It ate at him, not knowing.

There didn't seem to be any real reason why the Witch Hunters would be after her. Maybe alchemy, since there was some overlap between what she did and that; she had a book or two that might have gotten someone's attention but it was hardly worth chasing her for. There were enough mages and true alchemists to keep those bastards busy for a century. Why would they waste time on someone like her?

Eskel tried not to fixate on it, but he was like that. On the outside, he was always calm, focused, but his brain was forever running things over and over, trying to suss out the facts from the fiction. It's why he was good at what he did.

But there was plenty to distract him, trying to pack up Maya's little life to fit in a few saddlebags. She was not happy about leaving her books behind, but he plied her with stories of the library at Kaer Morhen. Hell, he'd been reading those books for decades and had hardly made a dent.

She was packing her more rare ingredients and some of the most important ones while he borrowed from her stock to brew potions of his own. If the hunters got there before they could leave, he was determined to be ready for them.

They both worked quietly and it made him content, this little domestic scene they made. He always liked it when he could be useful; practical things always made sense. Despite this threat hanging over them, he was still more content than he had any right to be.

"Eskel?" The sounds of her puttering didn't stop when she called him.

"Mhm?"

"Have you ever hunted a monster you didn't kill?"

He turned away from his potion to look at her. She still had her back to him, her hair swaying against her back as she moved, packing little jars and bags of ingredients into the saddlebag.

"Yeah." he answered, not entirely sure why she was asking. "Sure. We only kill monsters that need killing. Sometimes there are other ways."

She made a little questioning sound. "Like when?"

He chuckled. The best story for this was nice and dirty. She'd probably love it; she was like that. "I got a contract on a succubus. Locals said she killed a man." He paused, seeing if she'd comment, but when she didn't he continued. "But that's not really like them. I mean, doesn't do them any good to kill. They just want sex, not murder."

"So they really are like the stories say?"

"Usually." He shrugged. "Sometimes they go bad, but we don't hear about them too often. But I took the contract. There was good coin in it, and they didn't say kill just stop which is a nice little loophole."

She laughed, quietly. It was halfhearted.

"I searched around town, looked at the body. The man had been strangled and that wasn't really the sort of thing you see with a succubus. Usually they snap necks, break bones." He shook his head, stirring in the next ingredient into his potion. "They're really strong if you piss 'em off. So I tracked her down to some ruins outside of town. She had quite the little set up. She was also really clear about not having killed anyone. She didn't make any move to attack me. She used her other weapons instead."

Her almost heard Maya's expression; a little intake of breath. "Oh really?"

He laughed, looked over his shoulder to find her looking at him incredulously. "Yeah, it was fun."

"You didn't."

"I did." Maya made a face and Eskel grinned at her. "You jealous?"

She pursed her lips. "Of course not." Then she shook her head. "Maybe."

That made him feel warm. Very warm. "It was a long time ago. And you did ask."

Maya sighed. "Go on."

"Anyway, I spent some time with her...you know. She wasn't the violent type. I knew she hadn't done anything. Afterwards, I convinced her to move on, find a new place to get what she wanted." He shrugged again with one shoulder. "And she went."

"I thought Witchers were supposed to kill all the monsters, make the world safe."

"Killing her wouldn't have made anyone safer," he said. "We kill harmful monsters. We aren't exterminators. We don't just go around killing stuff for no reason. There's a lot of things out there people consider monsters; godlings, dryads, rusalkas. There's a brothel run by vampires in Vizima. They don't kill and only feed on the willing. All of them, they only hurt people when they're attacked. The world isn't better without them. It's just less."

Maya was watching him very carefully now, her face neutral.

"What?"

"Nothing." She shook her head just enough so it ruffled her hair. "I don't know. It's nice to know."

Eskel smiled at her. They went back to their tasks; the potion was almost finished. Something special for any Witcher Hunter who got some fucking funny idea. It bubbled a few times and changed color and he took it off the heat, pouring it into a bottle and stoppering it where the color swirled and shifted a few times before settling at a shade of pale blue.

"Did I ever tell you about Regis?" he asked, finding the sudden urge to keep talking. He liked talking to her. She was a good listener.

"No, who's that?"

"Never met him myself, but he was a friend of Geralt's; one of Geralt's favorite stories when he's drunk. Turned out he was a vampire. High vampire, apparently old enough and powerful enough that he could hide what he was. Took Geralt forever to figure it out. Apparently he wanted to kill him at first, you know, vampire. But in the end, he was a friend." He grunted. "When Geralt told me about him, I thought he was fucking crazy. It's one thing to sleep with some bruxa in a brothel but another to let this guy just keep walking around. I probably would have killed him." Maya was silent at his admission. "But if he'd given in and killed him? Fuck, things would be pretty screwed up. You never know what part someone's gonna play."

"You really believe that?"

"Yeah, try to," he said. He tucked his potion into a bag. "When I was young, I liked things to be black and white. Simple. Monsters were bad and humans were good. But it doesn't seem to work that way."

She didn't say anything. He wondered what she was thinking. Before he could ask, he felt her arms curl around him from behind, her cheek pressed against his. He put his hand on her forearm and closed his eyes. It felt good to have someone touch him, just because they wanted to.

"What's this for?" Eskel asked and Maya nuzzled her face against his.

"Just for being you," she said. "For being just what I needed." She made a sad laugh. "And here I thought I was saving you."

"You did." He turned his face and kissed her gently before maneuvering her around into his lap. She kissed him back, her fingers in his hair. She made a sweet little noise into his mouth.

Eskel was happy. His scars didn't hurt at all.


The sound snuck up on him. The subtle drip drip of water where snow began to melt off the roof and patter on to the ground below wasn't loud, but he wasn't sure how long it had been going on before he noticed. The winter was finally ending.

It was thinking about it anyway. There was always the chance there would be another freak storm after the first thaw, but they couldn't risk waiting it out. If there was enough melt that the horses could come out and paw through the snow for the first shoots of winter grass poking through the slush, the Hunters could already be moving.

It felt almost foreign to put on his armored jacket, the silver spikes cold, the leather stiff. They made him new trousers together; she cut, he stitched. They fit well, but were stiff in their newness. Maya went into the village to see if she could hear anything, but all the doors were closed. No one would speak to her.

They were coming.

They loaded up Scorpion with the saddlebags and haltered Storm, but her belly was already too big for anything more than a blanket. What had it been, four months only? It felt like a lifetime. Eskel knew it was hard for her; he watched her stare at the closed door of the house, one hand tangled in her mare's mane.

"Eight years," she said. "I lived here for eight years."

"Not so long."

"Long for me."

Eskel put his hand on her neck, pressed his face against her hair for a minute. "I'll miss it too, but I'd miss you more. Come on."

She nodded and complied, letting him take her hand and lead her away. He didn't know if taking her to Kaer Morhen was the right answer. He couldn't imagine she'd be happy there for very long. But it was as good a place to start as any other. Once they were safe and the Hunters were off her trail? They could worry about it then.

For now, forward. He pointed them towards the path, towards trails that were nearly impossible to see unless you knew where they were, unless you had Witcher's senses, sensitive and finely tuned. He led them forward but listened behind for footsteps, hooves, steel.

Only the sound of dripping water followed.


They made it far enough that even Eskel couldn't smell the village anymore when he heard the first hoofbeats. Soft ones, slow. Their pursuers were walking their horses, couldn't be sure how many. The ground was too soft to differentiate from this far away, but there was more than one. A small hunting party at least, doggedly on their heels. With the melting snow and mud, there was no way to hide their tracks and there was too much snow between the trees to even consider leaving the road.

He didn't say anything. No point in worrying her.

They walked for another hour before the footsteps started to close on them. No more hooves. They left their horses behind. Trying to be quiet. They didn't know he was with her. There were five, maybe six?

"Take the horses," he said, just loud enough for Maya to hear. She seemed to read his face, her already big eyes as wide as saucers. "Get them off the road."

"Shit," she muttered. "Are they coming?"

Eskel nodded and pulled his steel sword slowly so the metal was silent against the leather.

Maya slipped behind him, leading the horses until they were in the trees. Eskel changed his focus, shifted it forward and blocked her out. He couldn't let himself get distracted. Fighting men was always harder than fighting monsters. Monsters that needed killing were most often hardly more than animals, creatures of instinct. You just had to know them. Men were different. Men have motivations that are impossible to predict.

They came around the corner and he saw them first, all decked out in Witch Hunter armor, Church of the Eternal fucking Flame. Eskel darted off the road, concealing himself behind the trunk of a tree. He waited. He was patient, very patient.

Boots crunched on half melted snow. Someone coughed. A sniffle.

Six pairs of feet. That was a lot of steel, even for him.

He waited. The first man appeared in his peripheral vision and he spun out of hiding, steel sword flashing. The tip of his sword paused at the throat of the first pursuer. He wanted to just kill them, but questions first. Had to be sure. He wasn't a murderer.

"Why are you following us?"

A slow smile slide across the pockmarked face. He raised a hand, signalling the men behind him to still. Their hands were on their weapons, but they stayed sheathed. The man chuckled darkly. "Witcher." His voice was too amused for a man with a sword at his throat. "Afraid we'll take your contract?"

Eskel scowled. "What contract?"

The man raised an eyebrow. He grinned and it was ugly. His teeth were crooked and his breath stank. He got a shit-eating self-righteous look on his face. It took everything Eskel had not to stick the sword into his face. "You don't know." When Eskel didn't reply, slowly the man's chuckle turned to a laugh, a laugh that made the hair on his neck stand up. "Well, you're a lost cause. Here I thought you might help us. Some witcher you are."

Eskel pushed the point of the blade harder against the man's throat, almost hard enough to draw blood.

"Why are you following us?" He asked again. He flicked his wrist just enough so the point of the blade scored the man's neck, a narrow line of blood welling up along the scratch.

"Not following you Witcher," the man said and spat on the ground. "But now you're in our way."

He heard the crossbow bolt click into place a moment too late. The bolt fired at him, but he couldn't deflect it in time, the long wooden shaft burying itself into the meat of his shoulder before he could react. The man kicked him in the chest, almost knocking him down.

Eskel took his head off before he could pull his sword.

He spun out of the way, ducking as a blackjack swung at his head. His sword flashed, hitting the next attacker low on his thigh; the bastard toppled to the ground. Eskel dodged the next bolt, hearing the whistle in the air and spun to the right to put his sword through a skinny one's chest.

One, two, three.

A big oaf of a man in a long coat came charging at him with a greatsword. Eskel's blade swept out, slicing his attacker across the midsection as he crouched down, dancing out of the way. He pivoted and rose as the man made a gurgling shout and fell. Another with a mace was slow to react, stunned at first, but then he turned tail and fled in the other direction.

Four, five.

Just one left. The crossbow.

"Look out!" Maya's voice tore out through the trees but he couldn't move in time. The wooden handle of the crossbow hit him in the back of the head. He saw stars. He tried to raise his sword but his hand felt limp. The world titled. He struggled to make his eyes focus.

"Fuck," he heard himself try to shout, but his voice was strangled. "Maya!"

He saw the flash of steel, heard it as the crossbow hit the ground and the man pulled his sword, advancing on him. Then Maya was there, almost like she appeared out of thin air. One moment nothing and then she was there, her bright hair whipping around her face. Her hand grabbed the man's scalp, fingernails like claws, clutching his hair in her fist, digging rivulets into his skin. Blood ran down his face. Eskel could see the whites of his eyes.

Claws? Wait how?

Maya yanked the Witch Hunter's head to the side and tore out his throat with her teeth.