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Redania: 1273. Somewhere near Novigrad
Killing Karadin didn’t hit like Lambert expected.
Vengeance, it turns out, doesn’t bring back the dead. Doesn’t assuage grief. Just adds another notch to the misdeeds his soul has to bear.
It won’t bring Aiden back. Nothing will bring Aiden back.
With a heaviness in his step, he returns to the site of Aiden’s grave, the thought of what is happening to his body beneath the earth a crushing weight to his heart, the final straw to an existence that had been filled with pain, and Aiden one of the few bright spots amongst it.
A calmness settles over Lambert, and he gathers as much dry and fallen wood as he can from the area, patiently building a bier large enough to hold the body of his lover.
Large enough for two bodies to lie, side by side.
A pyre for us both.
Timber stacked and stabilised with meticulous precision, he decorates it with the small, wild flowers that Aiden had often picked, sometimes tucking one behind Lambert’s hair with a smile and then…
Soon, Aiden.
Turning to Aiden’s grave, he scoops soil out with his bare hands, dimly aware that finding a shovel would save time, but not wanting to spare the time to find one. The earth gives way easily, far easier than it had when he’d dug this cursed hole in the first place. Has it really only been a few weeks? The hole in Lambert’s chest feels eternal.
Too soon – not soon enough – his fingers hit rock before hitting Aiden, and he brushes soil carefully away from the stone; the more stone he exposes, the faster he removes soil from where Aiden's body should be. From where his body is not. Scrabbling frantically, emptying the grave completely, he digs at the stone with his fingers until blood from beneath broken fingernails drips and spatters onto the rock below, and Aiden is stubbornly still not there.
He climbs from the grave, confused and angry and trying not to panic. He must have the marker wrong, someone must have moved the stone – but no, the stone, Aiden’s mark burned into it with the fiercest igni Lambert could conjure, runs deep into the earth and is undisturbed, as implacable a guardian as the day he had chosen it, a marker that would endure no matter how many centuries Lambert lived. One he would always be able to find.
Aiden should be here. This isn’t like scrambling for that damn potion that you had in your hand two seconds ago for fuck’s sake, nobody just misplaces a whole body. Someone has stolen Aiden. What would anyone want with a dead witcher? Nothing good, it's never something good.
Lambert stares at the unlit pyre for a long time, wanting to weep with grief and frustration, but his eyes remain stubbornly dry. The temptation is there, to just end it now. But he can’t. Not without Aiden. He can’t let him be disrespected like this. Desecrated. Aiden deserves better.
The fate that beckons Lambert will have to wait.
Tired to his very bones, Lambert lies down on the unlit bier and closes his eyes to rest. When he opens them again, he uses his witcher senses, and follows a faint trail of boot prints, weeks old, leading away from the grave and back towards the township.
Lost in a sea of agony, Aiden feels a tug against the arrow burning through his hip and then a an even more excruciating pain, as if molten metal were being poured into the joint. He tries to move, but his body refuses to respond; tries to call out, to scream, but the poison in the arrows has paralysed him, slowed his breathing to less than a whisper, almost stopped his heart, and all he can do is endure. There’s another tug, this time on the arrow embedded above his eye, and then everything goes blessedly dark.
Los Angeles: 1976
When he wakes again, the agony is hardly less. He tries to move, but his legs refuse to cooperate and the pain tearing through his back and hip escalates. His left eye is swollen shut, closed too tightly to know whether or not he can still see out of it. Cautiously, he reaches for his brow, where the arrow had struck, to find an open, gaping wound. Why would someone help enough to pull the arrows out, but then leave the holes?
Fighting the urge to throw up, he pushes himself into a sitting position and turns his head, ever so slowly, encountering only unfamiliar buildings and bright, blinking lights in impossible colors. He’s filthy, covered in dirt, and there's no sign of his pack. He checks the pouches and pockets of his vest for potions, encountering only shattered crystal until his fingers, clumsy and sticky with blood, close on an intact vial. Please be Swallow, please be Swallow…
It’s Swallow. Nothing as good as Lambert’s enhanced version, but Swallow, thank the gods. He drinks it all, pressing the edges of the wound above his eye together as best he can. Silently praying that the damage to his body is not so bad that it can’t be fixed, he drifts back into unconsciousness.
The next time he wakes, it’s to the bright light of day. He’s lying in a street, and the unfamiliar surrealness of what he hopes was just last night, persists, albeit in better lighting. He wriggles his toes, and to his relief has movement on both sides, although the pain that persists in his hip and back is concerning, and his right leg seems to have lost most of its feeling.
He pushes through the pain to stand himself upright, leaning on the wall of a building for support. Carefully, he takes a step forward, testing his right leg, and falls flat on his face when his hip gives out.
Well. Fuck.
The road beneath him is not the cobbles and dirt he’s familiar with, but rather something as hard as stone, but smooth, flat and grey. A step down, and there is a perfectly straight carriageway, neat and black, with eerily white lines down the middle. A loud, sharp, sound, and he turns his head to see a giant mechanical monster roaring towards him. It screeches to a stop, and then burps out an unharmed human.
It’s all a bit much, really. Aiden’s eyes roll back in his head, and he passes out again.
The next time he wakes, he’s drowning in soft, fluffy white bedding, naked, clean, and with a bandage around his left eye. His medallion is gone, and he starts to panic until he sees the chain pooled on a small table next to the bed. Across from him on the other side of the room is another bed, and a woman wearing a strange dress and a serious expression tending to an elderly man.
When Aiden sits up, the woman calls in the direction of the room’s only door, and the man that had helped him rushes into the room.
He speaks in a language Aiden doesn’t understand, although doesn’t seem concerned by Aiden’s confusion, simply gesturing his intent and waiting for Aiden to nod before beginning his examination. Aiden watches him, a little bemused, failing to understand a single word of the man's chatter. When he reaches Aiden’s hip, the man looks at him with concern, and squeezes both his fists together, pointing to his hip and his lower back.
Aiden already knows the bones were shattered, and he nods his understanding. The man stands up, pinching his own arm and holding up five fingers. He pushes his fingers into his arm, and then holds up three fingers. Then touches it lightly, holding up one finger, and gesturing to Aiden’s legs.
He must be some kind of healer, Aiden decides, nodding his understanding, already knowing what the answers will be. His left leg is fine, a five for every pinch. His right, at best a three. In some places, nothing.
When the man points to Aiden’s hip, Aiden holds up ten fingers, and the man gives him a sympathetic smile, pulling a vial from a pocket and measuring a dose out onto a spoon. Aiden smells poppy. It won’t help much, not at a human dose, his witcher metabolism will burn through it too quickly. Not wanting to cause offense to someone so generously intent on helping him, he nods when the man offers it to him.
Examination almost complete, the man sits on a chair by Aiden’s head and gestures to the bandage around his left eye. Again, Aiden nods his consent, marvelling at the gentleness being afforded him. The bandages are unwrapped with care, and the man makes a surprised noise to see the amount of healing that has happened. Aiden puts a finger to a bruise, and tries to judge its age – no more than two days? His eye is still a little swollen, but not so much now that he can’t open it. He does so carefully, and closes his right eye. The room blurs, the man next to his bed no more than a block of color, but he can see. He hasn’t lost the eye completely, and it may yet improve. He heaves a sigh of relief, and the man holds a hand up for Aiden to count fingers. Aiden shakes his head, covers his right eye with one hand and indicates larger shapes with the other. The healer nods his understanding.
“Yungry?” the man says, his tone questioning.
Aiden has no idea what that means, and the man pulls out a strange sort of parchment and a writing implement, and sketches an apple.
Aiden points to the picture and nods. “Food. Apple.”
“Foog. Abble,” the man repeats, pointing to the picture and saying another word that Aiden tries to mimic. He does, then pats his stomach, trying again to convey that he needs to eat. The man nods, and calls to the woman, giving instructions before turning back to his patient.
He points to himself, giving what Aiden assumes his name. Aiden tries to repeat it, garbling it terribly, he’s sure.
“Aiden,” Aiden says.
“Argent,” the healer says back.
“Aiden,” Aiden repeats.
“Arger,” the healer tries again. Then he says his own name again, writing some symbols on the parchment and pointing to them. “Dockerdaven.”
“Dockerdaven,” Aiden repeats. Dockerdaven picks up his medallion and turns it over, pointing the the name engraved on the other side. Lambert.
“Renjck?” he asks. “Reg?”
Too tired to argue, Aiden shrugs. It will do.
When the woman returns with a sandwich and an apple, the man teaches him those words as well, and then leaves him to eat and sleep.
He’s always had an affinity for languages, so it’s not many days before Aiden can hold a simple conversation; weeks, to find out where he is, all the while worrying about Lambert. Will he think Aiden is dead? Come looking for him? Wherever Aiden is, it’s far from the Continent, and he has no idea how he got here. Would Lambert even know where to find him?
When Aiden is recovered enough to walk outside, he finds the mechanical monsters are a kind of horseless carriage. Dockerdaven calls it a car, and feeds it with a foul-smelling liquid at a place with more impossibly-colored lights styled into arcane shapes and sometimes almost recognisable symbols, though they don't form proper words. The car travels much faster than a horse-drawn carriage, only stopping when it needs to be fed again. A sort of fascinating, mechanical magic.
Weeks pass. Aiden's hip and back heal as well as it's going to - which is to say, stiff, and forever aching, and Dockerdaven teaches him some exercises it to keep it limber and strong, for a new value of strength. He learns to compensate, to minimise the pain in the way he stands and walks.
Lambert doesn’t come.
The healer, whose name, Aiden discovers as his language skills improve, is not Dockerdaven, but Samarth – Sam – Dhawan. A Doctor, from a land called India, and the lady, his wife. When Aiden asks why his differences - his eyes, his breathing and heart rate and healing - have passed unremarked, the man shrugs, and explains the prejudice he’s faced since arriving here. Although he is well-off, and came to practice his skills when there was need during a war – the war ended just as he arrived, leaving him with little power to negotiate terms. He is comfortably off, and doesn’t need to work for an income, but medicine is his calling, so he set up an underground clinic to cater to those who couldn’t afford more formal care, hoping to build a community. And sometimes, has to play back-alley surgeon under threat of harm by those operating on the wrong side of the law.
Aiden’s skill with a needle comes in handy. Hiding his Witcher training, strength and stamina behind a deceptively frail, damaged body, he soon establishes his ability to protect Sam and his wife from violence at the hands of his less savory customers. Sam continues calling him Reg, and when Aiden learns to read and write, he realises that Lambert’s name, the writing on his medallion, looks rather like WRENX.
Los Angeles: 1979
Aiden discovers spiked studs, and puts them on everything.
Three years, and not only is there no sign of Lambert, Aiden is unable to figure out how to get back, or even send a message. This world doesn’t appear to have any magic, and although his signs still work, he uses them only sparingly. Sam warns him against exposing himself and helps him find ways to blend in – Aiden’s never told him the details, but with as much as he has learned about Aiden, the good doctor is no fool..
The more Aiden discovers about this technology-driven world, the more his fascination with it grows. He tinkers with early mobile phones, with arcade games; he learns to build, to unbuild, redesign; learns to code, and then hack. By the time Sam’s wife gives birth to a daughter in 1989, he’s been drawn to underground activisim, and in 1990, when things get a little hot in LA after a stunt involving a telephone contest and a Porsche, Aiden decides it’s time to relocate. He starts wearing masks to disguise his distinctive birthmark and scars, and quietly reinvents himself as Reggie, and later, Wrench.
San Francisco: 2021
It’s Halloween, America’s ridiculously overpriced, capitalist version of Samhain, and Wrench is sitting curled up with Marcus on the tattered sofa in the hackerspace to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas together for the sixth consecutive year. Sitara has dragged the others out to a party, and he knows she thinks she’s helping, thinks there’s more going on here than there is, but whatever. What other people think is neither an Aiden problem, or a Wrench problem. Still, it makes him feel some sort of way. Complicated. Anxious. Loved, in a sort of… ‘we're not going to talk about it’ kind of way.
And maybe they should talk about it, but if they don’t, he doesn’t have to think about it, or figure out what the fuck he is doing, because then he’ll have to worry about it, and then he’ll start thinking about Lambert, and it’s not like he ever stops thinking about Lambert, but it’s been forty-six years for fuck’s sake, he’s allowed to move on, and it’s not like he’s even fucking anyone, okay? This is platonic cuddling. The gods – and presumably Marcus – know, he can’t fucking handle any more than that.
He realises how agitated he’s getting when Marcus squeezes his shoulder, pulling him close.
“Ok?” Marcus asks, concern written across his face.
His mask is going haywire, probably. What had he been thinking, creating a piece of technology to hide behind that goes and shows his every emotion to the world? Wrench leans into Marcus’ presence, solid and warm. He closes his eyes and focuses inward, controlling his breathing, calming the perpetual emotional rollercoaster that Cat witchers are cursed to endure.
Marcus waits until he “Yeah, OK”’s back before starting the movie, and Jack Skellington wearing a giant pumpkin-head sings and dances his way across the screen.
Something’s wrong with Jack, something’s wrong with Jack…
Wrench sympathises. The duality between what you are and what you want… what you’re trying to be. Jack and Sandy Claws. Aiden and Wrench.
As they often do, Marcus’ fingers have found their way into Wrench’s hair, scratching lightly, and Wrench suddenly realises that he’s purring.
He stops, holding his breath. Did Marcus notice? Gods, of course he fucking noticed. He wracks his brain, trying to figure out if he’s ever started purring before, fucking mutagens…
“Wrench?”
“Marrr-cus,” Wrench replies, deciding to play innocent.
“Don’t stop.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Wrench says, trying not to panic.
“Okay,” Marcus replies, calm and – Wrench can hear the fucking smirk in his smile, but - this.
He loves him for this. Marcus doesn't push, doesn't ask for more than he can give, never questions the weirdness that just has to work its way out no matter how tightly he tries to keep control. He just lets him… be. Like Lambert did. Meletele, he's got to stop comparing them.
It’s not long before the warmth and security Marcus offers gets the better of him again, and this time, when the soft rumble of a purr starts in his chest, he doesn't stop it.
Wrench is cackling at the idea of a live scorpion inside nesting dolls when the alerts start.
Without thinking, he flips over the couch with more agility than Marcus has ever seen him use, he knows, but he’ll deal with that later because he's muted all the notifications bar one. One he never expected to hear.
“Thought you gave us the night off,” Marcus grumbles from the sofa.
Wrench ignores him, rushing from phone to laptop and finally, with an explosive “fuck”, turns on the news feed to show a man surrounded by riot police in a street that seems to have just borne witness to a violent riot. One building is on fire, another burnt-out.
‘Those scenes are from earlier today, when…’ a reporter is saying; the scene flashes to the FBI’s 16th Street Station facility, reporting on an unknown terrorist they’ve dubbed ‘Zane’.
“Fucking fuck. I know him, Marcus. This isn’t good. We have to get him out, before they figure out what he is.”
“Don't you mean who he is? A terrorist?”
“No, I meant what. He’s not a terrorist, he just has no idea how this world works!”
“This world? You mean America?”
“Yes? But also, to be clear, no.”
Wrench races around the hackerspace, arming himself. It might have been forty-six years, but it’s also fucking Lambert, and he needs to get him away from there, like, yesterday.
“Wrench. Wrench!” Marcus has to shake Wrench's shoulder to get his attention. “You need to do this, we do this. You don’t have to explain.”
“I – yeah. Okay. No, I think I really do need to explain, the problem is you’re not going to fucking believe me.”
Removing his mask, Wrench places it gently on a bench and catches Marcus’ gaze through the blue-eyed contacts that he always wears beneath it, just in case, and lucky he did or he’d probably be getting cut to pieces in a lab somewhere by now…
Marcus’ expression turns from surprise at seeing Wrench's naked face, to confused when there doesn't seem to be a reason for the naked face. Oh, right. Wrench carefully removes his contacts to reveal golden-yellow irises, then narrows his pupils from round to vertical. Marcus gasps, then frowns, and Wrench turns back to his workbench, pulling a box out from underneath.
“Is this a joke?” Marcus laughs. “Ha ha, you’ve staged a publicity stunt, very funny. How'd you do the eyes?”
“It’s not a joke, why would I fuck with the FBI – here,” he stops stuffing explosives in his pockets for long enough to put Marcus’ fingers to his neck. “A normal human heart beats between sixty and one hundred times a minute, a bit less if you’re extremely fit. How would I fake that? And – watch.”
Curling his fingers, Wrench casts Igni, setting fire to the the sofa.
“Wrench! Enclosed space!” Marcus shouts, putting it out with a fire extinguisher.
“Oh, that’s your concern! Not the fact that I just used actual magic? The fires on the news, what looked like a riot – that was all Lambert, he’s – they’ll – Look. Pretend for a minute that somehow, somewhere, genetically enhanced supersoldiers are real, what do you think would happen if one just dropped in from another world and the government got their hands on him?”
“He’s a genetically enhanced alien supersoldier? Who you just happen to know? Wrench have you lost your mind?”
“Yes. No! Well, technically I lost that two hundred years ago, but I’m not crazy. Wait, I am crazy, but not that sort of crazy, this is very real. I’ll explain everything, after we rescue Lambert.”
“Dude, I have... so many questions. Why are they calling him Zane if his name’s Lambert?”
Wrench's agitation increases. “Because he doesn’t speak your language and my name is engraved on the back of his medallion, and upside-down in your language it looks just like ZANE, and the only way they know that is if they got his medallion which means he's either unconscious or, or - and can we go now? Please?”
“We need the others, Wrench. Wait. Be smart about this. You go off half-cocked you’re just going to end up caught – or worse, dead. You can back me up, but I’m the one going in, okay?”
“No – Marcus, he doesn’t speak your language, he knows me! He’s here looking for me, he might kill you trying to escape. Absolutely not.”
“What do you mean my language? Look, if you can communicate with him, you can talk to him through a commlink, write him a note if you have to, but we are going to wait so we can go in armed with more information.”
Panic makes you irrational. Marcus is right. It’s not the first time he he’s barrelled in before thinking, as Lambert would the first person to remind him. Groundwork. Don’t end up dead because some fucker think’s you’re expendable. “Fuck. Fuck. Fine, call the others back.”
“He already did,” Sitara says, stopping halfway down the stairs so that Josh and Ray pile up behind her. “Wrench, mask.”
Fuck fuck fuck. He turns around, frantically trying to remember where he put it down when Marcus, the fucking angel, places gently into his hands.
“Sitara knows?”
“Not everything. Less than you, now,” Wrench says, carefully positioning his mask and waiting for it to calibrate and redistributing the explosives he’s packed into Marcus’ satchel. “It’s complicated. Here, Lambert likes to blow things up even more than I do. And you have to get his medallion back. It’s important.”
Wrench fishes in a pocket, pulling out his Cat medallion. “Looks like this, but his is a wolf.”
Marcus takes the piece of cast metal, heavier than it looks, and flips it over see lettering that looks almost like WRENX on the back. “Lambert?”
“Lambert,” Wrench confirms. “I haven’t seen him in forty-six years, M. I thought I was never going to see him again. I – fuck, this is going to sound beyond crazy.”
“Crazier than alien supersoldiers? Wrench, you’re what? Thirty-three?”
“That’s what your scanner says, M. Who coded my data?”
“You did,” Marcus admits.
“Exactly. Questions: later. Blowing things up: now.”
"Yeah, okay, let’s go. Sitara, can you get me one of those not-a-real person images that looks vaguely enough like this Lambert to fool anyone who’s actually seen him in person? His hair's distinctive, it's all most of them will remember. Josh, get everything you can on the 16th Street Station complex, it’s been years. Last time I went in it was only a temporary site.”
“On it. Go Marcus, we’ve got this,” Sitara says, pushing him towards the stairs. “Wrench, Marcus is in charge. No means no.”
“But –”
“Wrench, I swear I will fucking taser you if I have to keep you here.”
“Fine, but I’m going to hate you later.”
“No you won’t, now get out of here. No killing FBI goons, we had enough trouble last time we got tangled up with them.”
“No promises,” Wrench mutters under his breath, starting up the stairs after Marcus.