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fanficsforheartandsoul · 1 year

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A Wolf’s Heart | [Deglan x M!Reader] | The Witcher | Part VI

Notes: Fate is a bitch and I’m loving it~ No Deglan again but hey we’re coming closer to the ending and he will show up again xD This is part 6 :)

Fandom: The Witcher

Warnings: Mentions of Blood, Swearing, Depression, Angst, Slight OOC, Non-Canon Story, Century Typical Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Spiraling, Injuries, Self-Concious Reader, Misunderstandings, Alcohol Abuse, Mentions of Addiction

Summary: Y/N ends up back in Vengerberg for another winter but not out of his own volition. He’s a miserable bastard but after some advice he knows what he has to do.

Word Count: 4,203

Taglist: @thatsequoia

If you want to be tagged in my stories send me a pm with the fandom/character name! Or comment on the fic :)

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VII, Part VIII

Masterlist

Please note that The Witcher is supposed to be around the Middle-Age. Homophobia existed and is addressed in this story, if you potentially get triggered please do not continue to read!

There was one thing that Fenri hadn’t considered. That his friends and Deglan didn’t consider.

Yes, Y/N was hiding the truth from them in the letter he sent but he did not lie when he had told the blond witcher that he would return in the winter.

He wanted to return.

It was just that fate could be a real fucking bitch.

Which was why three weeks before the first snow fell, a certain h/c haired witcher was lying in a ditch on one of the forest paths at the edge of the Mahakam mountains with a bleeding head injury, his right eye barely left unscathed by huge claw marks while his ear was missing a junk of skin and his left thigh had a gaping tear in it.

The grass around him was soaked in his blood.

Had it not been for Lisica’s distressed calls that alarmed a nearby merchant who recognized his armour and the blue neckcloth from his last year’s stay in Vengerberg, he probably would have bled out and died next to the corpse of the monster he had barely managed to slay after the surprise attack.

Thankfully he didn’t end up dead.

He sure felt like it though.

It took a while for his vision to adjust, his body was still weak due to the fever that had tormented him the last few days and whoever was taking care of him had yet to take off the bandages over the right side of his face.

He stared at the familiar wooden ceiling and watched how the small light of a candle flickered across the wood grain. He knew that pattern intimately and he was relieved.

He was in Vengerberg. Somehow he ended up making it to the tavern from his last year’s stay.

Slowly he lifted his right hand - it surprised him how weak he felt - and carefully touched the bandage over his eye and head. It itched terribly and he could feel his pulse through the fabric. It felt hot.

Gripping his teeth he sat upright, his bruised torso complained with spikes of pain and he felt dizzy. He didn’t have time to bitch and whine though and he scanned the room with his left eye for his belongings.

The room was similar to how he remembered it, there was a stool missing though and on the small wooden nightstand next to the bed was a basin with soaked linen dressings and a couple of herbs he could identify as Celandine and Ribleaf.

He was sure that those herbs belonged to him. Which meant that he didn’t lose his belongings when he got rescued.

Relieved he spotted his saddlebags in the corner on a wooden table.

The witcher pushed himself off the bed and almost crumbled right then and there, his left leg couldn’t support his weight and he had to sit back down again, squeezing out a pained moan between his teeth.

Taking deep breaths, he tried again, this time trying to maintain his weight on his right leg and he quickly hobbled across the room to his saddle bags. He heavily leaned on the table while he waited for the sudden dizziness to pass.

Then he grabbed his saddlebags and searched them for his potions. He was slow, annoyingly slow.

Suspicions began to rise when he pulled out the letters of his friends and the papers of the envelopes were discoloured and held a distinct herbal smell.

“Don’t tell me...”, he mumbled and sniffed the envelopes.

His other letters - the ones addressing Deglan were discoloured as well and when he finally felt the wood of his small potion chest, he had a bad premonition.

He pulled the chest out of the bag and some liquid dripped on his hand.

No, please...

Y/N placed the chest on the table with shaking hands and opened it.

When he saw the glass remains of his potion vials and the damp herbs he had to close his eye for a second and breathe. His hands formed fists on the table.

Those potions were of great importance for witchers and not easily obtained much less brewed. Before his departure on the Path, he had spent months brewing the contents of these vials and when he had left, he regularly took hours of his days to collect more herbs and ingredients for it.

Losing them was not only incredibly frustrating but also dangerous for his future endeavours. Their loss would force him to take on smaller requests which in turn would mean that he had less money to acquire rare ingredients from a herbalist.

Trying to calm himself he opened his eye again to inspect the damage further.

Most vials were shattered and their liquid remains were gathered at the bottom of each half of the chest in a dark puddle.

His Swallow potions gone, his Cat potions gone. His Golden Oriole, his Blizzard, his Black Blood, his Thunderbolt, his White Raffard’s decoction, all of their vials, broken.

There was one glimpse of hope though in this tragedy. One vial of the potion he was looking for remained intact. It was only a small comfort but for the moment it had to be enough.

Carefully, he felt the bandage around his head and began to unwrap it. It took a long time.

The exhausted witcher hissed alarmed - but not in pain - when the fabric stuck to his skin and he slowly tore it off. The air felt good on the skin and he discarded the bloody bandage on the table. His arm muscles quivered from exhaustion.

By now he had realized that the right side of his face was so swollen that he couldn’t see even without the bandage and it worried him greatly. Had he lost sight in his right eye? He had to check.

He didn’t touch the skin though.

Instead, he sifted through his bags once more to find the small broken shard of a mirror he had used before to stitch his wounds. He unwrapped the damp cloth that protected him from the sharp edges of the shard and then he examined his face in it. Y/N sucked in some air through his teeth.

The forktail’s razor-sharp claws got him right across the bridge of his nose and forehead, missing his right eye by less than an inch and the slash from the monster’s left claw breached his hairline and ended at the upper back of his head.

The slash of the forktail’s middle claw reached from his right cheekbone across his ear to the back of his head and some flesh of his ear was missing due to it.

At least the fourth one missed, he thought sarcastically but the ugliness of the future scars and the meaning of these wounds left a bitter taste in his mouth.

During the last moments of his hunt, he had been careless. He was already drunk from apparent victory and it ended up costing him.

With a mug like that no one - really no one - would look him eye anymore... And it was uncertain if he could look back at all with his right eye.

Not if the infection of the claw wounds spread.

The wounds hadn’t been stitched, most likely due to the inexperience of treating a mutant - and his flesh ended up getting infected - most likely due to him lying in the dirt for so long - and if he wouldn’t act fast, the skin would rot.

Breathing through his nose, he grabbed one of the only intact vials from its compartment and opened it. The black liquid seemed ominous and the pain he could expect in a few seconds made him grit his teeth in preparation.

He hoped his eye was swollen enough that the potion wouldn’t reach it, he had never accidentally poured this elixir into his eyes before so he had no knowledge of any side effects.

He slowly tilted his head backwards, then poured the potion directly onto his face and the tavern owner Iven entered the room right when he howled in agony and fell unconscious.

"And now they most likely think that I am lying. I messed up and I am too scared to explain the truth."

Y/N took a big gulp from his jug of ale and then slammed it on the bar with a deep sigh, spilling a few drops of his drink.

It had been three weeks now since he “almost killed himself” according to the druid who had treated him.

He, of course, saw that differently.

Had he not used that elixir that day, he would have probably ended up losing his eyesight and would have been forced to spend the rest of his days as at most an instructor at the school of the Wolf or more likely a beggar.

But now he “only” had to walk around with a shitface. The right side of his face looked like a plowed field - a real improvement from the white scars he had gained in his youth.

The skin was still red but it healed considerably well, thanks to his mutated body and the antiseptic elixir he used.

Unfortunately, though, his accelerated healing abilities didn’t help to grow back the hair he was missing. The forktail had made sure to mess up his magnificent hair before dying.

He chuckled humourlessly.

This kind of dark humour was his only comfort - apart from the ale, of course. Which he really needed, especially now after he had just sent a letter to Kaer Morhen for Fenri and his friends in which he basically told them that he was not coming home.

He knew how it would look to them.

As if he had lied to Fenri. Not once but twice. The blond man would interpret it as if Y/N had lied to his face and then in the letter he sent. As if he lied to all of his friends. To them, he would be a deceitful bastard and this guilt ached worse than his wounds.

Maybe he could have solved this if he mentioned his injuries in his letter but he doubted it would seem like the truth. Not after he had mentioned getting injured in the first year to his rival. There was also his reputation. They probably couldn’t believe that he got injured so heavily, he was notorious for his skills back in his training years.

But they didn’t know how much he changed. Y/N didn’t want to admit it but in the last two years he had developed an addiction to alcohol.

He drank almost every day and it wasn’t just one mead. He drank excessively and the money he made was spent on more wine and alcohol.

Due to his fast metabolism he wasn’t drunk for long and he had to drink many bottles to truly feel the buzz of alcohol and so he grabbed a bottle more often than any other drunkard.

During that day when he was got attacked he felt the withdrawal symptoms. He had been restless and plagued with migraines and his hand itched for some ale but he didn’t have any on him. He had checked two times already and during the third time the forktail descended on him.

If his friends knew that he let a monster sneak up on him, him who had better hearing than any of them, because he was looking for alcohol like a booze hound, they would probably shake their head in disbelief and disappointment.

He couldn’t tell them.

So he just had to deal with their anger. Not that he was in the mood for it. The fact that he possibly had ruined their friendship was a sour truth to swallow.

Y/N cleaned his sticky hand with the hem of his shirt and let his gaze linger on the many scars and blisters that covered his skin.

Not exactly a beauty are we, he thought bitterly. Getting uglier by the day...

The bard sitting next to him hummed.

Hannes had arrived in the city two weeks ago and was shocked when he first laid eyes on the witcher’s mauled appearance. He rested in the tavern in the room next to Y/N’s and spent most of his free time at the witcher’s side and made sure he was eating and healing well.

They did not talk much during that time because moving his jaw stretched the forming scabs and so he had yet to tell Hannes anything about the events that led to his injuries.

When he finally did, the bard exhaled loudly and needed a moment before he could formulate his thoughts.

It appeared like now was the same.

Y/N lifted his hand to wink at the tavern owner's daughter for another beer when Hannes finally spoke:

"I don’t think you messed up that badly. And there is no shame in being afraid."

He lowered his hand and turned his head to the left, the bard smiled assuringly and the witcher grimaced.

A thought crossed the witcher’s mind and he sighed when an image of Deglan appeared in his head.

The days before he encountered the forktail on the Path he had been feeling anxious about the upcoming inevitable meeting with his mentor. His chest had hurt when thinking about Deglan’s face.

How would he react when seeing him again?

He had yet to ceremonially take off the blue cloth around his neck - as he promised himself - and he was even wearing it now - after washing it and cleaning it of his own blood. The fabric was a shade darker now, unfortunately.

His eyes left the cloth at his throat and wandered to the bard.

If only he could fall in love with Hannes. It would have made everything so much easier.

The musician was good-looking, with his black hair and storm grey eyes. The hint of a beard accentuated his cheekbones and his eyebrows gave him a witty appearance. Combined with his blue shirt and brown pants he looked charming. Y/N did find him attractive and his character certainly was endearing...

He sighed.

Why was his life such a mess?

Hannes' words replayed in his mind and he breathed in slowly.

The bard only touched upon the tip of the iceberg of his feelings and it stung to hear it. He was not only afraid of messing up his friendship with Fenri and the others. In truth, he was glad that he was unable to return to Kaer Morhen in the end. He was not yet ready to cross paths with Deglan again.

He slew monsters for a living, he had ventured into caves and forests no sane man wanted to enter and he had taken the lives of creatures that the common folk feared to death, and yet he turned miserable and weak-minded when it came to talking about his feelings and such dainty emotion as love?

Oh, the irony. He could almost hear whatever deity fucking played with his life cackle in the background.

Hannes tapped his shoulder and he focused his attention on him again.

"There is no shame in being afraid but sometimes you have to confront your fears. Often, that is the only way to let go of them."

"That is easily said", he replied gruffly but the words echoed in his mind.

If he wanted to let go...

Doubt swirled in his mind but Hannes was trustworthy when it came to his advice, he had learned that fairly quickly after the last winter. He simply was uncertain if he could overcome his cowardice.

The bard reassuringly squeezed his left shoulder.

"You are a great man, Y/N. You will know what is best for you when the time comes.”

He paused, something flitted across his face but before Y/N could try to decipher it, Hannes added: “Life holds a dozen of opportunities and as vast those opportunities are, words are the same. You just need some time to figure out the right ones.”

The bard let go of him and took a sip from his ale. He grinned over the jug’s edge and asked: “On another note, how are you faring with your letters?”

The witcher knew exactly what the black-haired man meant and he groaned defeatedly.

“They experienced an accident”, he retorted and remembered how he tried to save the many letters he wrote to Deglan.

However, in the end, both them and the letters of his friends were unreadable. The ink had smudged due to the elixirs and the lines were blurred.

He had mourned them wholeheartedly last week.

His expression was grave enough for Hannes to make a face. The bard turned thoughtful and for a while, they were quiet again.

Y/N studied the grain of the wooden table and absent-mindedly massaged his left thigh.

He had removed his bandages a few days ago but it still hurt sometimes, especially when he walked so he had yet to do anything physically challenging. All he did was sit around and lay on his bed. He couldn’t even visit the city, not that he really wanted to do that. In his heart, he had already resigned himself to wearing a cloak forever.

“You know...”, Hannes suddenly said and he turned his focus back to the bard, “As sudden and arbitrary love is, it can fade. You should not wither away because of it, I don’t want you to."

The witcher raised an eyebrow. Not only did he not expect that sudden change of topic...

"Should you say that as a bard with dozens of ballads about eternal love?"

Hannes shrugged his shoulders with a grin.

"Those kinds of songs make the most money."

Y/N gasped in false shock, deliberately ignoring the implication of that topic - his feelings for Deglan - and instead imitated a young maiden and the bard slapped his shoulder while they erupted in laughter.

The action felt liberating and his chest appeared a bit lighter. It had been a while since he had laughed like this.

An image of his friends flashed in his mind and his grin faltered. He coughed and took the last gulp from his drink.

Hannes downed his ale as well and then exhaled loudly in satisfaction.

Again they were silent, Hannes most likely because Y/N did not acknowledge his ways of trying to steer the conversation in the direction of the witcher’s feelings.

Y/N leaned back and crossed his arms and the bard cleared his throat and called out to the tavern owner. The man, an older fellow of short stature named Iven, limped towards them and leaned on the bar to hear what the bard had to say.

"Iven, I wanted to inform you that I will not come back next year. And probably the year after, so you should find another entertainer during the winter."

Y/N tilted his head, wondering about the bard's absence, while the other man crossed his arms before his chest and jokingly said:

"Fucking finally, aye. Your horrible singing kept all my guests away!"

"Ha, we both know that’s untrue!"

Hannes exchanged verbal blows with Iven and laughed, but he stopped when he saw the thoughtful expression on the witcher's face and then leaned towards him to explain:

"I will be settling down in Skellige."

"Skellige?", asked both Y/N and the tavern owner with surprised faces.

"Yes", Hannes was smiling to himself as he leaned back in his seat, "I decided that I have seen enough of the world."

Iven clicked his tongue.

"You found a lass?" He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone and Y/N and Hannes followed the man's forlorn eyes across the room where his daughter was talking to some of the regular guests.

They exchanged a look and Hannes grinned.

"Well, something like that. Anyway... Can I have another beer for me and Y/N?"

"No", Iven gruffly replied but he took their jugs anyways and turned around to prepare their drinks.

Y/N watched the bard carefully. He was settling down...? Don’t tell me...

"Something like a lass...?", he asked quietly, and his thoughts began to race because what if...

A pipe dream floated in his mind and the image of two men, both yellow-eyed and showing signs of ageing, one with fewer white streaks of hair, the other with more wrinkles, standing before a small house looking happy and in love made his heartbeat speed up.

Growling inwardly he banned the thought from his mind.

Hannes gave him a side glance and smiled weakly. But his eyes showed an emotion Y/N could only describe as longing.

"It’s not what you’re thinking", the bard replied and he thanked Iven with a nod as the man slammed two beers on the bar counter in front of them.

He waited for the black-haired man to continue and they both watched as the tavern owner went over to his daughter and his regulars.

"My mother sent me a letter. I haven’t heard from her in years but somehow she found out about my summer stay in Cidaris. I remained longer there than usual and her letter reached me through one of my benefactors. Her lover died. And she has fallen ill. She begged me to return "home" but you know what-"

Hannes stopped and took a big gulp from his jug. He snorted humourlessly and the witcher noticed the darkness in his grey eyes and frowned.

"Skellige is not my home. I grew up in a small village in Verden and years after I had left home to follow my dreams, I returned and all I found was a burnt-down house, a letter and my father's grave in the backyard. He died because of an unknown sickness and my mother took off and married an Islander just weeks after his passing. And now she wants me to care for her after that bastard passed away too. And I will do it because she gave me life and we share the same blood, even though we haven’t seen each other in years and she- she had cursed me when I left home."

Y/N stayed quiet.

He did not know what to say.

He grew up as an orphan and the only people he could vaguely see as his parents were the people of Kaer Morhen.

Familial bonds and blood never meant anything to him and he never tried to find out anything about his parents, unlike Fenri who had visited his family home once when he snuck out of the witcher's keep.

The blond boy had returned with dried tears on his cheeks and bitterness in his eyes and Y/N knew from that moment on that parents were not something he needed or wanted. That was at least what he told himself.

So he did not know how to respond to Hannes’ bitter words.

But he understood him. If Hannes’ mother cursed him because he was the way he was, he truly understood his bitterness. If his friends cursed him because of his feelings for Deglan, he was sure the agony would kill him.

"You should visit me."

The bard distracted him from his thoughts and the witcher awkwardly cleared his throat because he had not yet found the right words to cheer the man up.

So he grasped the line that the Hannes threw at him;

"Of course. I’ll visit you. I’ve never been to Skellige before... And I’m sure your mother will like a witcher's company", he jokingly added at the end.

Hannes laughed and shrugged his shoulders and then suddenly his storm grey eyes held a burning intensity as their eyes connected, Y/N could see every speck of blue in them, how the bard’s big pupils were taking him in and how the fire accentuated the other man’s face and made it glow. His throat went a little dry.

"I... for certain would enjoy your company", Hannes said after a while, his tone soft.

Y/N blinked. His not-so-sober brain helpfully translated those words for him and their implication. He bit his lip.

He watched the man next to him carefully and his words echoed in his mind.

You should not wither away because of it, I don’t want you to. And he remembered their first meeting.

Something rose in his chest, a mix of self-hatred and selfconsciousness. His mouth tasted bitter.

Hannes shouldn’t look at him like that. He wasn’t worth it.

Y/N breathed in and out before answering:

"Well, I will think about it. I have some other affairs I first have to attend after all..."

His chest tightened. Yeah... other affairs.

Hannes leaned back, his smile bright and content as he downed the rest of his ale and he sighed satisfied after the last gulp.

"I am looking forward to your decision."

Y/N did not know if he would ever reach that point because as far as he was concerned he was not even sure if he would live until that day.

He knew one thing.

He had to return to Kaer Morhen the next winter. Not only to fix his relationship with his friends but to finally take off his neckcloth, to let go.

And after that... Maybe he could finally find peace.

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