The origin of that fic is rather trivial and links two elements: the lack of stories addressing an obvious, although avoided conclusion and my current interest in obstetrics. The story is T-rated, still certain things may occur to some people uncomfortable. I'm very sorry about it. Looks like years at Uni made me a cold analyst.
I would like to thank my betas, YenneferofVengerberg and infinite_regress for their constant and priceless support.
Lullaby, and good night,
With pink roses bedight,
With lilies o'erspread,
Is my baby's sweet head.
Lay you down now, and rest,
May your slumber be blessed!
Brahms' Lullaby (Traditional English Translation)
"I swear one more call like this," Geralt heard Yennefer threaten menacingly.
He lit the last candle in the candleholder, pushed the entire structure towards the bouquet of carnations, once again rearranged the dinnerware and wine glasses, and then emerged slowly from the dining room. He found Yennefer in the hallway. She was sitting on the wooden bench and toiled with a strap of her bootee. Her woolen cloak hung from the rack already, dried off and had decorated the travertine floor with heavy droplets of storm.
"Pneumonia?" he asked. Utterly as a matter of a form. He knew it wasn't the case. Pneumonia was fast and easy. This time around, she had disappeared for more than a day.
Without a word or a single glare, the sorceress made him a place beside her on the bench.
"Problematic labour," she growled, at last setting herself free from the piece of footgear. The shoe flitted across the room like an arrow and vehemently hit the wall before halting. "I won't bore you with details and names. Long story short; it got very bad and very bloody."
Geralt was silent. He didn't need to ask. The answers were right before his eyes. He looked at her. At her unnaturally pale face and trembling fingers which now fought a lost battle with the second shoe. At the hole left from the missing sleeve of her blouse and the clumps of dried blood behind her fingernails.
"I was told things like that just happen." he offered, kneeling down and reaching for her foot. The shoe yielded almost instantly. "My friend is a priestess of Melitete. She still struggles at times."
The sorceress raised her violet eyes and peeked at him with an expression he couldn't guess. Perhaps, he had never seen it before. The repertoire of Yennefer's stares seemed endless. "I'm a sorceress, witcher. I don't struggle."
Geralt didn't argue nor protest, only watched how she got up and disappeared on the staircase leading to the upstairs chambers. He didn't follow her. He was more than aware that while sincere, his words and gestures couldn't help much. Besides, he didn't feel in the position to insist on such intimacy. What was he in the end? He hadn't found any traces of his forerunners in the house, yet it did not confirm he was an exception. Yennefer surely invited others before him. She simply wasn't sentimental.
"Excuse me lad," the dull voice of Yennefer's emeritus cook woke him up from his pensiveness. "Is Lady Yennefer back?" she asked again, picking up one of the bootees from the ground.
"You're not supposed to overwork yourself, Maria. You're on retirement now. You are owed it," he mumbled, clutching the other shoe which the woman tried to take from him. Completely without reason, because somehow her thin and veiny fingers managed to pull it out nevertheless.
"Will she join you at the dinner tonight?" she chuckled, visibly happy with the result of her actions.
Geralt didn't reply. Nonetheless, his message still seemed to reach her just as well.
"Were you the cause of her appetite loss?" she asked. The witcher remained quiet. Her directed comments did not astonish him anymore. He got used to them, liked them even. For once he met someone who was brave enough to reach beyond the level of fake kindness.
"No, I don't think so."
"Then it must be work again," whispered Maria, warm sparkles danced in her chestnut-brown eyes. "You know what we're going to do? There's no crisis that a meal brought by beloved man won't fix."
"I don't think she wishes company now."
"Nonsense," said Maria, reaching for Yennefer's cloak. "Why can't you men see things how they are?"
"Because it's not that easy. Lady Yennefer is not any woman. What can be an acknowledged fact for every other of her kind, for her-" he didn't manage to finish.
"Let me tell you something," the woman interrupted him. "My parents sent me here when I was fourteen. Lady Yennefer was not much older. I was there when this house was just a dream on a piece of paper. I remember the day the shop downstairs was opened for the very first time. If I suggest something, you do it."
Maria did not add a single word more. She turned on her feet just as graciously as her blooming arthritis allowed her to. "Now lad, help me get to the kitchen."
Geralt obeyed, but rather reluctantly. He begun to ponder for a moment why he so rarely visited that place. Then, the smell of boiling rabbit meat and clarified fat hit him.
He looked around the room. A young, maid was sitting by a table in the corner, almost buried under the weight of the towels, sheets and other fiddle-faddle piled up on it. The mess didn't appear to worry the girl even a little, she was way too preoccupied with burnishing Yennefer's bootees. She had greeted him with a nasty discomposure to which Geralt responded with an equally amiable smile.
"Duck confit or rabbit stew?" asked Maria, pointing at the two medium-size pots on the stove. There was a third one too but about its content Geralt wasn't informed.
"Maria you should rest," he sighed.
Maria however appeared resistant to his begging.
"Done that so many times, it won't change a thing."
"Rabbit stew."
"Good choice," whispered Maria. Then she reached for two porcelain bowls and poured a sound dollop of soup to both of them. She placed them with grace on a copper tray, next to a tea pot and a basket of bread, and some sophistically folded napkins which as Geralt had learnt already contained cutlery.
"And maybe that cake from yesterday, if you please," he muttered.
The water had taken the colour of autumn rowan and Yennefer started to regret she had not rinse herself before getting in the bath tub. The traces of the last several hours she so badly wanted to brush off did not want to go away. Everything had the sickening smell of blood. The echoes of screaming still rung in her ears. Her scream. The expectant mother's. Then the bleak emptiness that followed them.
"Are you alright?" Geralt concerned voice stirred the silence. She turned around and spotted his sizing-up eyes. Until now, she hadn't sensed his presence in the room but it did not surprise her much. If there was anything witchers were good at, it was their subtlety.
"I've been better. Thank you."
Geralt moved closer and took a seat on the floor. "Quite a lot of it," he sighed, leaning down over the tub. "Weren't exaggerating when you said it was bloody."
"The placenta has grown into the wrong part of the uterus if you must know. In such cases, labour can't progress. Ultimately it makes the mother bleed to death and the fetus suffocate."
The witcher looked at the stone tiles covering the floor. Something very interesting must have drawn his attention. Something that Yennefer could not see. "Does it happen often?" he asked, with a note of unease in his voice.
"Yes. I'm not new to it."
"Why does it happen?"
The sorceress closed her eyelids. The petrified eyes of elven woman were glancing at her again. Then the same eyes begun to look distant and cold, lifeless. "It just happens," she whispered.
Geralt nodded. He didn't ask about anything else, once more showing the superiority of his kind over the other fractions of manhood. Instead, he passed her one of the bowls from the tray he brought with him. Without a word. Without annoying attempts to gain her attention. It felt nice. It probably was.
She focused on the content of the bowl. The massive chunks of beans scorched the roof of her mouth and throat, but she gobbled it down nonetheless, suddenly realizing how hungry she was. From time to time, she peeked at the witcher. Every now and then, he peeked back. Neither of they dared to speak. That evening they ate in silence.
"Night," sighed Geralt, placing his book back on the bedside table. Apparently, he did not await Yennefer's reply. When she tilted her head to wish him goodnight, he was lying on his other side, his oil lamp already extinguished.
The sorceress yawned, pushed aside the mug of ginger tea and the very first edition of The Forgotten Herbaceous Plants. Then she unceremoniously clung to the witcher.
"You're going to Gulet tomorrow, aren't you?" she said with her cheek pressed to the soft fabric of his shirt. He smelled of lavender and coumarin, and him.
Geralt intertwined his hands with hers, but lingered with reply. Not without reasons, Yennefer knew. The fair in Gulet was a recurring topic of their arguments. Many long and bitter arguments. The statistics however didn't discourage her much. They were in fact promising. A group of scholars at Oxenfurt had established already the positive link between makeup lovemaking and relationship success rate.
"That was the plan," the witcher begun when she was close to accept they would not converse that evening. "Thought we discussed it. I promised to stay away from trouble, liquor and Dandelion in general. Can stay if you want me to," he offered then, squeezing her fingers gently. His proposition appeared to Yennefer at least surprising.
"Would you?"
"I think I would," he blurted. His grip on her hand grew stronger. "We could spend the whole day in our nightwear. Read some silly books. Drink wine. Why are you laughing?"
"And comb each other's hair? You think that's what I do when I'm sad? Witcher, you just offended the entire womankind."
The silver ring on Yennefer's finger burnt again. She turned over in the bed and glanced at Geralt. He was lying motionlessly, trammeled in the net of the dreams. The dim light of the moon exposed a grin on his lips. Quite a significant grin.
Slowly, she freed herself from the cocoon of damask duvet, bear skin and blankets. She herself preferred chill of the night. The witcher was, however, a bit different in this regard. An indicator of good night sleep to him seemed to be droplets of sweat covering every inch of the body. Yennefer found it more as a reason to laugh than to get angry. Another completely ridiculous habit of his. She even suspected he would slept with his jacket on, if she had not objected.
She sat on the bed, looked around the room, and then again at the witcher. He seemed just as oblivious as moments earlier, if not more. The ring sent a painful impulse again. She reached for her robe and threw it on her shoulders. Even in her own household, she did not like to parade around not dressed properly. Carefully, she got up.
Before long she was in the workshop. Candleholders in the room responded to a simple spell and dispersed the infinite darkness. It appeared almost as during the day. Only more private. She came here for privacy after all.
She passed the bay of white tables and laboratory equipment and entered the adjusting room. The other one had more in common with a store room than laboratory. Rows of magical and conventional ingredients in metal cans decorated shelves. Oak cupboards labeled with stickers indicated a plethora of beakers and mortars and other glass instruments. The scales of weighting machines trembled gently as she walked by.
The sorceress lifted an empty jute box and put it on one of the boards. She filled it up with dozens of beakers, some of them in hilariously small sizes. A bunch of spoons and glass pipettes. A huge jar of sterile water. Plenty of cotton cloths that were normally used to wipe the tables after work. She would likely needed more of them in the future, and some towels as well. And a bowl with warm water. This could wait however. It needed to. Priorities first. Her finger hurt again. She needed to find the can catalogued A108C.
With the box in her hands, she stopped by the black metal doors leading to the last room of the workshop. She placed her free hand to the floral decoration covering it. The thin metal twigs came to life and wrapped themselves around the sorceress' hand. In a blink of an eye, the entire motif rearranged itself and formed a tunnel. A very narrow tunnel.
The sorceress entered the tiny space and left the box on one of the many shelves, right next to jars of unicorn teeth and black diamonds and other amazingly rare or expensive stock that were kept in here. Deep in the floor was hidden even a smaller room. Its size was desired however. It was much easier to cool- a requirement for storage of blood and bone marrow, and other biological samples. That store did not interest her much that night. Everything she needed was in a wicker basket in the corner of the room.
She approached the basket and peeped into it cautiously. A sweet, penetrating smell hit her nostrils again. She loathed that smell. It awoke feelings she could not name nor even describe. Feeling she had no experienced before, that seemed vague and odd. Eerie almost.
She let her hands lay on the wicker walls. She did it great care, but the cargo of the basket seemed to notice the subtle shift nonetheless. A bass sound similar to the purring of a cat stirred the perfect silence. A noise followed by a long sigh. It didn't scare the sorceress off. She made another step.
Her hand ghosted over the soft fabrics. Only one finger. Very gently. Something changed once more. From between sheets and blankets loomed up slowly a tiny, pink face. She drawn her hand back in hurry. She had to.
A pair of cobalt-blue eyes was glaring at her from under the line of black eyelashes, visibly with trouble but still undeterred.