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Winter is supposed to be the safest time of year for Vesemir’s boys. A time of rest and respite, a time where they can lick their wounds and pack on weight and slip out from underneath the constant, hateful gaze of the world. A time where he can relax too, knowing that they are safe, lulled off to sleep each night by the raucous chatter in the downstairs hall. His pups, laughing and loud and happy.
It’s the only time of the year that the keep doesn’t feel like it’s overflowing with ghosts.
But Kaer Morhen was never safe for them. Not against the monster that hates their kind the most.
He should have remembered that.
***
The attack comes at dawn.
(It came at dawn all those years ago, too. Humans are smart in this way, to not allow the witchers the advantage of night sight.)
Vesemir is already awake, sipping at a mug of lightly spiced tea and mentally drawing out his plans for the day. Hunting with Eskel, if the boy can drag himself out of bed at a reasonable hour. Then sparring with Lambert, who wants to show off a new style of fighting he learned from his Cat friend. And he promised Geralt he’d help him cook dinner that night—hearty stew and fresh-baked bread, a slow-cooking meal that will give them plenty of time to soak in each other’s company.
He should have heard the humans as they approached the keep. Should have noticed them before the door swung open. But he feels comfortable, with his pups back under his roof. Less alert.
Stupid. Complacent.
He springs to his feet as soon as the door creaks, but by then, it’s already too late. A man’s voice calls out, shouting something in Elder, loud and clear and ringing with power. Vesemir’s legs give out and he falls gracelessly to the ground, gasping around the too-heavy air.
Mage.
Shit.
Running footsteps, and there are people coming into the room, and more people on the stairs, flying up towards the bedrooms—towards his boys, no—
It’s the sacking all over again, except then they had an army of witchers, and this time there’s only four, and Vesemir can’t even fucking move—
There are hands in his hair, yanking him upright, and his head is pulled back to give the invaders a good lock at his face (at his eyes, of course it’s at his eyes, they want to make sure they’re really killing a witcher).
“This him?” the human growls, shifting Vesemir’s head back and forth as if for inspection. Another human, a tall broad man in his mid fifties, skims his eyes over Vesemir’s face before nodding, sharp and tight.
“Aye,” he says. “That’s the bastard.”
Vesemir has no idea who he is. But clearly, they’ve met.
He steps forward, balls his hand into a fist, and slams it into the side of Vesemir’s face. Held as he is by his hair, he can’t even turn his head with the blow. Can only take it, grunting softly but refusing to give the man any more of his pain.
He braces himself for another one, another, another another another until his brain gives up and lets him go—because this isn’t going to be a quick death, is it?—but the man just shakes out his fist and takes a step back.
“Wanted to get one punch in,” he says. His voice is shaking slightly. “For Tobi.”
One of the other men rests his hand on his shoulder, murmurs something too low for Vesemir to make out over the ringing in his ears. The man nods.
“Get him up,” he says, turning on his heel and walking out of the room. Two men duck under Vesemir’s arms and hoist him to his feet, letting him hang between them like a limp doll. He tries to demand an explanation, to ask him what the fuck they want, but his tongue is immovable as every other muscle, sitting heavy and useless in his mouth.
His head lolls back down as they drag him through the hallways of Kaer Morhen, and it’s full of ghosts again, dozens of witchers murdered in the sacking, just waiting for Vesemir to join them. Waiting for his boys to join them.
The humans’ necks are so fragile beneath his arms, and if he can only make his muscles listen to him—
They don’t.
They don’t.
No matter how hard he struggles they just fucking don’t.
They turn down a familiar hallway and Vesemir’s breath catches in his throat. Because of all the places in the keep, this one is the most haunted of all.
“Here,” their leader says, nudging a door open. He pauses for a moment, taking it in.
“Looks the same as it did when we burned this place,” he growls. “You don’t like coming here, do you wolf?”
None of them have stepped foot in the trial rooms since the sacking.
“Don’t like thinking of the boys you murdered, is that it?”
He stalks forward, grabbing Vesemir by the chin and forcing his head up.
“Is that it?” he spits, though he must know Vesemir can’t answer around the spell. “Thought you were nice and safe, after we took this place. Thought you’d escaped the consequences, didn’t you? Thought I wouldn’t find out you were alive. Thought I wouldn’t love my son enough to hunt his killer down.”
His fingernails dig into the soft skin under Vesemir’s jaw.
“You’ve made a lot of piss-poor assumptions, wolf,” he snarls. “But that last one? That was the worst of all.”
He steps into the trial room and Vesemir is dragged after him, wracking his mind for the man’s face. He says Vesemir murdered his son, and surely— surely it’s a misunderstanding, it must be, it—
Tobi.
The name clicks in his head.
A scrawny boy, a small, scared thing that nevertheless showed great potential after his first few months of training. A child surprise, borne away from his weeping parents because that’s the way the world works when you offer Law of Surprise to a witcher. Vesemir was just following tradition, walking in the footsteps of the man that had brought him to Kaer Morhen.
A cruel tradition, he knows that now.
A broken, awful one.
But he did not know that when he took Tobi, just as he did not know that when he took Geralt, or Lambert.
“How convenient,” the leader says, taking in the room with pain-shuttered eyes. “You never even bothered to take down the chains.”
They drag Vesemir beneath a dangling set of shackles and lift his arms so that the leader can lock him into place. And they feel the same, and this place smells the same, and he’s nine years old again, trying to be brave in the face of the grasses.
“You’re scared now, aren’t you?” the man whispers, once Vesemir is strung up. “Wondering what a desperate man might do to you, hm?”
He looks around the room with a smile, letting his gaze linger deliberately on long-ago instruments of the trials—knives and needles and half-dried bottles of potion.
“Well, I’m a big fan of letting the punishment match the crime.”
Scuffling from the hallway, men grunting as though bearing a heavy weight. And then more humans are stumbling through the door, carrying Vesemir’s boys into the room he promised they’d never have to see again.
“You left me with one child. I’ll give you the same luxury.”
No.
No.
No no no, gods, no, he can’t—
The man keeps Vesemir’s head turned towards the center of the room, forcing him to watch as his boys are locked into their own shackles. The smell of their fear blankets the room, thick and heavy and Vesemir is choking on it— never again, he swore they would never smell like that again, not around him.
“You can break the spell now,” the leader says, grinning at his mage. “I want to see them struggle. And the old wolf needs to be able to speak, after all.”
Something snaps in the air and Vesemir can move again, he can hoist himself to his feet and move and fight— but he can’t, not really, all he can do is kick uselessly at the air, spit meaningless threats at the men who have come into his home and leashed him.
The leader laughs and laughs and lets him rage, settles against the wall and watches him with an amused smirk, watches his boys with a wider grin when they join in his pointless fight. Lambert strains his shoulders so hard, Vesemir’s surprised he doesn’t dislocate them, Eskel shouts himself hoarse, Geralt looks the leader in the eye and tells him he doesn’t have to do this.
The smirk fades at that. He gets to his feet and stalks over to Geralt, taking a knife out of his belt as he does so.
“Don’t touch him,” Lambert shrieks. “Keep your hands off of him you rat bastard, or I swear to the gods I’ll shove a bomb up your ass and watch the fuckin fireworks.”
Not Geralt, not Geralt, gods, not Geralt—
The man rests his blade against Geralt’s throat. Geralt just stares him in the eye, calm as anything. Humans can’t smell fear, which means that only the witchers have any idea how terrified he is.
“Were it up to me, I’d end you for that,” the leader says. “But it isn’t up to me. It’s up to your dear old dad.”
He turns around, and there’s something wild in his expression. Something far gone from human.
“So who’s your favorite, wolf?” he asks Vesemir. “I’ll be nice. I’ll let you keep that one.”
And how could he expect him to answer that? How could he expect him to—
Vesemir lifts his chin, keeps his mouth shut, and tries to look as brave and unflinching as Geralt. Based on the leader’s renewed laughter, he doesn’t do a very good job at it.
“Fine then,” he says. “We’ll just have to figure it out.”
He turns to the mage.
“Go ahead,” he says. Another word in Elder, sharp and piercing, and this terrible, ghost-filled room drinks in the screams it has missed for a decade.
“No!” Vesemir shouts. He tugs at his chains, straining to get to his boys, who jerk and dance like puppets at the ends of their strings, their eyes rolling madly in their heads. “No, no, stop—!”
“Choose,” the leader says, folding his arms over his chest and watching his boys thrash like they’re performers in an exquisite opera.
Vesemir can’t. He can’t. He just—he loves them, he loves them all so much, he can’t give any of them up, not when they’re all that he has left.
“I’ve heard that this feels like fire,” the man says. “Or—lightning, is that right?”
“More like lava,” the mage replies. “Only it doesn’t burn up your nerve endings. Doesn’t kill you.”
“More pain than you could ever feel naturally. And it can get worse, can’t it?”
“It can always get worse.”
“Don’t,” Vesemir gasps, well aware that he’s begging. “Don’t— please don’t—”
“Choose, and we won’t have to. Two can die in peace, the third will be free of pain. You won’t make them suffer anymore.”
A sob tears out of Vesemir’s throat, and he strains his full weight into his bonds, please, please please—
Another word in Elder and the shrieking gets impossibly louder. Their eyes have all glazed over, insensible with pain.
“Kill me,” Vesemir pleads. “You’re angry at me, I killed your son, kill me—”
The man laughs. It’s a hollow sound, a bell clanging in an empty cathedral.
“No,” he says. “You’ll suffer as I suffered. Not a bit less.”
Geralt stops screaming. Stops thrashing. Goes limp in his chains, and Vesemir’s heart stops.
The mage bites out a quick word, and the other two fall still as well. Faint tremors wrack their bodies, but Geralt is the worst, shivering like he’s been in the snow for hours.
His senses were always more sensitive than the others.
“You with us, pup?” the leader asks, raising Geralt’s chin to look in his glassy eyes. Tears are running down his cheeks, blood pooling over the edges of his lips. Must have bitten his tongue.
Geralt heaves a shuddering breath. His eyes find Vesemir, and his mouth twitches into a faint smile. He nods, and Vesemir knows that it isn’t for his torturer’s sake.
“So stoic,” the leader murmurs, tracing his fingers down Geralt’s jaw. “So brave. I can see why you’re his favorite.”
He turns to face Vesemir, one eyebrow raised.
“He is your favorite. Isn’t he?”
And all Vesemir can think is that, if he says Geralt’s his favorite child, Eskel and Lambert will die. He'll lose Lambert's fire, and he'll lose Eskel's solid there-ness, and he'll lose Geralt, too. The Geralt he knows—stupidly idealistic, stupidly brave Geralt—will die as surely as his brothers.
So he shakes his head. He shakes his head because that’s all he can think to do—because he boys are hurting, because his boys are dying, because winter is when his boys are supposed to be safe and they’re not and it’s all his fault.
“He’s not? Well why didn’t you say so?”
The knife again.
It flashes almost too fast for Vesemir to track.
There’s a horrible gurgling sound, and the smile drops from Geralt’s lips. A wave of the mage’s hand and the shackles are gone from his wrists, leaving him to collapse on the ground and convulse as blood spills and spills and keeps spilling from the gash across his throat.
Vesemir’s own throat feels like it’s been cut open, raw and red and burning, and he doesn’t realize that he’s screaming until Geralt stops moving.
His head is turned to the side, facing Vesemir, and his eyes are still glassy, and it’s a foggier kind of glass, an emptier kind of glass, and they’re so fucking still. Geralt is so fucking still, a cast aside ragdoll, limbs crumpled and lifeless and covered in red.
There are still screams, and words, furious, deadly words. Lambert and Eskel, pushing aside their own torture, their own fear, to scream out against what was done to their brother. Vesemir doesn’t hear what they’re saying. He doesn’t hear what the leader is saying, or the mage. The world could end, right here and now, and he wouldn’t notice a bit of it.
He just keeps staring at Geralt’s eyes.
They have to move. They have to blink. They have to flash with Geralt’s warmth again.
They have—
Vesemir can’t have killed him. Not with a fucking head shake, when Geralt had survived so much.
He’s vaguely aware of the leader leaving, with a promise to be back for Vesemir’s final choice.
Vaguely aware of Lambert and Eskel arguing over each other, each demanding that Vesemir choose them to die.
Vaguely aware of his boys crying, wailing, trying desperately to comfort each other, to comfort him.
But he still can’t lift his head to face them. He still can’t stop staring at Geralt’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry—”
Geralt just keeps staring at him.
“I love you,” he tries. “I love all of you. I’m so proud of you, and I never told you enough, and—and—”
Eskel and Lambert are silent, save for a few hiccuping sobs.
“I’m sorry.”
They were supposed to be safe.
“I’m sorry.”
He was supposed to keep them safe.