Chapter Text
Falling…. No. Sinking.
She was sinking into oblivion. Slowly as the drip drip drip of sap from a spigot.
How could she have gotten here? Memories flash behind her eyelids like little reels of tape that had nearly been worn to shreds.
Hands reaching out as she crashed into the waves. A scream. Maybe her own? Then blackness.
No longer did she breathe air, but the water that held her fast and drug her down into the deep, dark nothingness. The crystal-clear waves like ice in her veins, knowing she would die having never truly lived for herself. Wasted days, no years, on others. Her dreams stayed just out of reach.
Suddenly, as she was embracing the dark and the cold, a rush of warmth surrounded her. Hands, arms, a powerful chest. Then she was breathing air again. Heaving and sputtering as the water shredded her lungs on its escape from her throat. There were voices, yelling maybe. She couldn’t be sure; her ears were ringing with a vengeance.
All she knew now is that someone had rescued her. She was still alive for the time being. Everything else could wait till after a nice long nap. So, she closed her eyes and let the darkness swallow her once more.
*
“But what is she?” Aiden asked.
He had pulled the strange woman that had fallen from the sky out of the freezing Skelligen surf. No portal had appeared, she had just materialized out of thin air it seemed.
“Dunno, but she smells fuckin weird,” Lambert chuffed. Bristling at the idea of caring for a wayward sorceress that had magically fallen from the sky. Aiden could understand his friend’s discomfort. It hadn’t been more than a century since the last mage had ripped their humanity from them and turned them into monsters for the sake of killing more monsters.
Aiden rolled the unconscious woman onto her side when she had finished heaving the remaining water out of her stomach and lungs. Her strange clothing snagged on one of the buckles of his boot in the process. Odd billowy pants adorned her legs, black as midnight even without being waterlogged. She wore no shoes as if she had been lounging in her home when she was unceremoniously dumped into the Skelligen seas. Her top was similar to his own chemise, tucked into the waist of her trousers. She wore no corset or stays, no overdress, no skirts. Almost as if she were a stable boy, though she was most definitely not a stable boy. Aiden struggled not to admire her more noticeable assets lest Lambert catch him and terrorize him for being a cad.
“What are we going to do with her Lam?”
“For now, I guess drag her to camp and dry her out. Maybe she’ll have some useful information when she can say more than ‘Where’s Jasper?’”
*
Call it a hunch, but Lambert didn’t think their unwanted guest would be very forthcoming about her origins or her intentions when she woke up. He was proved right on that hunch when he found himself pinned to the forest floor with one of his own knives and a positively seething woman straddling his waist.
“Where is Jasper? Where did you take me? Take me back-” she was rambling. Demanding the same things over and over.
Not one to take a knife to the throat without proper retaliation Lambert quickly flipped their position and growled at her. To his absolute shock, she growled back.
“I want to go back.”
“I could throw you back into the ocean gleefully little lion, but I’m certain my companion would have my head for drowning the woman he just dragged from the bottom of the ocean,” Lambert snarled. As if on cue said companion reemerged from the dense trees with three rabbits in one fist and a slim throwing knife in the other.
“LAMBERT! She is our guest!” Aiden gasped in exasperation.
“She tried to kill me first to be completely fair,” he tried to reason back without completely losing his composure.
“Why can’t I hear you?” the woman, now looking more like a girl, began to panic. She reeked of fear and anxiety. Lambert almost recoiled with how quickly her smell turned sour with the vinegar wine punch of terror. It was a wonder he hadn’t noticed the coppery tang of blood weighing heavy in the air around her when he had carried her to the clearing they were using for camp.
Aiden knelt by his side and began to investigate the woman while Lambert held her still. She was struggling even more now, being unable to understand what they were saying.
“Her eardrums are busted. Both of them. It’ll be weeks before they heal. If they heal at all,” the smaller Witcher tutted.
“Well how the fuck are we supposed to question her now?”
“Simple. I’ll grab my journal and a quill. Hopefully she can read.”
The woman struggled less once she realized that the two Witchers would not harm her immediately. Lambert slowly let her up after confiscating his dagger. If she scrambled backwards from him to lean against the nearest tree, he didn’t care.
Aiden returned with the journal flipped to a blank page and began to write a question.
‘What is your name?’
The woman took a moment to ponder the question. Emotions flicked behind her eyes as fast as a jackalope, her scent rolling through an array of smells. Nothing Lambert could pinpoint, but not much of it smelled positive. She gave a careful answer, quiet as a mouse.
“Lilliana. Jasper calls me Lili.” A short sob escaped her, and her features crumpled. The salty pang of tears and misery crackle through the air. Lambert felt as if he had been struck across the face with the force of her scent. His hackles raised when his medallion began to sing. Her strong emotions seemingly caused the snarling wolf’s head to hum against his chest.
“I’m sorry, the ley lines are so strong here,” Lili hiccupped. He didn’t know what a ley line was, but he assumed it had something to do with the chaos that was rolling from her in soft waves. It could have been almost comforting had it not meant she was definitely not human as they had thought before. It was almost as if she had materialized the ability to manipulate chaos in the small span of a minute after he had released her from his weight. The burnt amber and ash scent turned bitter in his mouth.
*
Lili didn’t know where she was, or what these cat-eyed men wanted from her. She did know that her eardrums must have burst from the pressure of the water she had crash landed into, and now she was incapable of hearing even the loudest of growls from the angry red head she had held at knife point. Her body ached from being deprived of oxygen and her heart ached knowing exactly what had happened now that she had a clear head.
Jasper was gone and she was stuck in whatever stupid dimensional tear Ollie had opened and pushed her into. Knowing that she would have to start from scratch all over again infuriated her, but most of all it destroyed her. Knowing she could never go back and hold her lover’s hand or wake with his arms around her waist and soft murmurs in her ear. Never being able to smell his cologne or dance in the kitchen with him again. The futility of trying to get back had set in six jumps ago. Gods never liked to play fair. She was needed somewhere else and so she had to be taken from the home she had finally built for herself and spat back out in some medieval nightmare of a realm.
The men were looking at her as if they could rip her to shreds at any moment but were too polite to do so. She knew if she really wanted to, she could teleport back to her drop point, but that water was cold and one of these men had dragged her out of it with kindness in his heart. She guessed that it was the ley line channel that was causing the silver medallions on their necks to quiver.
“I can explain, but I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”
-
Turns out it was a pretty believable explanation. She didn’t get stabbed, nor did she end up laughed at, burned at the stake, or stoned so she assumed it wasn’t terribly far-fetched in this world. Also, it turned out that she happened to be rescued by two monster hunters and the cat eyes were in fact not normal here. Her nonchalance at the physical differences between normal humans and Witchers was apparently abnormal too.
She would even say they were starting to become friends.
The two men, Aiden and Lambert, were oddly patient explaining to her the breed of magic that ran this world. All these things like monsters and mages and Witchers. Elves, dwarves, and fae. So much information that she couldn’t possibly retain it all, but she listened with rapt attention and appreciation for the kindness they were continuing to show her.
‘Can I ask a question?’ Lambert scribbled on the pad. His lips were moving at a rapid pace and Lili couldn’t keep up. She did notice the admonishment and smack that Aiden delivered to the back of his head.
“Sure”
Aiden attempted to wrestle the journal and quill from Lambert’s hands. The redhead won and chose to flaunt that by sitting on the poor brunet.
‘If you’re not from this dimension or world or whatever, how do we know you don’t have any physical differences from “normal” humans too?”
Aiden seemed to be yowling and spitting venom in defiance. Lili shook with laughter. She could feel the vibrations of her own guffaws echoing in her chest. She hadn’t been asked so bluntly to take her clothes off in a long time and the audacity of the question made her just bold enough to stand and strip. She gave a slow turn, shrugged, and slipped her now half dry clothing back on.
“Any differences that you can see?” She smirked.
Lambert was now howling with laughter, rolling to his back to shake with mirth. Aiden was stuck spluttering beneath the redhead in shock. Both men shook their heads no. She guessed she was normal in their world's regards then. Possibly even attractive if the hungry look in their eyes said anything. This would be an interesting friendship indeed.