So I have this headcanon that Vesemir was a little shit growing up and drove Barmin absolutely insane. So him having Lambert to raise now is just the universe paying him back for being such a terror as a pup XD
100% agree, Non. It got a little sad, but I love the idea of Lambert making it very clear that he doesn’t want to be at Kaer Morhen.
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Barmin knows full well the moment Vesemir looks upon the scowling eight year old that his own charge is looking into an angry, cracked mirror. After Lambert’s been at the castle for a week - cussed out every instructor, started four brawls and attempted to steal food from the larder no less than six times - Barmin brings it up.
“He’s like you, you know?” The old Witcher murmurs over his broth. Varin, who has also spotted the striking similarity, smirks into his ale, while Rennes, their esteemed leader, chuckles quietly over the pages of his book.
Vesemir huffs. “We’re nothing alike. I didn’t steal food from the mouths of my brothers.”
“No,” Barmin nods. “But if I remember correctly, you used to eat like a sparrow and shove the rest of it down your trousers for later. The amount of times I had to send the terriers into your room to hunt out the mice.”
Vesemir’s not convinced. He knows something of Lambert’s background; farming family, Kaedwen, father was a lout. They were similar in some respects, but he’s sure there’s little more to compare.
That changes as the months tick by. The child is chaos incarnate. He rages against the world and everyone in it. The first time the alchemy lab explodes because Lambert mixed together two chemicals he was expressly told not to, Barmin laughs from the stairwell as Vesemir holds the child by the ear. Vesemir remembers creating a noxious gas cloud in the very same room while he as Lambert’s age and let’s the boy off with stuffing target dummies.
Writing proves to be difficullt. It requires sustained concentration and petition. Neither of these are Lambert’s strengths. He needs action and something new at every turn; something to set his curiosity afire and make his active mind work for it. The Witcher left in charge kicks Lambert out on his ear when he flicks ink all over an ancient tapestry.
The list goes on. Destruction in the kitchen, carnage in the library, bruised and bloodied initiates in the courtyard when Lambert started a fight. In the end, Vesemir corners him in the grand hall. “What are you playing at, boy? This is your opportunity to make something of your miserable life. You’re throwing it away.”
Because, for Vesemir, it’d been his escape. He’d been a whirlwind of chaos, but as he’d spent more time at the school, he forgot his old life and embraced his new. Lambert rounds on him, fists clenched, jaw set. “What if I didn’t want it?”
Vesemir blinks.
“Didn’t get much of a choice, did I?”
“There’s always a choice,” Vesemir murmurs.
“Yeah, right,” Lambert huffs, glancing out the misted windows as if to make his point. He’d last all of about half a day in Morhen valley before something big and taloned ate him. Not only that, but where would he go? Straight back into the arms of his father. The only choice he had was between one miserable existence and another. With this, he walks away. Lambert may have attitude in buckets, but he definitely doesn’t have a death wish.
Vesemir watches him go and he hopes that, one day, Lambert will embrace his new life. His prickly armour of anger may keep others at bay, but Vesemir can see the wounds it has inflicted on its host. It was no way to live.
