Young Wolves, part 4 is here! finally! and on AO3, here!this chapter has really been fighting me the

Young Wolves, part 4 is here! finally! and on AO3, here!this chapter has really been fighting me the whole time, but i’m glad to have it out now so i can move on finally. a massive thanks to @asparrowsfall​ for the beta and @con-affetto-kiko for generally being awesomefic & warnings under the cut!CW: general angst and guilt :(Witcher training relies entirely on the resilience of young people. Vesemir has watched children go through the Trials for decades, centuries, even, and sometimes, privately, he wonders when even the strongest novices will be pushed too far.Vesemir and the other instructors are mentors, parental figures and protectors for the novices from day one, as well as their teachers, but they are not the ones who decide the fates of young witchers-to-be. Instead, they are the ones who pick up the pieces of what’s left of the apprentices after the Trials. Getting attached is dangerous and heartbreaking, and Vesemir always considered himself distanced enough, hardened enough. The mutations were necessary for the witcher caste to exist, and the strongest would persevere. Then, when Master Prothero decided that seven promising boys, a year after surviving the Trial of the Grasses, should be given another round of new, experimental mutagens, Vesemir realized he had not been as successful at distancing himself as he had thought. Geralt, who’d been abandoned at the keep in infancy, who’d always been in the way, at his feet growing up, who Vesemir had helped name, was one of the promising young witchers chosen. He was shocked and numb when he heard. Geralt had taken the news silently, staring at the floor with wide eyes, but accepting his fate without a fight. Eskel, unexpectedly, had screamed his protest.Vesemir knows he does not, and cannot have a say in it: the hierarchy in place at Kaer Morhen is military, and necessary for keeping a force like the School of the Wolf functioning. But it is also cruel. Instead, he focuses his attentions on his remaining trainees, and drives them even harder, faster, and demands perfection.He knows at least one of them will take the strain and exhaustion of added training as a welcome distraction.Eskel is faced off against Karim, a slender, fast fighter, who under normal circumstances is no match for him in strength, but Eskel is off-balance, distracted. Karim’s strike staggers him, and when they lock swords, he is overpowered and knocked back, his blade knocked out of his hands. Karim swings, and doesn’t pull his strike in time, when he notices Eskel’s not moving to dodge, and hits him across the shoulder, hard. Eskel crumples in the dirt. Vesemir has seen a lot in his life. He has seen sickness, death, and injury. He has seen the camaraderie of men brought together in harsh circumstances. He knows the sort of bonds witchers form, especially ones such as Geralt and Eskel, latching onto each other through the harshest years of their life. He knows devotion when he sees it. He also knows utter terror when he sees it. Eskel’s hands shake when he tries, and fails, to pick up his sword, and he cannot raise his eyes from the ground. Vesemir can smell his fear in the air, can hear his erratic heartbeats thundering over the roar of the training grounds. Eskel, as Vesemir has known him, has always been a steady, reliable boy, sincere at heart and thorough with his duties. His extreme reaction to Geralt’s life being at risk once again is in such contrast to his nature, that it’s all the more clear how deeply rattled he is. Vesemir is just as unsettled, but better at hiding it. The group of boys chosen for the additional regimen of mutagens were taken away that morning, and Vesemir had felt sick just passing by the stairwell to the laboratory and dungeons. He knew he was imagining screams where there were none, and his mind kept producing vivid images of what he knew was happening. It made him sick, and he saw a similar expression of nausea on Eskel’s face. Pain and exertion are a witcher’s cure for worries of the heart and soul. Vesemir knows discipline and harshness are what Eskel needs to push through this, so he shouts across the courtyard, commanding him to get up and keep going. The boy grits his teeth and pushes off the ground onto unsteady feet. Vesemir wonders if he would work himself to death, and still have no relief for his pain. -- source link

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