#1k-5k

My name is Jean Prouvaire. 

I am thirteen years old. 

I like poetry. 

I like flowers. 

I like art.

These are all truths about me, if slightly skewed ones. My name is Jean Prouvaire but my friends call me Jehan. I am thirteen years old but I won't be for long. I am a poet and I like flowers and art but to be honest, none of it matters. 

There is one greater truth that trumps them all, because I might change my name from Jean to Jehan and I might grow older and I might switch hobbies but there is one truth that is constant. One greater truth that defines me, I suppose. 

I am Jehan, and I can hear people's thoughts. 

I always knew, I think. I didn't "develop" my ability at any point. I think I was just born with it—born cursed, as some would say. From the first memory I have until today, people's thoughts are quietly abuzz around me. Or—not so quiet, sometimes.

Sometimes, it is overwhelmingly loud. 

Sometimes, it's terrible and I clasp my hands over my ears and I scream. The world shakes with me when I scream.

And I remember being six years old and volatile (as six year olds often are) and being upset for some reason or another. I don't remember why. I never do. But the special-occasion, expensive wine glasses started to tremble in their spot on the top shelf, and I could hear the china of the plates clinking together in the cabinets, and my mother rushed to console me. 

I thought she was concerned. I think she was just scared.

I always thought the best in people, I suppose. I always felt like I had to. Like my optimism was how I was going to repent for my existence. Like the constant loneliness and fear weren't enough. It wasn't too bad at home, though. At home, I had to watch out for my telekinesis more than my psychic abilities, because my parents learned fast that I needed to be locked inside for my own safety.

That changed at school. 

I hated school. I screamed and I ran and I vomited and it was all too much. None of the other kids liked me, but maybe what happened to me after was worse. 

I understand now—after years of repeating affirmations to myself, thinking about those childhood years with a certain detachment—that what she did was wrong. That denying a child companionship was wrong. That being too scared of a child to touch him, some days, was wrong. That packing a child up, sending him alone to live with one singular tutor with a quiet mind when the child needed friendship the most, was wrong. That leaving a child there, even if he had begged for quiet and to just be alone, was wrong. 

Those first few months in that big house were easy. I appreciated the quiet. I nearly cried from relief a few times, when my mind finally went silent as I slept. I entertained myself with books. The ones where I couldn't see what everyone was thinking were my favorites. I started writing poetry about the noise inside my head, even if it had gotten quieter. 

There was a ghost in the house, but I couldn't hear her thoughts, so I didn't mind. My tutor was a drowsy little man, exactly why my parents had chosen him. They cared, in some sort of distant way. As long as they didn't have to be around me, around the weird little kid who knew too much about too many people, they would put in the effort. As long as I couldn't hear their thoughts—

—gosh, can't he just keep it to himself—

—what was he thinking, running out like that—

—can he hear this? Can he really hear everything—

—I hate him—

—I wish he was never born—

—they tried their hardest to make me comfortable. It was around here when I developed my ironclad belief that it matters not what people think, but what they do. What they say. That the beauty that they try to put into the world matters more than the darkness in their heads. I still believe it. Everyone has had bad days. But I was a child, and I could hear how much my parents hated me. 

My curse skipped their generation. Some days, my worst days, I wished it hadn't.

I talked to the ghost sometimes. My tutor hated her. I didn't know why. When I asked her, she got quiet. She got sad. I hated making people sad. Sometimes, I thought it was easier talking to people whose thoughts I couldn't really read. Sometimes, like this time, I knew it was harder. "It's because I'm a monster, little one," she'd finally said.

"I don't think you're a monster. You're just a ghost."

"A ghost and a psychic, little one. That's good as a monster to him. That's good as a monster to me."

"Does that mean you think I'm a monster too?" I sniffed, feeling a little bit sad. Here was another person in my life who I thought liked me, but no one likes monsters. I was ten and not too bright but bright enough to recognize that she had just called me a monster too. 

She was silent. Then she sighed, kneeling down in front of me, as I started to cry softly. "Oh, little one, I didn't mean that. We're not monsters, okay? We're people, same as everyone else." 

I sniffled and nodded, but her words still hurt, in the kind of gentle way that my parents' negligence did. I knew that I was some sort of abomination, but it struck me then that I might have been the same as the vampires and werewolves that snarled and bit and drew blood, and it hurt me. 

My name is Jean Prouvaire. 

I am sixteen years old. 

I live in a big house with a ghost and a tutor and no one else. 

I like poetry.

I like flowers. 

I don't like the quiet. 

My ghost calls me Jehan. The tutor doesn't speak to me by name very often—it happens, when there's only two people speaking to each other—but he alternates between calling me Mr. Prouvaire and Mr. Jean. I say, often, that my name is Jehan, but it doesn't really matter when I only speak to two people. 

I've just turned sixteen and I keep writing these, almost like timestamps. As I read the notes from years ago that seem to be farther and farther away, like the Jehan from then is only a memory now, preserved in these slips of paper, I am gladder and gladder I started making these slips. I half-mourn the Jehans that I've forgotten. 

I grew into the big house but my footsteps still echo in the hall. My neighbors moved out a few years ago and the ghost's thoughts are just a comforting buzz. It's me, alone, in my head, and it's lonely. It's all I ever wished for and it's lonely. 

I got better at poetry, or so I hope. Most of it still ends up as kindling, though. I am a teenager and half-angry, half-sad, and so I think it's only natural I don't want there to be a record of my thoughts. 

I still like flowers, and I'm just glad that there's no one here to judge me for it. There's not a lot to judge but I still fear it. I fear it like a pair of fangs slicing into my skin, draining me dry and only leaving a psychic behind. 

I don't like the quiet. I hesitated before I added it to the list, but—

But it's been eight years since I spoke to another person. My tutor is under the impression I want to be confined in here, to have all our groceries delivered to our doorstep and he was right eight years ago but he's not right today. The big house with its echoing feels like a vast prison sometimes (like a maze I can't get out of), and when it does, I run outside and talk to the animals. It makes me feel insane but I'm a psychic so what's another brand of insanity?

I've gone half of my life without talking to more than the same two people. It feels like I've lived and died here, but I know it's wrong. The ghost has lived and died in this house with no people for company, so I know I'm lucky. I know I'm alive. Without the ghost to talk to, I fear I might not know.

A few months after my sixteenth birthday, my tutor moved out. I'd apparently become respectably educated, by any means, and I was a "bright student" so it was okay that I was "graduating" early. 

I didn't have a graduation ceremony. My parents didn't come. My tutor just packed his bags and went, and my head was a little quieter. Quieter than even silence, I thought, because I'd never known silence but being with my ghost's, my neighbors', and my tutor's quiet, muffled thoughts were the closest things to silence I would get. 

The groceries still come. My ghost hovered over me worriedly. "You need to go out. You need to talk to the living," she told me, and I said fine. 

I dialed the number of one of the men my parents had taken me to meet once, a lifetime ago. 

They took me to meet a lot of specialists, back then. Dr. Thatcher had diagnosed me with auditory hallucinations, and got uncomfortable when I rattled off what she ate for breakfast that day. She called in her colleagues, shaken. Dr. Levine and Dr. Keller didn't have answers for me either, but Dr. Keller told my parents that if they weren't going to accept 'auditory hallucinations, mental hospital recommended', they'd have to go to fortune-tellers and the like. 

And my parents did. (I remember seeing in their thoughts white walls and utter silence, slop for food and invasive medical procedures. Who recommends a mental hospital to a six year old? I remember my mother hissing internally. 

It made me happy, a little. To see psychic-related anger not be directed at me, but like a shielding blanket wrapped around me.)

When the MRIs and the scans failed, my parents gave up and took me to ghost-talkers and tarot-readers. They called me a psychic—every single one of them, although some used different terms—and it was helpful in that I knew who was faking. My parents didn't fully trust my ability, but whenever I whispered that they had no idea what was happening, they took their opinions with a grain of salt. 

And every single person we talked to was faking. It was at this point, six years old, that I started to hone my ability, although I'm sure that was not my parents' intention. I learned how to find the answer to my questions without invading privacy. I learned that physical touch helped with this greatly, although it came with the downside that my parents refused to touch me anymore. I learned how to access memories. 

I went to "real doctors" for a year. I turned seven in an MRI machine. I went to supernatural "doctors" for another, two years of testing total. 

Like I said, they took me to a lot of specialists back then. 

I'd half-forgotten all of them, except the man whose phone I was dialing. This man is special in that only he was right. 

"You can hear other people's thoughts. They aren't auditory hallucinations. Ask around in your extended family if there's a record of this happening—it's usually hereditary," he'd warned me quickly. Then he pressed a slip of paper into my hand. "A phone number," he'd told me. "You might be able to help someone with this ability of yours, Prouvaire." He smiled. "Isn't that nice?"

And I'd looked at him, paper clenched in my fist, because I'd heard whispered stories of this. Of the people who called themselves hunters, who hallucinated the same as I did, only they hallucinated monsters and ghouls and vampires. And I was seven, and I hated vampires, and I ran. 

I kept the number, though. I brought it with me to the house, and my ghost explained that hunters were real, and she made me promise not to get involved with them, because it was too dangerous and I was an eight-year-old child. 

But I am not an eight-year-old child now. "Hello," I said when he picked up.

"Hello. Combeferre here. Who is this?" he said, sounding nice and professional. It was strange, not knowing what he was thinking. Behind the layer of smooth detachment, what was he thinking? 

"My name is Jean Prouvaire," I said after a too-long pause, the words stilted on my tongue. I hadn't had to introduce myself to anyone in eight years. "I am a psychic and I'd like to help."

Combeferre was never one to turn down a good deal. 

He sent me cursed dolls and I drew ghosts out. I helped them. My ghost showed me how to do it at first, but I insisted on learning how to do it myself. 

I talked to the ghosts a lot. It helped. I healed. 

"You're lonely," one ghost told me right before she went. The words were gentle, and I'd already known it for quite some time, so it didn't hurt.

"I know," I'd responded, weary and happy to see her off into a kinder beyond. (I was right, too—an angel would tell me, later, that the Heaven of human souls remains untouched, and I was so relieved then. I was worried, with how he was talking, that I had sent my ghosts up into a world of cruelty that he described. At least they were happy.) 

"You don't have to be lonely," the ghost finally said after a long pause, and stepped into the light on a sunny, glowing afternoon. I gripped my tea mug and I smiled, a deep kind of warmth settling into my soul like it always does when I help the ghosts pass on. My ghost appeared then, looking upwards out the window into the sun. She wouldn't pass, not until we were both ready, but she seemed to accept it then. That she would pass, some day. 

Then she turned to look at me, and she frowned. "What's going to happen to you when I'm gone?"

"Maybe I'll have made friends with one of the hunters by then," I said, smiling. "And the ghosts will keep me company. They're nice. Some of them stick around after they're ready to go."

"I'm worried," she sighed. "I'm worried you'll be lonely."

"I've always been alone."

"I know." She drifted over to me. "It drives weaker people insane. It would have driven a weaker person insane years ago," my ghost told me. "But you are not weak, Jean Prouvaire. You are stronger in your mind than almost anyone."

You are not weak, Jean Prouvaire. It becomes my mantra. It becomes my reason to keep trying, to wipe off the tears and try again and again. It becomes my reason why I'm so determined to befriend this young, blond hunter, because I'm sure that we have a lot in common. (He flinches away at every touch. He presses himself into corners when I come in. He is scared and he knows I can see it, but I'd never tell, because I am scared too. 

We are hunters. We are all scared.)

You are not weak, Jean Prouvaire. It becomes the piece of her that I carry around when I come home and find her gone, and the blond hunter and his mentor telling me you're welcome, there was a ghost inside your house, did you know? Well, now she's gone, so you don't need to worry. 

And I flew into a rage at them—what better way to show my strength, I suppose, and I screamed. The plates inside the cupboards clinked again. I trembled and my world shook with me. "You're the monsters!" I remember screaming. It didn't shock Feuilly, the older and wiser one, the mentor. He assumed that she'd tricked me, somehow, into loving her, when she was the only one who loved me for eight years. 

She had nearly raised a child and she was gone. She half-raised me and she was gone, so I screamed at them. 

Enjolras, the young blond hunter, almost took my words to heart, and I'm sorry to say that I was happy to see it. I was angry at him when he shook it off at the screamings of someone who will thank him for it later. I will call him a monster in my head, over and over again, and I will not regret the words for too long of a time. 

I will remember these words later, holding my friend's hand and looking through his memories about a pair of ghost children that his partner (Grantaire, who he's in love with) didn't want to salt-and-burn. I will remember them, when he thinks about it, tossing and turning and wondering why death needs to turn humans monstrous. 

And I will find that there is a special kind of strength in pushing forgiveness into his mind. To let him know that I forgive him for all of it, because he did what he thought was best, and I cannot hold that against anyone. He won't know when I forgave him, but I can pinpoint it down to the moment.

I will stop holding my grudge once Feuilly dies. I will forgive him for it all, half because I know my ghost would have wanted me to, and half because I am the one who finds him in that hospital, after Feuilly was killed. Combeferre tells me he's almost certainly dead, but I don't believe Combeferre because I know Enjolras and he would have felt it the greatest betrayal to the world to die now. Most of all, I would have felt it. And we are not friends yet but something sparks when I drag Enjolras back to the house. 

We become friends, slowly, painstakenly—we become friends through a lot of time spent too close to each other. We become friends because I hold him there until his heart heals, and something about not being alone—having a living, breathing person with me—heals a lot of my loneliness too. 

When he leaves, I hold on to the hug for an unnecessarily long amount of time. I'm scared of what it'll be like to return to a completely silent house again. I'm scared, so I hold on tighter and I know he feels it. 

When he lets go, he tells me to get a cat.

My name is Jean Prouvaire but my friends call me Jehan. 

We can be friends, if you want.

I am twenty-one years old. 

I have a cat and I love her more than anything.

I have one friend, maybe two or three, and I love them to death.

I have friends now and I told them to call me Jehan. I have friends now. 

I am twenty-one and old enough to buy alcohol, but Enjolras looks at me and he's thinking about Grantaire going half-comatose a few months before (and he still doesn't know what happened, no one does except Jehan and Enjolras has decided he's going to respect Grantaire's privacy and he knows I wouldn't tell him anyway) and says please don't. 

I laugh and agree because Enjolras has only ever had two friends, maybe three, at any point in his life that I've known him. He buries the "before" too deep for even me to see. Enjolras has had at most three friends, and we both know that he and Grantaire are friends now, and he doesn't want to see another one of his friends lying on a bed, drunk and unseeing. 

I got that cat Enjolras was talking about and she makes me happy. I named her Minerva, because she seems smart and I thought she'd enjoy the allegory to the old Roman goddess of wisdom. She loves me and her thoughts aren't loud and she's not scared of me. 

And it's still insane to me, sometimes, that I have friends. I love them. I'd go to the end of the world for them. But I still don't love them as much as my cat, of course, because my cat is soft to pet and unfortunately none of them have that going for them. 

A few months ago, I met Grantaire. Grantaire is an angel and he is miserable. But that doesn't deter me, not a bit. He might mock the hunters for what they do, but he is far worse off than they are, even put together they do not breach his level of  sadness. Which is saying something. 

When I joined the hunting community, I could see that I was the only light they had. I had to be happy because no one else was. I liked being happy, of course. Who doesn't? But I didn't love the obligation. But even those feelings fade in time. Or, more like I figured out how to be happy enough for my miserable friends, and unhappy enough that the happiness was genuine when it came. I thought about my ghost until it hurt. I thought about my loneliness and I figured it out. I got a cat. I raised the cat. I asked Combeferre to give me ghosts possessing objects, because I am kind, and I wanted someone to be kind to these dead children. And I am kind because I learned to be kind. 

When there is no one to look through your mind and pour gold into the cracks in your soul, you learn to pick up the bucket and pour it in yourself. 

There is still sadness in me, though. As much as I love my friends, they are not great at keeping up contact, and maybe that's why I love Minerva more than them (which is half a joke—I don't rank the loved ones in my lives). There is still the crushing loneliness when Enjolras doesn't text for months and Combeferre calls me "Prouvaire" again and neither of them ever visit. I'm working on it, though. I am pouring gold into my cracks and praying it does not tarnish. 

Luckily, I am the psychic. (Unluckily, no one knows to worry about me until it's too late.) Luckily, I piece myself together without involving anyone else. And it works. I can do it. 

Of course, that's until I align my mind with the angel and he starts looking through my head, because I love him and I trust him and he needs someone to trust him, right now. And I know he can see my sadness some days. 

But here's the thing. I am happy. These are my friends, and sure, they might die, but I have friends. And I love them. 

I have come very, very far from the scared, lonely child I once was. I have come very far from masking it with smiles. But I have not stopped. 

The scary thing about being a psychic, the only psychic, is that no one can see inside my head. No one can make me face my thoughts. And I am as tired, as lonely as anyone would be in my position. But I learned how to be kind. I learned how to be gentle even when I wanted to be angry, to shatter china and expensive wine glasses and throw things at people. 

Still, even with all my struggles and all my pain, it turns out I'm healing. Feuilly comes back to life but I'm healing. I'm doing my best and almost always, that's enough, and that's a blessing. 

I cannot forget my power. I cannot forget my abilities. But I am reassured that it is not a curse, in Enjolras' blasé way, like there's no other answer, in Combeferre's gently sure manner, and in Grantaire's scoffing at every terrible thing I say or think about myself, and the way they all help me gently push it aside every time it comes rearing back until it doesn't. Until there is gold in my cracks and it won't tarnish, not for a very long time, because their love is like varnish. I am preserved in my happy state and it is because they loved me. 

I have come very, very far from a six-year-old rattling china plates in cupboards. I have experienced oppressive noise and oppressive silence and loneliness and friendship and mourning and everything in between. 

I am Jean Prouvaire, but my friends call me Jehan. I am a psychic but it does not define me. I am a psychic and that only defines me if I let it. I am a poet and I like flowers. I have a cat and I love her. I have friends and I love them. 

It was a delicate game that they played, dancing on a knife’s edge in barefoot summer rains.A light push in either direction would send them both into a free fall, anger and violence for months on end until they simmered and cooled enough to embrace and cling to the other’s company like a child to a blanket. A push could be as simple as a beg for another evening or as forceful as a fistfight. It was a dangerous dance that worked in their favor most days. They were determined to make it work; so it did.

* They rode at each other’s side, horses trotting along toward the next podunk little town big enough to have a decent inn. They hadn’t seen another traveler in days and even Lambert was aching for a good bed to lie in. Naturally it had to rain. “If you hadn’t insisted we check out that embankment we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Aiden grumbled, his hair was plastered to the sides of his face and neck. He should have looked like a half drowned rat... or cat. It wasn’t fair, he looked like a painting.“I’m sorry that I have some half decent morals!” He added a mutter under his breath of “Fucking Cat.” “Your morals got you a sprained ankle and no pay for a job that should have gotten us at least twenty crowns a piece, sweetheart.” He… had a point. It wasn’t even as though the drowners were near a village. They were three hours from the last washing post for Melitele’s sake. But… no. He was not admitting defeat.“Better than a dead kid next summer. Hell, what are you complaining for? You’re the one who's been bitchin’ about a bath.” “Yes. A bath. A wonderful, warm, lovely bath- not freezing rain and a muddy river. Melitele’s tits Lam!” Aiden was a good man, he was. A damn sight better than Lambert most days but the man could complain for hours . Lambert would be paying some inn keeper for a bath that evening; he simply knew it.  Even still… he reached over and flicked water from his gloves at the Cat’s face. “You’ll live.”

* “Duck!” Aiden hit the forest floor as an arrow whipped through where his neck had been just moments before. He rolled left and popped back to his feet in time to catch a bandit with his dagger, just under the man’s ribs. He made a satisfying sound when he hit the ground. Aiden didn't have time to revel in it. “Stupid thing, robbing a witcher. Robbing two? You must have been top of your class.” He spun in time to see Lambert knock the last man in the clearing unconscious before he took off into the trees. Branches broke as the archer took off post haste, seeming to realize that he was now in a very poor position. Lambert caught him before Aiden could take the first coin pouch off their would be assailants. Lambert was… harsh. He kept his gentle smiles and laughs, all his soft pieces that the world hadn’t yet managed to beat out of him close to his chest. Covered in layer upon layer of thorns and armor. He would cut his way through a hundred men before he let someone see the things he considered his weaknesses. Aiden had, somehow, managed to slip between those defenses at some point. He wasn’t sure when. Despite the rage that he carried in his chest Lambert was a good man; he didn’t take contracts on humans and he rarely killed them outright, a bit of maiming or disfigurement was well within the cards but he refused to make use of a grave. Except where Aiden was concerned. Except where the people who he loved were concerned. He’d asked, just once, why the death of a human was the line. Why after everything that life had thrown at him and all that he had done in return that was where he put the marker. Lambert had been half asleep and full of good whiskey at the time; so the answer was honest, too much so. “Cause I’ve got the upper hand no matter what. It’d be like beating on a woman or hitting a kid and I ain’t got any plans on being like my father. That’s if it’s jus’ me though. They wanna hurt someone else and I’m not going to let them get on with that. Might as well put those damn trials to some fuckin' use...” In the morning he hadn’t acknowledged the information he’d so trustingly laid at Aiden’s feet; and they went on with their lives. Lambert came back then with a recently cleaned steel sword. “They ruined my good boots.” “We’ll get you new ones.” Aiden promised. “I’m holding you to that.” A calloused hand was offered to him and Aiden placed his own within it. On his feet he stepped into the wolf’s space, using their clasped hands to pull him into a one armed hug. He ran his hand over the wolf's back for both comfort and to ensure there were no injuries he needed to patch. “Least I can do for you saving my ass.”

* They tumbled into bed together for the first time after a bar fight. It wasn’t a bed really; it was a bedroll laid beneath an overhang of rock and they were both too keyed up from their frantic flight out of town to make anything last long. Lambert had a black eye and Aiden had a split lip that protested every harsh kiss pressed against it but neither witcher cared. Pain was routine, a small price for the love and the pleasure- the oh so fucking finally feeling of giving in to what they wanted. With fumbling hands they brought each other off. Aiden slung a heavy arm over the wolf’s waist and tensed when Lambert’s hand circled his wrist, well expecting to have it tossed aside with a complaint about cuddling like he had in every inn they’d shared a bed within before. He didn’t though. Aiden woke the next morning with his arm still firmly in place. The grumbling about ‘disgusting dried fluids’ was even worth it.

* Lambert was in a mood. The birds were too loud, the flowers that bloomed alongside the road were too cloying, and the sun was too damn bright. Even Aiden, the only person on the planet that could stand his company more than a few hours, was distancing himself on their trek. The contract was for a pair of griffins, easy enough, but the alderman had smelled of cheap liquor and the look in his eye said that they would be lucky to get half the promised pay. “Hey, kitten?” It comes out as a biting thing, no matter his attempts to keep his frustration off the cat's head. “Yeah?” Aiden looked at him then, eyes that edged on green rather than amber, wide and expecting. “How ‘bout you go on and get our pay. I’ll probably gut the fucker if I have to deal with him right now.” The cat didn’t reach out for him, having spent too long at the wolf’s side not to realize his mood and the preferences that came with it. “Alright. You going to be in our room?” “Yeah, I’m going to try to sleep off the last of this damn potion.” He didn’t manage to sleep at all. Aiden came in with two plates of food and two tankards of ale to find him pretending, face down on the mattress. “Come on, asshole. I got food and most of our promised coin for you… I also got a new gwent deck last month that I’m gonna kick your ass with.” “Like you could win without cheating me, pretty thing.” he forced himself up, toward the food that made him want to be sick with the thought of it on his tongue. He needed it. He knew it, Aiden knew it. Just like Aiden knew that he wouldn't win without cheating. “Let’s see about that.”

* Cats were unstable. Dangerous. They were as quick to change from laughter to anger as a summer sky was from blue to storm gray. Cats were not to be trusted. Every witcher and human child was taught that from the moment they could walk. Lambert was never good at following instructions. “Aiden?” The carnage was… extensive. A dozen bodies torn apart with the strength of a hurricane and the care of a starving drowner. “Aiden, love?” Endearments, true endearments, were rare to pass his lips. They meant one of two things- he was well fucked or he was scared out of his ever loving mind.He stepped over a butchered arm, half cut and then torn, towards the figure in the middle of the room. They had split six weeks before, Aiden going to take on a contract that Lambert wanted to know nothing about. He wasn't naive, he knew Aiden didn't have the same qualms he did about humans and human contracts but he had asked in their third year not to know about them. Aiden respected that. Aiden respected him.It was the blood that gave them the chance to meet then, so strong even from half a mile through the forest that Lambert was helpless not to investigate.  Cats are unstable. Their mutations make it inevitable that they’ll snap one day. His hand wrapped around the cat’s wrist, firm and without fear. He expected him to lash out, was willing to take whatever scar or pain that came in order to simply touch. To ensure that Aiden was real. That the frozen figure wasn’t a lie, a cruel trick played on his mind. Aiden turned, Lambert tensed, but the dagger in his cat's left hand dropped to the floor rather than bury itself in his chest; and Aiden collapsed against the wolf’s chest. He was soaked in blood, Lambert realized dimly. Not just covered but he was dripping in it. Aiden’s hair was matted with it and his blue armor hardly showed through the red. It was old- turning black and crusting. How long had he stood there? “I’ve got you, kitten.” the hand on his wrist shifted to hold the cat’s waist, Lambert raised his other hand raised to clasp Aiden's neck. A feeble attempt at making it all better. “I’ve got you.” Fourteen bodies. Most wore some sort of uniform, a lesser lordling’s colors or some shit but... some did not. There were three men in commoner clothes, a torn scrap of pale lilac fabric, and a small pair of shoes not unlike… Oh gods.  “What happened here?” This is Aiden. He’s yours, he's good. There’s a reason for this. Salt was in the air, nearly lost beneath the copper of blood, and the body in his arms began heaving with sobs.“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”Cats feel too much. Lambert shifted his grip to half carry the other witcher outside, he needed away. He needed fresh air and dirt under his feet. He took the sobbing man around the back of the shack to a well where he could rip one of his undershirts into strips and begin to clean the blood and gore from the man’s skin. The armor, the clothes, they were lost causes but he could make sure that the only stain on his skin would be salt. He started with his hands, coaxing his fingers to uncurl with soft and even pressure. He took care around the nails, more than one of which were broken. Then up his arms with broader strokes. By the time he started on his neck the sobbing had quieted down to shuddering breaths, hiccups that ended before they finished. Ignoring his eyes which were red rimmed and half void of the emotions that wracked him so thoroughly just moments before, he was nearly calm.Lambert wiped at some splatter on his cheek. He tossed the cloth aside and took up another.

“Back with me, kitten?” He needed to be gentle. He had to be gentle for him.“Yeah.” His voice was like sandpaper.“Gonna tell me what happened?” Lambert asked, afraid of the answer.“... yeah.” Aiden swallowed, took a deep breath- shuddered and had to try again. Lambert waited. He could wait for Aiden. Only for Aiden. “Contract was for some kid- not to kill. No, gods no. Someone kidnapped a mayor’s daughter or a lord’s… I don’t know. Titles weren’t important. I just was supposed to find her and bring her back home but... but I tracked them up here after a few weeks. Gal had a lover and a kid no one knew about... I guess the dad's family couldn't stand a bastard kid running around or some shit and I thought that it would be easy to find her and she jus' would agree to keep it quiet but when I got here they were” his hands clenched, rage twisted his lips into a snarl but he didn't try to rise. “They were too distracted with her to realize I’d even gotten inside. They used her as a bargaining chip, Lam. She was half dead, held up here for all that time and... and they offered her to me. Like I was a- I didn’t kill her Lam, I didn’t touch her or that kid in there… that was all them. I tried so save them but it didn’t fucking matter and they... they... Please, please believe me that I wouldn’t- even as angry as I was I didn’t touch them. I didn’t do that to them. I tried. I didn't- I couldn't...” he was rambling, losing it once more and the longer he spoke the more rage built in Lambert’s chest.“I know you wouldn’t.” He pours every ounce of conviction into the words.“I blacked out, Lam. I… I don’t remember it all but I wouldn’t have” he was breathing fast again- panicking. He was losing him again. “I know, kitten. You wouldn’t. I know that, you know that. You’re too good for that, love.” He dragged the cloth over his eyelids, gentle, and then he tossed it into the bucket. He was as clean as he could be without a full bath. “Do you want me to burn it all?”“No, the girl and the kid. They deserve better. I’ll make a pyre for them if you’ll deal with the others.”“I can do that.”So Lambert gently squeezed the cat’s hands, kissed his forehead, heedless of the blood in his hair, and set to work.