. Geralt grunts from among the cushions like he already knows the answer.

“I drank it all already.”

Lam snorts. “Of course, you did,” he mutters, but he hands Eskel the bottle when he reaches for it.

Eskel pulls a decidedly nicer face when he takes a sip, curious and thoughtful. “Weird,” he says. “But I like it. Think it would work well in Gull?”

And, oh, there it is. The twinkle in Lam’s eye when he finds something new to play with, the grin that lights up his whole face, a little wild. “It might, actually. Worth a fucking shot,” he replies. He snatches the bottle back, glares one final time at Jaskier, and then he’s darting for the door again like he was never even there.

He stops in the doorway, and Aiden watches him turn back around, stride back to the table, and stop at his side. The giddiness on his face has settled, Lam’s usual impassive expression washing over it. A face that had once been hard to read, but Aiden knows now: it’s all in his eyes.

“Alright?” Aiden asks, and he reaches for the bottle. Lam lets him take it, frowning at him when he drinks. It’s fine, not Aiden’s thing, but not as terrible as Jaskier was making it out to be. “Not bad. Don’t think I’ll drink the Gull you make from it though.”

“Yeah, not what I was coming over here for,” Lambert says.

“Oh? What for, then?” he asks, but there’s a familiar look in Lam’s eyes, and Aiden already knows the answer.

He tilts his face up to meet him, humming into the soft kiss Lam pulls him into. There’s a hand on the back of his neck, squeezing gently, and Lam pulls back to quickly kiss his cheek. His beard brushes against Aiden’s own, a little uncomfortable, but he knows that if he points it out Lam will just hold him in place and rub his chin on his cheek until he shoves him away. Again.

“That’s looking good,” Lam says when he pulls away, nodding at the drawing of the hot springs.

Aiden makes a hedging noise. “The lines are wobbly still,” he says.

“And? Fix them later,” Lambert replies. And, well, Aiden can’t really argue with that, can he?

Still, he laughs at little, because sometimes it really is that simple, and he pats at Lam’s hip in thanks. “I’ll see you at dinner then?” he asks, eyebrows raised, letting Lam know that it’s not really a question. If Aiden didn’t ask, he knows Lam would spend days stuck up in his lab, forgetting to do anything more than sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“Yeah, yeah,” Lam grumbles, but he squeezes Aiden’s neck again before he draws away. He’s gone a second later, leaving the door wide open behind him. Aiden scoffs at him in his wake. Absolutely no manners. He wouldn’t have him any other way.

When he turns back to his journal, Aiden finds Jaskier already watching him, an unreadable brightness in his eyes. “Are we a… a… theatre performance to you or something?” he asks, lips curling around a word he does and doesn’t know.

Eskel snorts where he stands at Jaskier’s shoulder, and the bard swats him. “Or something,” he says, and he slides Varin’s journal back across the desk.

With a roll of his eyes, Aiden goes back the drawing of Voltehre, soft and kind eyes staring up at him, and he gets back to work.

Aiden has a string of bad days the week after, the first in a very long time. He wakes up agitated, he stays agitated, and when Vesemir has them training with signs, his fingers can barely move into position even when Eskel tries to help him. And that’s if he actually manages to get out of bed. Some days, training is over once he does, and then he gets stuck at the table after he finishes eating, struggling to do the things he has been asked to do despite knowing he has to do them.

He snaps at Lam. He snaps at Jaskier and Geralt and Coën. He chucks his journal onto the desk and ignores it for three days. And the whole time he hates it, hates himself for it, and he curls up in bed with Lam and barely says a word. Because if he does, none of them will come out right, not when he’s like this.

He’d been doing so well. It’s been months since he’s been like this, and that had only lasted a single day. This doesn’t seem to stop, not even when he calls Lam a stupid bastard for daring to be in the same room as him. At least it’s happening here, where he’s safe, where they’re both safe.

Lambert is as patient with him as he can be, but he never lets Aiden get away with the shit he says, snapping back just as much and storming away when Aiden really hurts him. And when Aiden eventually calms down and apologises, he lets him back in, every time. There is a part of him that thinks he shouldn’t, given how poorly he sometimes treats him, but is so damn glad he does.

The Caravan would probably like him more now, broken as he is. He’s said it to Lam once, and the look on his face meant that he never said it again. Doesn’t stop him from thinking it though.

He hates it. He hates it so much. A single bullshit contract and he’s reduced to this. A body that can’t do what it once did and a mind determined to rage at anything and everything. He is better, yes, that means fuck all when he’s screaming at people he considers friends. Screaming at Lam.

He’s a mad fucking Cat, but he is still not what they ever wanted him to be.

Days and days later, when the agitation settles into something manageable, he is determined to stop being an anti-social arse. He goes down to the hot springs with Lam and Coën, letting the boiling water and steam soothe his aching muscles and raging mind. He floats on his back in the middle of the pool until Lam tells him to stop flashing himself, then he laughs at the way Coën very politely does not look in his direction.

“Gotta show off at any opportunity, don’t you?” Lam grumbles, slinging an arm around his waist under the water when he paddles over to him.

“Don’t pretend you weren’t watching. Besides, I wasn’t doing anything,” Aiden replies. “I’m simply enjoying the, uh, this. Coën’s the one acting like he’s never seen a cock before.”

Coën scoffs from the edge of the pool. “I like to choose which cocks I see, thank you,” he says.

“I feel like I should be offended,” Aiden mutters, and Lam laughs against him.

He feels calmer now, body soothed by the water, and he lets Lam pull him from the hot springs only a few minutes later. His hair drips over his shoulders, too thick to dry quickly and too long to not brush over his clothes when he puts them back on. He could cut it shorter, but he’s grown attached to the length, and he knows Lam has too, running his fingers through it whenever he got the chance.

The three of them wander down to the library, where laughter already spills into the hall. Lambert ducks away to grab more White Gull, and Aiden grabs his journal from where he left it days ago. Soon, he’ll get back to Voltehre, but he cannot bring himself to even look at it right now.

The trio are crowded around one of the loveseats, Jaskier curled against Geralt’s chest with his lute and Eskel stretched out above them. Aiden settles amid the furs, back propped up by a cushion, and Coën splays next to him, seemingly content to nap in whatever twisted position he lands in.

The nest had made him laugh the first time he saw it, the last thing he expected from a pack of big, strong Wolves. They were a bit like puppies sometimes, curling together in a nest of furs or playfully roughhousing in the courtyard. Sometimes, Aiden doesn’t know what to do in the face of it. They are so unlike the Caravan. They call each other brothers, when Aiden hadn’t even thought to consider Gaeten and Kiyan friends.

Still, he’s not complaining. He likes how close they are, how easily they’ve let him in, even when he was at his worst that first winter. He likes the nest too, how warm it is, how easy it is to settle under a fur with his journal in his lap. Which is exactly what he does.

He has the drawing of the trio open, hoping to add some of the foundational lines, ones that will be easy to go over again if he needs to, when Lam comes in, arms laden with bottles of Gull. Aiden isn’t going to pretend getting properly drunk isn’t one of the better parts of wintering in the freezing cold and crumbling keep. He’d gone decades without Gull when he walked away from the Caravan. And now he can have it whenever he wants, and Lam is damn good at making it.

It makes him worse, when he drinks, his body too loose and lazy to find the right words, to move the way he wants, but that’s his choice.

“New batch,” Lam says, handing Eskel a bottle. “Got that shit Jaskier didn’t like in it.”

He wanders over when he’s done handing out his latest experiment, kicking at Aiden’s ankles the way they so often do to each other. It’s always easier for him like this, asking without speaking. And Aiden moves as requested without even thinking about it, shoving the fur aside and shifting his legs apart to make room for him.

“How am I supposed to draw like this, hmm?” he asks once Lam’s settled back against his chest. He takes the bottle of Gull when it’s offered to him, and while the taste isn’t exactly something he enjoys, it’ll do the job for the night.

Lam sets the bottle off to the side and snatches Aiden’s journal from his hand. Aiden tenses, he can’t help it, and he knows Lam feels it. The last thing he needs is Lam opening it and seeing a half-done attempt at Voltehre, especially here. Lam slows, a warm line against Aiden’s chest, the closed journal in his lap.

“You alright?” he asks, shifting his head back against Aiden’s shoulder, his nose brushing Aiden’s jaw. “Got something in here you don’t want me seeing?”

He asks it like a joke, but Aiden still feels the guilt in his stomach. He so rarely hides things from his Lam—can’t remember the last time he ever did. “I’ve been working on a very detailed sketch of your arse,” he says. It is technically true; he’s just already finished it.

“Fuck’s sake, kitten,” Lam says, and Aiden can’t help but grin at him. Doesn’t seem to matter how often he draws Lam, clothed or otherwise, he still gets all flustered about it. He’s so fucking pretty. “Get a blank page then, I’m not helping you with that.”

“Helping?” Aiden asks, but he still flips to the first blank page he finds, nowhere near the drawing of Voltehre.

Lam makes a soft noise of affirmation, then takes the graphite from his hand, readying himself against the page. “Go on, then,” he says. “What are we drawing?”

Aiden chuckles under his breath, slotting his chin over Lam’s shoulder to see properly. He grabs Lam’s hand and he immediately knows it’s going to be the worst drawing he’s ever done. “Hmm, I think… Jaskier,” he says.

“Hey!” Jaskier cries, pushing himself up from Geralt’s chest. “What did I do to you? This, after you called me ‘ugly flower’ the other week? I’m feeling very targeted, I’ll have you know.”

“You’re the one who calls yourself Dandelion,” Aiden replies. It’s not his fault he loses his words. It’s also not his fault if he sometimes pretends to forget the word when he knows it will be funny. “You can’t blame me when I find the easiest way to describe something.”

Lambert’s laughing, almost chortling, and Aiden has to hide a smile in his shoulder. Jaskier glares at them both, then turns and swats at Geralt, who Aiden hadn’t even seen do anything. Eskel smirks at them from up on the loveseat, safe from Jaskier’s ire.

“Alright, alright,” Lam says when his laughter fades, readying his hand again. “Drawing. Get to it, kitten.”

It is infinitely harder like this, moving Lam’s hand along the paper, but it is also infinitely funnier. If he thought his lines were wobbly before, it’s nothing in comparison to the circle he makes Lam draw. He stifles his laughter as best he can and glances over at Jaskier to make sure they’re getting the angles right (they’re not).

Jakier glares at them from the other side of the nest and doesn’t say a word.

Lam stops them every now and again to take a sip of Gull, passing the bottle back every time. Aiden’s not yet drunk enough to feel woozy and giggly, nowhere near it, but he still can’t stop the short bursts of laughter as they draw.

“Wh—Lam, what is that?”

“What? That’s his nose!”

Jaskier makes an affronted noise, and Geralt slides an arm around him to keep him from getting up.

“Stop, stop,” Aiden says through his laughter, and Lam takes his hand off the page like Aiden is doing him a grave disservice. “Let me… Let me fix it.”

To be honest, there’s not much hope for it, but he does give it his best shot with a little shading.

Jaskier’s face on the parchment leaves much to be desired. His hair is a single swooping line and his nose is, uh, bad. It doesn’t really look like him, and it most certainly is the worst drawing in this journal, but he can feel Lam’s chest shaking with silent laughter as they sketch the skinniest possible neck below an impossibly pointy chin, and he can’t find it in himself to care.

He wants Lam with him like this for the rest of his life. Sometimes, he can’t believe he will actually get to have it.

He forgets Coën is sitting close enough to see what they’re doing until there’s a sharp bark of laughter to his right. “It’s, uh, it’s beautiful,” Coën says, and a stick of graphite comes flying across the nest from Jaskier, thudding against a cushion.

“I truly don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this,” Jaskier mutters. And now Eskel laughs, like he can’t help himself, the sound growing only louder when Jaskier squawks and leans up to whack at him.

There’s a fluttering in his stomach, and he has to bury his smile in Lam’s shoulder so often he might as well stay there. Every time he looks up at Jaskier, he finds the bard already glaring back at him, and it only makes him laugh harder. Lam is so focused, not looking away from the parchment unless it’s to drink, snorting any time they draw something that definitely goes against accurate facial proportions.

It’s a good fucking night. Aiden’s surprised Vesemir hasn’t decided to join them for once.

He doesn’t put much detail into the drawing. He can’t, not when Lam has no real understanding of what he’s trying to do, and his own hand shakes too much from laughter, from the drink, from his own inability. Eventually, when it looks roughly like a person with facial features and shoulders, Aiden gives up pretending it’s going to get any better.

“It’s a fucking masterpiece,” Lam declares, and Aiden wants to squeeze him until he bursts.

“It’s definitely something,” he says instead. It maybe looks like Jaskier, if you squint and someone tells you it’s supposed to. He takes a swig of Gull and has to laugh again, because they’ve genuinely made some kind of monstrosity, sometime that looks like it was drawn by a child, but he can’t remember the last time he had that much fun doing something so simple. He turns the journal towards the terrible trio. “Thoughts?”

Jaskier makes a wordless noise, and Eskel hides his laughter around a bottle of Gull. Geralt’s the only one who actually looks at it like it’s something to be analysed. “Best he’s ever looked,” he says, and that only sets both Jaskier and Lambert off again.

Lam tilts his head back against Aiden’s shoulder, laughing loud at the ceiling. Aiden’s not drunk, but he feels giddy like he is, grinning and squeezing Lam tight around his stomach.

“What do you mean that’s the best I’ve ever looked?” Jaskier’s asking, turned around so he can jab Geralt in the chest. “Do you see that nose?”

“Yes,” Geralt says, and then nothing else.

He doesn’t need to. “Wh—Geralt! Eskel, help me out here. Eskel!” But Eskel is cackling on the loveseat, eyes closed and face scrunched. “I can’t believe you two!”

When Aiden looks back over at him, there’s a bright smile on Jaskier’s face and he rolls his eyes when he meets Aiden’s gaze. There’s not any true animosity from him, but there never really is.

Lambert turns his head, mouth brushing Aiden’s jaw, lips spread wide around his laughter. Aiden fucking loves him, more than he ever thought possible. It had surprised him once, the extent of his feelings, how much he wanted Lam with him always, how desperate he had been to get back to him when he was in Maribor. It doesn’t surprise him anymore. It simply is, it’s simply a part of him and will be for the rest of his long life, when they’re on the Path and when they’re finally doing something new.

He has to kiss him then, can’t help himself, because he loves him. Aiden hasn’t been the kind of person to shy away from what he wants for decades now. And if he always wants his Lam, well, he can’t exactly be blamed for that, can he?

It takes him a few more weeks to finish drawing Voltehre, made more difficult by his body doing its usual bullshit and Lam being determined to be a limpet at any available opportunity. Aiden will never really complain, not when Lam is tucked into his neck, safe and warm. But it does make it difficult to do what he wants to do.

Eskel catches him one afternoon. Or, more accurately, actually pays attention to what he’s working on when they’re in the same room. And it’s only because he comes over to say hello to Jaskier that he sees it, Varin’s journal spread open and Aiden’s attempt right next to it.

He’s not recreating the image one-to-one. He doesn’t want to. He’s shifted the angle slightly, tilted Voltehre’s head a little, softened his smile and put more emphasis on his eyes. Small things, subtle things, so that the drawing is his and not Varin’s, but is still the boy it is supposed to be.

“Oh,” Eskel says from over Jaskier’s shoulder. “I was wondering what happened with that. You’re redoing it?”

“Better my drawing than Varin’s, don’t you think?” he replies.

Eskel hums in agreement, no hesitation. “Are you going to redo Lambert too?”

Aiden stares at tiny baby Lambert, smirking up at him. He wonders for a moment what he was like then, if things came easier to him, if he was even a little bit freer. “No,” he says. “I think I prefer drawing him as he is now.”

He’s got more than two decades of drawings of Lam, enough to see the subtle ways in which he’s aged. There are lines on the corners of his eyes now, a tiny bit of grey at his temples that he denies is there. A timeline of their entire relationship through many, many journals, not unlike the one that sits on the shelf in their room, a drawing of himself within and a chronicle of their life together. One Lam slowly adds to over the course of each winter here.

Aiden’s never said it, but he does want to be a witcher that dies in their bed, old and tired and happy. He thinks he deserves it. He thinks they all do.

“It’s looking good,” Eskel says, pulling Aiden away from his meandering thoughts. They do that now, more often than they had before, wander about and struggle to focus on what he needs them to. “Nearly done?”

“I think so,” he replies. Voltehre’s hair is messy, a shaggy mop that sits near his ears. He’s been focusing on it for a couple of days now, trying to get it to sit right. But it’s close. One it’s finished, the only thing left to do is to give it to Lam. That will be the hardest part. He’s ready for any kind of reaction, anger or grief or the weird little ways Lam shows that he’s happy with something.

Or freezing entirely, the way Aiden had that first winter when Lam had shown him the degree to which he had mourned. He hadn’t known what to do with all of that. He’d known Lam loved him, in the stunted way he always said it, but to see it spread out in front of him, written in Lam’s careful hand, so much of himself detailed and known in a way he never would have dreamed of? Fuck, it had almost broken him.

Aiden wants to do this for him. He likes to think he has proven his own love just as much, but there is always more he can do, like giving Lam something of the boy he once had, cruelly torn from him.

Jaskier smiles at him from across the table. “I think he’ll like it,” he says.

“I hope so,” Aiden replies.

It takes him another two good days to finish it, spread over the course of a week. He works on the details, on making sure the hair and the eyes and the shading are right. And when he sits back, entirely finished, he can’t help but feel like something is missing. But there isn’t, because all he’s ever had to reference is Varin’s drawing, and he’s gotten his own as accurate as he can.

It could be his own skills as an artist, still not what they once were. He’s regressed twenty or thirty years, but he’s looked at his older journals and knows his style hasn’t changed. It’s enough to build his confidence, just a little. He doesn’t look at the journals from right before Karadin. He can’t bring himself to.

But that doesn’t seem right. It genuinely feels like there’s something missing, even when there isn’t. Still, it’s a finished as it can be, and he takes his journal up to their room in the middle of a freezing afternoon, Jaskier watching him with an encouraging smile. Lam is off making some kind of tincture; Aiden has time to set himself up, prepare himself for this.

Their room is cold. He lights the hearth with Igni and bundles himself in a thick woollen cloak Lam bought him years ago. There’s a pile of furs on the bed, ready for him to burrow under later that night, and above it, hung on the wall, is a familiar medallion.

And he knows, just by looking at it, what is missing from his drawing.

He still has time, possibly, depending on how long Lam wants to spend in his labs, but he’ll hear him coming. If it’s not actually done tonight, then it’s not done tonight. They still have weeks left of winter, plenty of time.

Aiden sets himself up at the desk, journal open once more. It’s a little inconvenient, having to turn around to check the medallion, but he won’t ever take it from its hook, not unless Lam tells him that he can. It doesn’t matter either that they’re all identical, he wants to make sure he’s drawing Voltehre’s medallion.

Only half of it ends up being visible, the portrait cutting off just below the shoulders, but it’s enough. It takes him an hour, and then it’s done. Voltehre sits there, smiling up at him with a medallion around his neck, and Aiden has to step away for a moment.

He pulls a familiar journal from the shelf, a single sheaf of parchment sticking out from it. When he opens it, his own grinning face stares back at him, and he mourns the eye he lost and the skills he lost with it. Voltehre is less detailed, less confident, than a nervous drawing of himself done awkwardly in a mirror years ago. But it exists, and it’s hopefully accurate, and that’s enough for now.

He can do it again in a few years, when he gets better.

Aiden tears Voltehre from his journal, lays the piece of paper atop the drawing of himself, and sets himself down on the edge of the bed to wait.

He is not often one to overthink. He takes things as they are, makes the most logical assumptions he can, and he learns to read people. He likes to think, after all this time, that he knows his Lam as well as he possibly can, but he still isn’t sure of the reaction he will get.

“What do you think?” he asks the medallion above the bed. “Did I get you right, at least?”

Not for the first time, he wonders if he and Voltehre would get along, if they would even meet if he were still alive. If he lived, Aiden’s sure that he would adore anyone who cared for Lam as much as Voltehre seemingly did. A kind person, Lam had told him. Up here, when everyone was dying around them, and he was still kind.

Aiden smiles. There are footsteps in the hall.

He moves to the desk when the door swings open. He doesn’t want the first thing Lam sees to be the drawing, not without warning.

“The damn goat is on a rampage again, got in the fucking storeroom,” Lam says. There’s a smudge of soot on his cheek. Aiden should laugh; he can’t quite bring himself to. “Coën said you disappeared up here. Bad day?”

“No,” Aiden says, fingers bumping the edge of the journal. “I was working on something. I have a—a—I have something to give you.”

Lam grins at him, surprisingly lecherous for a person who so often forgets that sex is a thing they can do. “A present? When did you even have time to get one?”

That’s the damn word. Present. “I didn’t. I drew it,” Aiden says, and he reaches out to bring Lambert closer, cupping his bristly jaw. He loves the way Lam always leans into it, an unconscious movement. “Thought I’d get some… some pay back for our first winter here.”

Make it funny, make it silly. Ease him into it, keep him calm.

Lam is still smiling, but it’s smaller now, and there’s a little wariness in his eyes. “What did you do?” he asks, and there’s a furrow in his brow. “Aiden—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his thumb over Lam’s cheekbone. “Come look.”

He turns so Lambert can see, keeps himself pressed close to his side, and he feels it when Lam sees the drawing on the desk. Lam tenses, his whole body ramrod straight in a way Aiden’s never seen before, and he’s so utterly silent with every second that passes.

And then, spat out like a gasp, “Aiden? Aiden, I—”

He feels Lam’s body go slack, feels his knees give in, feels him slump. “Oh, hey. Shit, sit, Lam. Sit. You’re alright.”

Lam listens to him like a puppet, collapsing in the chair at the desk only because Aiden puts him there. “You—That’s—” And then he’s looking up at him, eyes so damn wide, pupils narrowed like he’s scared. “How?”

Aiden’s not going to ruin this by mentioning Varin, not now, not yet. He puts his hand on Lam’s shoulder, tentative. “I’ll tell you later, alright?” he says. Weeks later. Months later, when they’re not here for Lambert to rage. “Did I get him right? Is that him?”

“Yeah,” Lam says, choked, painful. Aiden’s heart squeezes. “That’s him. That’s—That’s fucking Voltehre, Aiden.”

“I know, my Lam.”

Lambert’s shoulders are shaking. He has a hand over his mouth and the other hovering over the parchment, over Voltehre’s smile. “I forgot,” he says. “I forgot.”

“You can touch,” Aiden says. He keeps his voice gentle, more gentle than he ever has. “You won’t smudge him.”

And Lambert does, reaching for the paper like he can somehow pull the smiling boy out from within. His shoulders slump, heaving. A wounded animal noise spills from his lips and it’s all Aiden can do to keep himself standing.

“He’s so young,” Lam whispers, voice nearly inaudible, fingers grazing Voltehre’s smile. “I forgot how young we were. He’s—I—I don’t—”

Aiden crouches next to the chair, peering up at Lam, at the distraught look on his face, one he’s never seen before. Briefly, cruelly, he wonders if this is what he looked like when he thought Aiden was dead. He throws the thought aside, hand shifting down to rest on Lam’s hip. “What do you need, my Lam?” he asks, that ever-present question. What was once a push for knowledge is now something safe.

It takes him a long time to answer, eyes locked on the drawing. “A moment,” he eventually says. “I need a moment. Alone. Please.”

He doesn’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, and he has to ignore the pit in his stomach. He doesn’t want to leave. “Of course,” he says, and he drops a kiss on Lambert’s forehead when he stands. “I’ll be in the hall.”

Lam doesn’t look at him when he goes, but Aiden does smile sadly at the medallion above the bed before he closes the door behind him. He hovers in the hall, back pressed against the cold stones, and he tries not to listen to Lambert in their room, the thumping of his heart and the heaving of his breaths.

He’s never been sent away before. Lam tends to leave himself when things get too much, storming away in the middle of an argument. Or he’ll seek Aiden out, hands holding tight and not letting him go for a long time. This is neither of those things, and Aiden doesn’t know what to do except wait. And wait. And wait.

At the very least, he’d gotten Voltehre right. He can rest secure in that knowledge.

Minutes pass, so many of them, and Aiden still waits. He is grateful that Lambert picked a room away from everyone else, so that no one can see him hovering like this. He tilts his head back against the wall, eyes closed, and he listens to Lam’s footsteps pace the length of the room. Once, only once, and then he’s silent again.

And then, finally, he speaks. “Aiden,” he says, his voice muffled by the walls. He says nothing else, but he doesn’t need to.

Aiden pushes the door open again. Lam’s back at the desk, hunched over the journal and the drawing. In his hands is Voltehre’s medallion, his knuckles white around it. He doesn’t look at Aiden, not even as he walks towards him, not even as he slowly drops a hand on the back of his neck, squeezing as gently as he can.  

Neither of them speak, not for a long time. Lam is still shaking under his hand, but his face is near expressionless. Voltehre smiles at them, and next to him is the drawing of Aiden himself. Both of them, side by side, and Aiden’s stomach swoops.

“I love you,” Lambert whispers, and it’s impossible to know which of them he’s talking to.

“Lam—”

Lam turns then, like all he needed was for Aiden to speak, burying his face against Aiden’s stomach, shoulders shaking. His hands dig into Aiden’s hips, medallion jabbing him in the side. Aiden keeps him close, fingers running softly through his hair.

He hears Lam swallow, feels the deep breath he lets out against his stomach. “Thank you,” he says. He’s so quiet. It’s so damn painful. “Fucking hell, Aiden. Why?”

The answer is an easy thing. “You told me once that you couldn’t remember what he looked like,” he explains, and Lam makes a choked noise against him. “I wanted to give that back to you.”

“Fuck. Fuck. I don’t—” Lam turns his head up then, meets Aiden’s gaze. And, oh, his poor Lam. There’s so much sadness in his eyes, wide like they’re trying to take everything in. “I don’t fucking deserve you.”

“Well, that’s a lie,” Aiden says, shoulders slumping at the tiny snort Lam lets out. He shifts his hand down, cups his cheek again, smiles at him with all the adoration he can muster. “You deserve to have him too, my Lam. This was the least I could do. I can, uh, do him again as many times as you need me to.”

“You gave him a medallion.”

“It’s his, isn’t it?” Aiden says.

Lam buries his face in his stomach again, breaths coming out stuttered and long. “Yeah, it’s his,” he whispers. “Can we—Can we—”

“Whatever you need, my Lam. Tell me,” he says. He’s lucky, his words aren’t leaving him. His mind is letting him have this, for once.

“Can we stay here a while?” Lambert asks, gesturing at the drawing. He sounds younger, smaller, like the boy smirking in Varin’s journal. “I just want to…”

He threads his fingers in Lam’s hair again, feels him burrow the way he so often does. Comfortable, he’d told him once, and safe. Contained. “Of course,” Aiden replies. Whatever he needs, always.

Voltehre smiles at them both, full of a youthful kindness. Lam’s fingers graze his sketched forehead, and they stand there, him and Aiden, for a long time, in a comfortable silence. As long as Lambert needs.