#notw vesemir

[jay-arts-t]

Posting a a little today but really like the whole bit the boys have over calling Vesemir old. They all just collectively agree “old man old man”

It’s even funnier when notw makes vesemir only 70, or really 60 something years older than them since they’re around 4-8 age group. And he only looks like he’s in his 20s-early thirties. I’m sure Lambert started it. One day he just asks “why are you so old?” And Vesemir is left shocked. He’s not that old!!! But then when they get back to Kaer Morhen and the boys are a bit older Geralt finally gets to ask all his questions about Kaer Morhen he couldn’t ask before.

“How old is Kaer Morhen?”

“I don’t know Geralt. Old.”

“Are you older than Kaer Morhen or as old?”

Vesemir throws his boots at him. Then that’s when the whole “*insert item* is almost as old as Vesemir!”

HE HATES IT.

When Ciri finally joins them, Lambert immediately teaches her the bit. She is RUTHLESS with her insults. Vesemir is giving her a history lesson in the courtyard since it’s nice out. The boys are fixing one of the walls in the background. He’s telling her about a war that happened around 600 years ago.

“Do you remember what it was like in that time? Since you were there?” Vesemir wants to crawl into a hole and die in it. The boys are basically toppled over in laughter. Lambert starts choking from laughing too hard. Ciri seems extremely pleased with herself.

It starts evolving further into “oh you wanna know about the conjunction of spheres? Oh I dunno, ask Vesemir he was there since before the conjunction.” And “what was it like when dinosaurs were alive, Vesemir?”

AND IT SOMEHOW SPREADS. He’s in a growing town in southern Redania with Geralt and they run into Jaskier. Now he’s never had the fortune of meeting him, but he’s heard plenty. He’s about to thank the poet for looking after Geralt until Jaskier goes “so I’ve heard you’re quite old! Tell me Master Vesemir, what was it like when kingdoms started to form? How did the royal families come to be in power?”

Vesemir is SEETHING. Geralt just smiles like the little shit he is.

[lassieposting]

not to get all emotional about notw again but one thing i love about the single parent vesemir dynamic is that the kaer morons would end up having a completely different training experience to basically every generation of witchers that came before them.

like. netflix!vesemir seems to grow up towards the end of the golden age of witchering. for him personally, witchering seems to still be a lucrative profession - he makes a very robust living, and he can afford to live in the lap of luxury in his off-hours, but he does also admit that he's built his brand on taking only the most dangerous contracts, which will bring in the most money. deglan, however, complains that he's "down two dozen witchers" in one year because they're struggling enough to take employment elsewhere, as sellswords or criminals. he's down enough manpower that he forces ves, his golden child, to join in with training the baby witchers - a chore he's spent most of his adult life skiving with zero consequences. so like. they're not doing great, overall.

but when vesemir was training, there were still plenty of witchers at kaer morhen, with a tried-and-true system for teaching youngsters. he probably would have had a mixture of academic classes (the three Rs, history, politics, languages, maybe some law? everything he'd need to keep out of trouble in various kingdoms once he's on the path), and then both theory and practical classes for things like alchemy, weapons training, monster lore, etc. there's lots of time spent poring over old bestiaries and potion recipes, lots of rote memorisation, before he's ever allowed to try anything out for himself.

(he's old for a newbie - twelve or thirteen and with zero fighting experience - so he's actually in some remedial classes as a kid. he's in the same group as Luka and Sven, both a few years younger, for all his fighting skills, because he's got a lot of catching up to do. at some point, once he's shown enough promise to impress, deglan gets personally involved in his training, gives him extra lessons, etc. It works out for him - he's a fast learner with a natural talent.)

but at the end of notw, kaer morhen is a smoking ruin, and vesemir and the four surviving baby witchers are? basically on the run. they wouldn't be able to go straight home; the humans are still riled up, and there's no way to know that they won't come back to finish the job if they realise some of the witchers survived. ves is an unparalleled fighter, but he's only one man. they'd swarm him, get around him and kill the boys easily. he'd have to give them time to calm down and lose the thirst for mutant blood before even considering bringing the last hope of the wolf school back into potential danger. so they'd be on the road for? quite possibly a long while.

so the kaer morons don't have access to the massive library at kaer morhen during that time. they don't have a bunch of trainers who've become highly educated experts in their respective fields. all they've got is vesemir. and while he's got a working knowledge of all the things a witcher needs to know, he's only an expert in one field, and that's fighting. he's also still got to work to support them, so the amount of time he can actually spend tutoring is, well, limited. they have to learn on the fly, often by trial and error.

they learn what happens when a witcher overdoses on potions the hard way: watching the fallout of vesemir actually doing it to survive a fight. he's sick as a dog for days, heaving like he's trying to bring up his own innards long after there's nothing left in his belly. they're young, but they know witchers aren't supposed to get sick, and it's horrifying for them. they're not entirely sure exactly why he reacted that badly - not like the long lecture on biology that vesemir got when he was in training - but they sure as shit know they don't want it to happen to them.

they learn healing the same way - by the seat of their fucking pants, more often than not. vesemir uses himself as a practical example, because he's never been all that spectacular at the theory side of things - when he's taking post-battle healing potions, he'll explain which ones he's using and why, or if he has a small injury he'll use it as an opportunity to demonstrate how to properly stitch or cauterise a wound. he's grouchy and short-tempered a lot of the time, sore and tired and with a hundred paces he'd rather be than airing his scars to fascinated and grossed-out little boys, but he does his best, because this, this practical shit, this he can do. they'll need this knowledge, eventually. but there are also times where he comes home on the verge of collapse, using the wall to stay upright and struggling to get out of his armour before keeling over into bed, and they have to learn to keep calm and put that new knowledge into practice independently and fix him up themselves.

eskel learns igni early, long before they're sent to nenneke, because sometimes the fire goes out while vesemir is off hunting or scouting or taking a moment to go out of earshot and grieve in fucking peace, and if he doesn't figure out how to relight it, his little brothers will be cold. he's seen ves do it. he knows how to make the sign, more or less. he just figures it out, trying to replicate what vesemir does until it works. he's naturally inclined towards magic, which is probably why it works for him, but he still works it out by himself.

geralt picks flowers for vesemir when they're on the move, between villages. he knows ves is struggling with balancing everything, and he thinks he recognises plants that he's seen in vesemir's alchemy kit, the ones he makes potions out of. he collects as many he recognises as possible, and when vesemir is stabling the horse at the next inn, geralt tugs his sleeve and hands them over. some of them are useful. some of them are useless, and some of them are poison. ves gets down on geralt's level and shows him how to spot the differences between this white flower and that white flower, and geralt gradually brings him fewer things that would probably make him sick.

lambert doesn't initially learn to fight in a safe, structured class with padded armour and a little wooden practice sword like ves did. he learns to fight by picking fights with eskel and geralt, both a few years older, and getting his arse handed to him, until he figures out how to use their bigger size and greater strength against them. by the time they get back to kaer morhen and vesemir has somewhere safe to actually do some proper training, lambert has already become pretty adept at just…getting out of the way of whatever is trying to hit him.

vesemir gets them all little daggers, for when he's not around to protect them - live steel, a big responsibility for a small child. remus watches how vesemir looks after his gear after a hunt and starts to copy him. vesemir oils his sword, remus oils his dagger. vesemir checks his armour for damage or wear and tear, remus checks his clothes for the same. he'll come sit by ves and just. copy him. eventually vesemir starts showing him how to mend a tear in a gambeson courtesy of the business end of a forktail, and he'll matter-of-factly rip a side seam out of a spare shirt so remus can practice fixing something that ves doesn't have to wear into battle again anytime soon.

just? baby witchers who get back to kaer morhen eventually and start their training proper, only to realise that they've learned a bunch of this shit out of order already just from living on the road with vesemir for a year or two, having to see the really ugly side of his job, and trying to make his life easier. witchering 101 baptism of fire edition for all of them

[linafinsterwald192]

Romantic rp NOTW Ves, my OC Witcher Rundra

Hello! What it says on the tin. My OC: - long black hair, soft face, broad muscular body - exciteable, optimistic, rarely shy (except for when it comes to Vesemir) - has a teasing relationship with Ves, similar personality aside from her being more down to earth and seeing right through Vesemir sometimes Backstory: - Rundra was one of his students (convincing Witchers she can take the Trials and whatnot is exhausting, I tell you... but even more so as a woman) - Vesemir began catching feelings and becoming attracted to her when she became an adult, and hid it away out of pride and stubbornness - Rundra had a crush on him in her teens already, but he told her off for them

I have barely any knowledge aside from the movie itself so if you don't either, that is totally fine.

[farieshades]

What do you think about Geralt and the wolves realtionships?

Forewarning I suppose, that in this case I do ship literally everyone together (with and without Jaskier’s involvement) but for the sake of feigned ‘reasearch’ I suppose I shall try to keep fanfiction out of it for the most part, and in this I’m sticking with Eskel, Lambert, and Vesemir no matter that Ciri could theoretically be considered a Wolf and Gweld does exist in my knowledge, as does Aubry (more so in AWAU than actual reference outside of being killed during the Tournament). Not entirely avoiding fics I suppose, but, you know… 

Geralt and Eskel

Eskel and Geralts relationship starts when they are kids. They grew up like brothers, possibly closer, but many writers take this into them never being far apart from each other. We know Eskel feared for Geralts life when the other's hair turned white, and well, that's sensible considering most times half+ the cohort would be dead. Out of the other two, Eskel is the one that Geralt is probably closest to. His second hand. I’ve not read much in the terms of the progression of their relationship, though I know Eskel mourned him when Geralt vanished and was thought dead. 

Geralt and Lambert

Lambert is that little brother you have that's constantly getting into trouble with the police, probably has fought off a coyote at somepoint, and half the time his stories sound true but you may never know. Lambert's personality is that of an angry cat, all biting and hissing, but when calm, they may just curl against you at the end of the day. Generally, my belief here is that he's protective of what little family he has and to conceal his emotions, he becomes a prick. True, there are great disimilarities, with Lambert, more-or-less hating his fate of being a Witcher while his family has gotten over it (or in Geralts case managed to become famous and beloved somehow). Though Lambert made no secret of his hatred for Kaer Morhen, when the time came to stand in its defense, he did so without a second thought (Journal Entry). He's the bastard of the family who hates everyone but will fight to the death to protect them, and for that, there is some respect. 

Geralt and Vesemir

There is a lot going on with the Vesemir stuff in my head. Vesemir became a father figure to Geralt, but treated all young witchers with harsh affection, a (bad) attempt at both teaching them of the harsh outside world that would await them, and to defend them from 'going soft'. After everything with the genocide happening, Vesemir becomes more fatherly to the remaining Witchers, more... I wouldn't say Kind, but that's the word my brain wants. If we want to believe NotW is factual to the story, which in itself is debatable, he becomes this father figure by force rather than want. Nevertheless, Geralt is respectful of him, probably due to him being one of very few Witchers that Geralt would be looking up to through his life. My very definite, non-professional opinion is that he’s probably a toxic father to have, but also compared to the other Witchers that may have survived the fall of Kaer Morhen, possibly the best one to have survived to train the remaining members of the school.

[limerental]

ok at long last it's time to post this draft of my very belated things I didn't like about s2, unrelated to book accuracy

things i did not like:

Geralt's character arc. Or lack of one. He reads like the same character from the first episode to the last, which is not what you want from your title protaganist. Contrasting with his s1 arc, his s2 arc is entirely flat. He doesn't change and doesn't really realize anything and is not really deeply affected by anything that happens to him.

Geralt and Ciri's relationship. Most of their scenes together felt forced with Geralt delivering fairly wooden, sage lines and not truly connecting to Ciri. I don't buy him as a father figure and am perplexed by the idea that Ciri thinks of him as "the father she never had" given she did have Eist as a child... I would have liked to see Geralt at least grapple somewhat with what a child like ciri needed, especially given how isolated he has been. I don't buy his calm and measured approach to parenting, and he consistently tells Ciri what she should be feeling and refuses to actually listen to her.

Every Eskel choice, obviously. Idk that guy. The choice to make him into a smarmy asshole and then tree him was unnecessary and poor writing. Regardless of book accuracy or not, we barely had time to care about this guy who isn't Eskel before he was dead, and Geralt's lack of emotional reaction to killing him was the nail in the coffin of that plot line for me.

The escalating mutated monster fights and mystery leading to the ultimate boss battle. According to notw netflix Canon, Vesemir had literally seen mutated monsters before but somehow forgot? Anyway, my main beef is that the monsters had no real chemistry or sentience. They weren't sympathetic or interesting, just mindless beasts to be killed dramatically. Which sucks. Cool monster design isn't just "ooh cool scary thing" it's also making something that the audience feels something about. Vereena was maybe the only monster that was true for

The wigs. God, the wigs. Especially Triss & Francesca for racism reasons but a lot of them just sucked

Geralt's fucking contacts

Dermain dying. Let the deaf character of color live, you fools

The fast travelling fucking everywhere. Absolutely zero consistent travelling distances or difficulties. Where's Kaer Morhen even in comparison to cintra? The show seems to make it look like a brief stroll away. Though to be fair this was established in s1... gonna be real awkward when most of s4 or whatever is just months of geralt travelling to the amell pass when he was there and to cintra in s1 in like a blink. Anyway

Geralt bringing jaskier back for what... for fanservice? He didn't even wash his pits man. He's stinky. Love him though unfortunately. For real though "I need your help" help for fucking what, writers? Help to appease the bard fanbase?

Roach recast as a Friesian. Hate it. Reject it. Cannot support it

The treatment of Yenralt. Everything about it. Everything. The fucking disgusting "mine" scene. The lack of forgiveness. The dear friend letter erasure. Their stilted conversations that ultimately said nothing. No Yen apology. Yen pleading to him. His cold, hard indifference as he held a sword to her throat. Nope. No. Naw. Not my Yenralt.

On that note, I said I wouldn't harp on book accuracy but Yennefer and Ciri's bonding time at the temple is one of my favorite Yen parts of the books and I hope dearly that gets reconciled in s3 because seeing all those Yen and Ciri bonding moments repurposed with Yen not truly feeling them but manipulating Ciri for her own purposes broke my wee heart.

Probably more that I am forgetting! But that covers my main criticisms. A whole 9 months late lol

[lambden]

even though jaskier/vesemir isn’t my thing at all, i do think the comedic potential is huge. solely because i’m a diehard truther that vesemir fucked filavandrel in NOTW. could you imagine. could you fucking imagine. filavandrel finally reuniting with vesemir after all the time apart and then hearing about his pettiest, most irritating enemy: the bard who took HIS lute and used it to spread (at first) anti elf propaganda because he wanted to ride some witcher dick. Oh my fucking god could you imagine how irritated he would be to discover that vesemir even knows jaskier at all, let alone the sheer fury when filavandrel realizes that he fucked that old man

[vesemirsexual]

okay trying not to laugh tho at the NOTW thing like…they really gave vesemir a whole gay best friend and then killer him off…yes, yes that’s definitely how you do a #diversitywin

[blossomdapple]

16 and 18 for the hot takes

Thanks so much for the ask!!

Since no fandom was indicated I'll default to The Witcher ^^

16. You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Aiden lmao. I keep hearing about him on Tumblr and AO3 and at first I thought he was someone's OC that become popular (cuz that happens in fandoms sometimes) but apparently he's a character who was mentioned ONCE in The Witcher 3 yet I seem to see far more content of him than of characters like Triss, Calanthe, Dara, Coen, Renfri etc

I get it, people project onto characters that are essentially blank slates but his popularity relative to characters with far more screentime and characterization in other media is honestly a bit ridiculous 

18. It's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

NIGHTMARE OF THE WOLF. Unlike Blood Origin which everyone knows and (unfortunately) hates, no one in the fandom seems to even know what NOTW is which is a shame cuz I really enjoy the movie. Sure the timeline and lore are inconsistent with the show it's supposed to be the prequel to but besides that, I think it's entertaining and offers an interesting look into Vesemir’s backstory and events that happened decades before the show

I like how it characterizes Vesemir in a complex way. Plus I love Illyana and Luka as characters and I recommend it for the animation alone

[ladycibia]

Nightmare of the Wolf’s honey cake made me insta hungry, 100% would steal it in full view of tw3′s guards

[graciegra]

Vesemir kissing 70yo Illyana is peak immortal romance

[srapsodia]

“Make ‘em somethin’ more”

Thinking about purpose, costs, and internalizing harmful lessons.

[bamf-jaskier]

+

+

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The Lake House

Nightmare of the Wolf, 2021

[lassieposting]

So this was meant to be a little headcanons post about Vesemir's main relationships over the years, but it got wildly out of control so here have five little ficlets instead

ILLYANA

Vesemir is six when he decides he's going to marry Illyana.

He's never known a life without her in it. She's four months his junior, his playmate practically from birth. He pulls her pigtails and chases her with worms, and she doesn't tell his father. He plays house with her for countless hours, letting her henpeck and berate him the same way her mother henpecks her father, and doesn't complain. When they're nine, her father succumbs to the wasting sickness, and she's forced to grow up; she takes on chores of her own, becomes mature and responsible and levelheaded in all the ways Vesemir is not, but her eyes still light up when he leaves stolen honeycake beneath her cot in the indentures' dormitory.

He's not giving up on her - he's not - when he runs away to join the witchers. He always intends to return to her, like he promised that day by the frozen lake. He'll take the most dangerous contracts, make the kind of coin they could only have dreamed off as impoverished brats, and she'll have her lake house, her painting, her wine and food and whatever else she's decided she wants in the intervening years. It never occurs to him that she might not be there when he gets back.

She isn't.

She writes before his Trial of the Grasses, and isn't that just a note and a half to go out on? Forget me, Vesemir, she says, as he's fucking throwing up his own insides in a pit surrounded by dead and dying boys.

(He's not a complete moron. He knows she didn't write that letter - not by her own hand, at least. The old master never taught any of his indentures to read or write. Vesemir's learned at Kaer Morhen, but Illyana's not had that opportunity, and she's got real elegant handwriting for someone who's only just learning to write a few words. No - at best, she dictated it. He's...not surprised, in the end, to hear that her new master's family had a son who cared for her. He's just surprised that a pampered nobleman was thoughtful enough to give a servant girl that kind of closure.)

He doesn't expect to survive the Trial, but he does. Mutagens burn through his blood and remake him from the ground up. Four survivors, in his training class. Him and Luka. Rennes and Sven. The lucky few.

He goes out on the Path, and he does his best to do as she asked; forget me, Vesemir.

Since he was six, he believed he'd marry Illyana.

He doesn't.

FILAVANDREL

Vesemir is in his late twenties when he meets Fil, barely out of Kaer Morhen. He's got two or three years out on the Path, and he thinks he's a seasoned hand, because he's young and dumb and overconfident.

It's his first time going after a higher vampire without Deglan backing him up. He's not a dullard, he's done his research, but he's inexperienced, and he stands his ground where he should've dodged. It happens. He feels his ribs break, feels something puncture, chokes on blood. Sheer animal panic takes over, and for the first time in his life, he turns tail and flees from a fight. The bastard laughs, jeers, as he runs for his fucking life.

(He'll go back and take the fucker's head, later, better prepared and with a plan. He's paid well for it, but he comes away from that hunt with a hefty coin purse, a livid new scar, and a whole new respect for the lethality of his chosen career)

Fil stumbles upon him toppled facedown in the dirt at the side of the road with his horse huffing nervously at him as he bleeds out in the muck. Devastatingly romantic, as first meetings go.

It'll be a while yet before the Great Cleansing, but Fil already has every reason to hate humans. He's only marginally less hostile towards witchers. He's got shit to do. Somewhere to be.

He stops anyway.

He saves Vesemir's life. Nurses him back to health, such as it is. Hunts for him. Cooks for him. Straps up his ribs so they'll mend clean. Watches over him while he sleeps. Helps him lift his head up to drink a vial of Swallow whenever he needs it - the round bottle, he asks for, since Fil doesn't know shit about witcher elixirs. Bullies foul-tasting, fouler-smelling elven remedies down his throat that dull the agony to a bearable pain and make it hard to keep his eyes open.

He's...touched, might be the word. Fil is aloof and prickly and pretty bossy for a guy who looks like one punch could lay him out, but he's also...well. He's kind.

And fiercely intelligent, when Vesemir manages to get him talking in the evenings. And funny, in a serious kind of way. And oddly striking in a certain light.

Which, no, wait - that's probably the blood loss talking.

...right?

They part once Vesemir has healed enough to be able to stay in the fucking saddle without keeling over, and honestly, he's a little disappointed. He likes Fil. Fil's company, he means. The - the conversation. You know.

He...maybe realises a few things about himself on the way home.

He speaks to Deglan about Fil when he gets back to Kaer Morhen. Or. Freaks out a little at Deglan about Fil, might be more appropriate? He'll laugh about it, one day, looking back - Deglan doesn't do feelings, and he spends the entire conversation looking like he'd rather feed his own dick to a manticore than hold Vesemir's hand through any kind of emotional revelation, but when Vesemir runs out of steam, the old buzzard heaves a heavy sigh, throws back his entire glass of wine, and - like it pains him - grits out, "Look, young feller, if it's bothering ye this much, just fuck the elf and get it over with. Ye'll either enjoy it or ye won't. Either way, problem solved."

Which makes sense, actually. So when he runs into Fil again, several months down the line, that's exactly what he does.

Well, sort of. Fil knows what he's doing and Vesemir doesn't, and also Fil is a bossy pain in the arse, so he sort of...takes the reins and then just never gives them back. But it turns out Vesemir is - hm. Kind of into that, actually. It's educational, and fun, and apparently wins Sven thirty crowns in a betting pool Vesemir didn't even know existed, so whatever.

(He'll repay his life-debt eventually, in Cintra. He's just finished killing a territorial and directionally-confused water hag who found her way into the bowels of the castle through a fucking sewer tunnel. He emerges via the castle's gaol, and he's following a Cintran guard to his sizeable reward - royal contracts are always lucrative - when he catches Fil's scent coming from one of the cells, overlaid with sickness and infection and fear, and the strange scents of a dozen other elves crammed into the same cell. Witchers aren't supposed to get involved in political conflicts, but...it's Fil. Political neutrality be damned. He rips the door off its hinges with a blast of aard, and guides the captive elves out of the city via the tunnel he's just oh-so-helpfully de-hagged for them. The guard...well, he gets rowdy, and Vesemir deals with him, fast and efficient. Deglan, when he finds out, is furious, which is fine, because Vesemir isn't proud of it either. He knows he's broken the guild's code.

He'd do it again anyway.

Of course he would. It's for Fil.)

LUKA

Luka is the first friend Vesemir makes when he arrives at Kaer Morhen. He's a few years younger; a scrawny, loudmouthed runt of a kid, angry at the world and everything in it, with an unfortunate habit of starting shit with boys twice his size. He calls Vesemir a stupid son of a bitch, that first night in the stables when Sven asks for his story, because he's the only one in their initiate group who volunteered to become a witcher, and Vesemir bristles, lunges up and knocks him flat, and Luka grins savagely at him from the floor, wipes his split lip on his ragged sleeve and tells him, "You hit like my Ma. Learn to throw a punch, and maybe you'll live long enough to get out of here."

They're in the same training group - Vesemir is older, but he's never held anything more dangerous than a butter knife and he can neither read nor write, so they're in the same boat. He throws himself into training with the kind of motivation that only comes with wanting to be there, hours upon hours of drills and tracing letters with his pointer finger while he sounds them out like a small child, memorising monster features and alchemy ingredients, hanging on his tutors' every word. Barmin pairs him with Luka for sparring, and Vesemir tends to pull his punches against smaller opponents because it's, you know, unfair, but Luka is stabby and bitey and so fierce that he can take Vesemir two bouts out of four, and well, Vesemir can respect that.

He saves Luka's life in the Red Swamp, and something changes; Luka becomes his friend. When Luka wakes, Vesemir is perched on the end of his bed reading Illyana's letter. Luka rasps, "You saved my life," and Vesemir says, "Nah. Ghoul got in the way, I was aiming for you," and from that moment, they're inseparable.

They start sharing a bed early. It's purely common sense at first - Kaer Morhen is cold for unmutated boys even in summertime, Luka is skinny and underfed; it makes sense to let him burrow into Vesemir's side and share body heat. Then, after the Trial of the Grasses, the survivors are moved into a dormitory and...well. Luka is far from the only one having night terrors. Vesemir doesn't mind Luka crawling in beside him, shaking, pressing close like he's trying to get under Vesemir's skin. He thinks he's dead half the time, poor bastard, trapped in his own rotting corpse, and that's a lot worse than any of the nightmares Vesemir has, so he lets Luka sprawl over him and listen to his heartbeat and they get through those fucking months together.

Luka has known he liked other boys since he was small, and Vesemir has known Luka likes other boys since...gods, sometime before the Trial. It's not a big deal, and he's far from the only one in the keep who'd rather tumble other witchers. But when some of the older boys, newly-minted witchers back from their first year alone on the Path, let Vesemir tag along to go drinking and whoring in Ard Carraigh when he's about eighteen, Luka is weird and awkward about it for days, almost like he's sulking, as though he doesn't go about stinking of sex half the time himself.

Vesemir is highly intelligent, see. But it's...it's kind of a witcher thing to not be very bright, about all that feelings nonsense. It never crosses his mind that Luka is jealous.

He gets older. Deglan takes a personal interest in his training; he's an arse, but he's one of the best, and Vesemir hears him bragging to the other witchers occasionally - my lad this, my lad that. Vesemir's own father never bragged about anything he did. It's nice, to be worth that kind of pride.

And before he knows it, he's old enough to apprentice, and Deglan takes him out for his first year on the Path. It's tough for him and Luka, that year, to suddenly be separated from someone they've been joined to at the hip for near on a decade, but for Vesemir there's the distraction of the job - Deglan has him doing all the work an adult witcher would be doing, claiming that he's "only there to keep ye from gettin' yerself killed, young feller", and it turns out witchering is exhausting. But he's earning decent coin for the first time in his life, and Deglan teaches him some smart cons for when times are hard, and...he's good at it. Really, truly good at something, like he always wanted. Deglan has to intervene a few times, when a monster's about to eat him, but not half as much as he expected to need to, and Vesemir comes back to Kaer Morhen that winter with a new confidence and independence that make him feel like a seasoned warrior compared to Luka and Sven.

Luka missed him, desperately. And it turns out they don't quite know how to be two halves of a whole, anymore. That's...a tough few years, figuring out how to be two people, instead of one. And somewhere in the middle of it, Vesemir meets Filavandrel, and that's a whole fucking journey of self-discovery, and suddenly a few quirks of Luka's, in the way he acts around Vesemir, that he's never thought twice about start making sense.

When Luka is ready to apprentice, Vesemir starts hassling Deglan early - let me take him. Deglan is wary - Vesemir hasn't been a grown witcher that long himself, after all, but he has enough of Deglan's favour and trust that the old buzzard gives way. "If he gets killed because ye're arsin' about, or showin' off, ye'll carry that for the rest of your life. Take. This. Seriously."

And Vesemir does. He works Luka hard, but he steps in sooner than Deglan did for him when Luka needs help, and they spend their evenings flashing hard-earned coin in taverns. They work well together - not as two halves of a single whole, but as...like good food and fine wine. Both serve perfectly well alone, but...they're better together.

And he's less oblivious now than he was, when they were younger. He notices the little sideways glances Luka shoots him when he's bathing or changing his shirt, the light-hearted comments hovering just on the safe side of flirtatious, the sulking and the cold shoulder whenever he spends the night in a barmaid's bed. He brings it up after Luka cockblocks him for the third night in a row, chasing off the blacksmith's daughter with scowls and barbed remarks, because...well, because as it turns out, Luka has never been particularly subtle about his feelings; Vesemir has just been blind. He asks if there's anything Luka wants to tell him.

There is.

NENNEKE

After Kaer Morhen is sacked, he looks for somewhere safe to take the four leftover brats Deglan charged him with. He tries Kaer Seren first, because the Griffins aren't the worst, as other schools go, and they'd have all the facilities necessary for training young witchers, but that's a bust. He turns to Fil, who's hospitable enough when Vesemir shows up on his doorstep with four skinny, hollow-eyed little wretches trailing behind him like every man's worst nightmare, but he's barely got enough resources to feed his own people, and witchers eat like horses. It's Fil who points him to the temple, actually - the one place he knows of that will take in pity-cases longterm, even freaks like elves and mutants.

Nenneke is a mere junior priestess when Vesemir shows up with the boys. They're a fucking mess, he knows that - it's a little over a year that they've been on the road, never staying in one place for long, trying to always stay one step ahead of the rampant anti-witcher sentiment sweeping down from the north. The boys are twitchy and skittish - that's his fault, he knows that; he's been working while they travelled, because he has to, nobody else is going to earn coin to put food in their damned mouths, and that means he has to leave the whelps alone and vulnerable in a rented room somewhere for days at a time, where it's a benefit to them - no, where it's essential to their fucking safety - to be wary of humans. And he's become a brusque, grouchy bastard in that year, hard on them and harder on anyone else who comes near them, because it's -

It's been a lot. To - to deal with. Humans and - fucking mages - they all look like threats now. And he's the only thing between those kids and getting strung up in the fucking street like the vermin the humans think they are.

Anyway, the temple takes them in, because Melitele is a sucker for punishment, he guesses, and he's introduced to...gods, a whole fucking host of priestesses and acolytes, none of whom particularly stand out as anything other than probably not dangerous, and one of them is Nenneke. She's bald and beautiful and speaks with a strong accent he can't quite place, and apparently she likes brats, because she goes down on one knee to introduce herself to Lambert, and - well, with the benefit of knowing her a little better, he can surmise she was probably going to magic him a fucking...flower, or something, to win him over, but at the time...she opens her hand, palm-up, and he smells the scent of magic, and he reacts. It's not as bad as it could've been - he seizes a fistful of Lambert's little cloak, drags the boy back behind his own body and snarls at her to back off in a tone that sounds half-feral even to him, but he doesn't attack her or anything - but that one interaction is enough for them to take an instant dislike to one another.

It stays that way for a while.

She inserts herself into their lives in a truly infuriating way, always offering to teach the boys or play with them or take them down to dinner, and - it's not that he doesn't want the time alone, he does, he really does, but they're his fucking kids and he hates letting them out of his sight, hates leaving them with anyone, especially a gods-damned sorceress.

(Druid, she tells him firmly, the first time he calls her that. Apparently the difference is that she wasn't trained at Aretuza. She learned magic from...well, a fucking dream, or something, he doesn't know. He doesn't really see much of a difference, not for a long time.)

And she has a lot of opinions about his - he's loath to call it parenting - how he deals with the whelps. He's too hard on them, she insists. Too cold, too detached, too grumpy, too heavy-handed, too, too, too. He doesn't let them 'be children', whatever that means. Hovers too much. Doesn't show them he loves them enough. As if she could do any fucking better, in his place.

(She can. She does. He kind of hates her for it)

And the thing is - the temple is good for them. He's not so up his own arse that he can't see that. Geralt used to go days at a time without speaking a word, and now he talks to the priestesses in the halls. Eskel is less stressed, less overwhelmed with the pressure of keeping order while Vesemir works. Lambert is -

Lambert is Lambert. But he's Lambert a bit less offensively and a bit less angrily than usual.

He doesn't settle as quickly as they do. He's still prickly and tense and tired all the fucking time, because he doesn't really sleep. He catnaps, but...someone needs to be on guard, to protect the boys. He spends a lot of the night hours pacing the temple's empty, candlelit corridors like a wraith or brooding on a balcony with a decent vantage point over the temple grounds, and the rest of them in the hallway outside the bedroom the boys are sharing, meditating or reading or - or just staring blankly at the fucking pages of some ancient manuscript because he's read the same sentence five times already and the voices of his ghosts are too loud to keep out any longer.

Nenneke likes the late hours. She volunteers to go around lighting all the candles in the evenings, and he's...he's not sure if she just doesn't go to bed, or if she gets up multiple times in the night, but it's not unusual for her to amble past him in her house robe and slippers. She claims to enjoy the quiet. The peace.

Vesemir barely remembers what peace felt like.

One day, she catches him on the edge of dozing off on the bench outside the boys' door. He startles, lurching to his feet and taking a step to the side, blocking the way into their room, as she appears in the archway, the candlelight blurring around her like a halo. She stops there for a moment, looking at him like she's trying to figure him out. "They are safe here," she tells him. "And so are you."

That's all she says to him that first night, but over time, they get closer. She finds the gaps in his armour and pokes at them, and bit by bit, he lets her in. She does what she can to heal them - all of them. She teaches Eskel to control his signs. She works with Lambert on his temper. Does her best to mediate between Lambert and Vesemir, and teach them both some communication skills. When Vesemir can't sleep, she sits up with him, lets him exorcise his demons bit by painful bit until he doesn't have to clench his jaw to keep from welling up at Luka's name or flinch at Deglan's anymore.

(She'll tell him, eventually, that she's been skimming his surface thoughts when she spots him late at night. She's watched him replay it over and over: the moment he realised he'd as good as murdered Illyana, a hundred torturous scenarios where Luka dies alone and terrified, your fault your fault your fault. She'll tell him he's torturing himself, that he wasn't to blame for half the things he's laying at his own door, that he shouldn't be so hard on himself. And - he hasn't cried, hasn't let himself cry, since he heard Illyana's heart stop beating, because someone has to keep their shit together in this pack and it's not going to be the kids, but he will then, with his face buried in her shoulder like a child.)

They'll never be fixed, not really. Wounds like these don't ever truly heal. But they get to a point where Eskel starts laughing again, and Vesemir's smiles reach his eyes, and he starts sleeping again - in his room, on good days, or with his head in her lap while she fusses with his hair on bad ones.

Lambert even calms down some, which is nothing short of a fucking miracle.

Eventually, he gets to a point where he's able to focus on properly training the boys, and that's not something he can do at a temple. She - sensible and levelheaded as ever - points out to him one night, as they're sprawled out together in the dark, that the best place to train young witchers is probably a witcher keep. Has he ever considered returning to Kaer Morhen?

And that's what they end up doing.

MIGNOLE

He goes out on the Path again once all the whelps are done with their training, because he doesn't know what to fucking do with himself in Kaer Morhen anymore without them. He's not the only surviving witcher from before the sacking - there are stragglers, a few of them, who hadn't been home for the attack, and who'd made their way back once they heard that the keep was occupied again - but he's the only one who's been basically chained to the castle for the past...oh, however many years. And now his manacles are all grown up and witchering independently, and he realises that at some point, they'd become his whole fucking life.

He was someone before he became a single father of four. He'll just...adapt, like he always has.

For all that he's been out of the game for what feels like a lifetime, he hasn't changed that much. He's still fit, still strong, still fast, still startlingly handsome even if he does say so himself. There are some changes, of course. He's grown his hair out some. He's less picky about his contracts, because he hasn't had that luxury in years. And maybe he keeps an ear out in taverns for any stories of one of his boys passing through this way. So what? He's still him.

Getting back out there feels like coming home.

There's this one Oxenfurt nobleman he takes a job from, proud owner of most of the properties in an outlying district that's crawling with barghests. He's harmless enough - what Deglan would've called a killing lord (the ones who get you killed out of stupidity or inexperience, rather than a murdering lord, the ones who get you killed out of cruelty or greed) - but he's got a daughter who's a fucking menace. She's young and studiously inclined, and the first time he sees her she's chasing him out of the house with ink on her nose and several rolls of parchment tucked under her arm.

She plans to come with him, she announces, like it's a fucking given. She's never seen a barghest up close. She means to draw one for a paper she wants to submit to some academic journal. Perhaps he would be so kind as to identify its organs for her.

Which. Fucking what

He refuses point-blank, and she argues with him in what must be the most amusingly upper-class way anyone ever has - he's "terribly vexing", apparently, and he swears she actually stamps her foot in frustration under those long skirts at one point. She's got this thing where she seems utterly oblivious to just how dangerous that kind of excursion would be. Why would she be in any sort of danger from a living, hungry barghest? She'd have protection.

Him. The big strong witcher.

That's. Hm. Well, he's flattered, if nothing else.

He does not take her to draw living barghests, because he is not a fucking idiot. But he does return with a corpse slung across the back of his horse's saddle - a whole one, rather than just a head ("Gods, how frightfully unsettling it is!"). Because - because she has a pretty little button nose and long eyelashes and she looks up at him like she has no fear of him at all, and he's charmed, damn it.

He's wondered, over the years, what might have been different if he'd sought Illyana out sooner. She was only in her forties when her husband died. All those years, they might've -

Well, maybe Mignole reminds him of a road not travelled, is all.

Her father pays him generously, though he bemoans Vesemir's having brought "that gods-awful thing" back to the house, and Vesemir goes out to fill up on expensive Redanian brandy and equally expensive tobacco. It's the little things, see. The small luxuries he's had to miss out on, bringing up kids.

It's still early when a matronly woman approaches him at the bar, hooded and cloaked, and delivers a note penned in an elegant, swirly hand. It's Mignole, of all people, asking if he might be so kind as to return to her father's townhouse to identify some barghest organs that don't match anything found in a normal dog.

His eyebrows make for his fucking hairline, because that is a blatant lie. Barghests have no such unidentified organs. Either Mignole doesn't know what a kidney looks like or she doesn't want to see him about the beast.

He goes, because he's never been one to turn down an opportunity, and honestly her determination to go after what she wants is refreshing in the mincing, swooning world of noble ladies.

He hops the wall into her father's lavish garden, because he's 90% convinced this is not intended to be the kind of visit she'd want her father to know about, and spots her, reading a book by candlelight on the window ledge in one of the upstairs rooms. She startles when he tosses a pebble at the glass, but her face lights up when she spots him. He's able to climb the trellis right up to her window, and she opens it to let him in.

He doesn't leave until dawn. She doesn't ask him about the fucking barghest once.

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

The shot of vesemir fanning himself with a handful of contract flyers with coins raining down around him....... whore

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

Finally watched Nightmare of the Wolf! Here are my thoughts in two memes:

Basically it was ridiculous, doesn’t fit in any known existing canon, and I loved the shit out of it. XD

[erzsebetrosztoczy]

Simple as it is, we have now:

Papa Vesemir

And Daddy Vesemir