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"No reason to come back. It's like Kaer Morhen died here today."
With Lambert and Vesemir dead, those words hung in the air, bitter as ice. Letho agreed to stay, true, but gods know how long that would last. Eskel was the last scrap of glue. The last bastion of Kaer Morhen as it were. And yet, even he had deserted everything in his grief.
"Eskel of Kaer Morhen. Heir to moldy bastions and crumbling walls!" Vesemir had once declared while a bit too far gone on hooch. Still, they all believed it. Truly. He was the single constant they could all rely on. But now? It would seem even the morning star had wavered as he hauled his grief leadened form away from his birthright. His home.
Decades would come and go. Ciri would fall amidst ice and grief. Emhyr's blood would stain his people and heir. Even Geralt would pass into myth. Some said he became a vintner in Toussaint. Others claimed he walked willingly into crookback bog, never to return. Eskel, for all he carried, could find no comfort in rumor or heresay, and eventually brought his tired bones home.
At first, he had sought his death on the path. Death never claimed him, despite his recklessness. Then he had tried to disappear into the wilds of the world. Whispers of Geralt and his own conscience made that impossible. At the end of it, he had finally returned to his birthright.
Moldy bastions and crumbling walls. Empty rooms and echoing halls.
The first fires he lit did little more than awaken the ghosts of the past. Lambert bickering in the way they all knew, meant he cared. Ciri guffawing when her drink made dry humor seem a bit too amusing. Geralt watching from his corner, affection burning in his eyes. Vesemir grunting a show of disapproval before joining in on the fun.
Eskel was silently grateful no one was around to see him collapse under his memories. The way his body shook and eyes burned with unshed tears.
Was he truly the last? How was that fair? Lambert had clawed for every breath and deserved far more than what he gained. Ciri grew and should have bloomed like jasmine against the moon. Geralt unwillingly gathered fame and should not so easily pass into legend. Vesemir simply was. Always shifting and adapting to a world hell bent on killing him.
But what of Eskel? He was stubborn and cunning, true. Reliable and a safe haven for those lost in the storm of life. But now that they seemed gone, what purpose did he serve? Why had he too not passed from life into shadow. Even as his silver laid so delicately upon his bed beckoned to him, he could not grasp it. Even now, he showed himself to be a coward.
A witcher never dies in his bed.
Eskel laughed humorlessly as he wondered if he'd be the first to do so, and by complete accident at that! Many had tried to forsake the path before. None succeeded. Yet, here he stood, a witcher born to and content with the path and its fate. Outliving his brothers against his own will, and unable to take his own life due to what?
Some bitter sense of duty? Pride? Hope?
Monsters were once dwindling. Now they had become, yet again, a plague.
There were, simply, not enough witchers left to cull them. Humanity had wished witchers extinct long ago. How now might their descendants chastise them for their foolishness as they found themselves overrun? How long until someone rediscovered what was lost and the cycle began anew? Dry humor painted these questions as Eskel tried to focus on the cold of the stone beneath his feet, and the warmth of the fire licking at his hands.
How had he come to be here again? In a room oh so foreign, yet so comforting? He must be an old man if this was all he had left to him. Memory and shadows, dancing in broken halls and fallen homes.
"Eskel?" The word had not properly registered as the witcher tossed another log on the fire in his room. No one was here but him and the ghosts of his memories after all.
"Eskel!" Clenching his jaw, the wolf willed his specter to leave him be. Geralt's voice was the absolute last he wanted to hallucinate right now!
"Fuck off." Eskel's reply had been to no one as he took a deep draw from his bottle of white gull and stared into the fire, "Yer not really here."
"...Eskel, look at me…"
He couldn't. Even seeing the movement across the fireplace from him, Eskel simply couldn't. If he looked, and the space was empty, as he expected, that would cut deeper than any charging fiend. It would be proof that he was finally losing his mind in his old age.
And if the movement was real? If Geralt had just sat down across from him after all these years? He didn't know if that would be worse.
What was worse then? A witcher losing his mind in age and loneliness, or his husband refusing to contact him and letting him believe he had died horribly for decades.
"Please, G'ralt….dun torture me like this…" Pleading to the air, Eskel closed his eyes in place of being forced to look, "You died…..either in Crookback Bog on a suicide mission, or in Toussaint, comfortably in your well earned bed."
"....I live in Toussaint, Eskel," Geralt's voice was like a siren's call. Heh. Funny. Eskel never really understood that metaphor until now, "I– I came home because I caught your scent. For so long, I thought you died. Killed yourself in your grief…."
"I tried," Eskel didn't even try to deny it as he pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, "Did I succeed? Is that why yer here? Ta punish me for abandonin' you?"
"I'm here to take you home, Eskel," Geralt's choked words came with an elderly hand resting upon Eskel's knee, "Home. Where me, Lambert, Vesemir, and Ciri live. Where wine and rest are the norm. Where the path can become a distant memory. Please, Eskel, look at me."
It felt truly like a demon's pact as reddened eyes finally met those of the man across from him.
Every last honied word was like a dream come true. Lambert, Geralt, Vesemir, Ciri were all safe and effectively retired. Grasping the withered and calloused hand, Eskel choked on his own voice as he tearfully nodded.
If this was indeed death coming to claim him, first witcher to die in his bed, then the least he could do was face it with courage.
To this day, none know if Eskel of Kaer Morhen was real or myth. If he truly did reunite with his husband, brother, and daughter in that magical land of Toussaint. Or if he is simply the projection of the tortured and lonely souls trying to find meaning in this messed up world.
What is known to be fact though, is that the school of the wolf was once based out of Kaer Morhen. They defended Cirilla valiantly and dispersed when their elder fell protecting the young queen. And twin swords were found when that old ruin was finally reopened after nearly a millennium.
Twin swords, a lit fire, and the ghosts of the past, ready to speak to any willing to listen.