A/N: Pleeease do review if you like it!

Summary: Akela meets her mother - the mother who, as the stories go, left her to the monsters in the woods. Fortunately, she was found by Geralt before they could get her, but it's safe to say she's not happy to see this woman… and neither is Geralt.

She had always said it.

She had always said that, if ever she was to come face-to-face with her parents, she wouldn't care. She would turn her back on them and leave without sparing them a second glance.

It was, after all, the least they deserved, wasn't it? They had left her out in the woods, alone, only hours old, not even a scrap of material to cover her naked body in the wicker basket on that cold night. That told her everything she needed to know. Who needed details when she had that much?

Of course, she knew that the chances of actually meeting them one day were slim. They had left her a newborn, and now she was sixteen. It wasn't like she would look any way at all similar, despite the fact she apparently still had the exact same eyes that she did as a baby… she doubted they'd even looked at her eyes before they threw her away.

She'd been sat outside on the fence Roach was tied to, quite happily rubbing the horse's nose and enjoying the warm breeze in her face, when a shadow fell over her. Now, she would have looked up, but she'd been trained to notice the smallest signs of danger, and this shadow was full of it. So, she kept her head down, discreetly moving one hand to grip the sword at her side. "What do you want?" she asked quietly.

"Are you- do you… you travel with the Witcher?"

They had a voice of genuine curiosity, and yet Akela could tell they were incredibly tense, standing a way off, possible chance of attacking her. He said they did that. Waited until the right moment. She turned her head the slightest bit, Roach having already done so. "I'm sorry?"

"The Witcher… do you travel with him?"

A woman. She didn't sound dangerous, and yet he said they never did. Akela lifted her head to look at her, and, at first, she had to blink in slight surprise. The woman did, too, before she opened her mouth to speak and then shut it again. "Pretty," she said after a short while of miming a goldfish.

Akela furrowed yet eyebrows. "What?"

"You're pretty." So was she, Akela decided, though she didn't want to make it obvious that she'd been quietly looking her up and down. A young thing, with long hair and bright eyes – like… no – but she was clearly on the poor side, if her tattered clothing and dirty skin was anything to go by.

"Thank you."

"And…" She stepped forward and Akela tightened her grip on the hilt of grr sword. "Your eyes. They're mine."

What? She stared at her. Eyes wide, confusion swimming in them. "I-"

"I'm your mother," she blurted out, and Akela's heart skipped a beat.

Words stopped in her throat for a moment, but she got them up and out after a while. "You can't be."

The woman stepped forward once again and Akela held a hand up, a warning. She halted, but her face contorted into one of slight pain, and she blinked and swallowed thickly. Roach fidgeted, clearly anxious at her girl's own tenseness.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You don't…" Akela shook her head. "You don't look like the type of person to leave their baby to the wolves." It was rather blunt, she could admit, but it was true all the same. She looked to have a kind face, however nervous she seemed as well. Either way, Akela suddenly felt uncomfortable and as though she needed to get away. She averted her eyes and glanced quickly around her. No sign. How long did buying supplies for a journey take?

"No, no- that wasn't my fault, child-"

Akela snapped her head back around to face her. "Don't call me child."

The woman's expression turned desperate. "But… you are my child."

"No, I'm n-"

"Is this her? The girl?" An old man came hobbling up with a stick, white hair and the smell of ale on both his clothes and breath. He paused for a moment next to the woman, giving Akela the brief chance to study him. Butterflies were beginning to swarm in her chest. Of course, she'd been trained by the best, but the best was usually there with her. There weren't many instances in which she was forced to deal with danger without it.

The woman nodded, hands fidgeting once more as she ducked her head slightly when he turned to look at her. "Yes, Father."

He moved forward, limping with his stick and humming under his breath, searching eyes roving over Akela. "Mm. You'll do," he grumbled after a while.

Akela stared at him, knuckles white from their grip on her sword. "I'll do? For what?" She glanced between the two of them. "Who are you people?"

The old man stared at her with slight contempt in his eyes before he glanced over his shoulder and nodded to his daughter. Akela looked at her when she began speaking, but she was still wary of the man. Wary of them both.

"Sixteen years ago, I gave birth to a baby girl and- was forced to give her up," the woman told her, and Akela felt a swell of anger in her chest.

"Why?"

She opened her mouth to answer but was swiftly interrupted by her father, who stepped forward once again, entirely too close for the teen's liking. "Because the boy who'd knocked her up died… tragically… and she couldn't very well do work on the farm with a little fucker on her breast, could she?" he said gruffly before reaching up and grasping Akela's chin, turning it this way and that while he analysed her disgusted face. "But," he continued, "now you're older, you'll do perfectly as an extra stable hand."

Akela quickly wrenched her chin from his calloused hands, moving backwards enough for Roach's massive head to be stuck between them. "Get off me!" she all but hissed. She readied herself to fight as he snarled and moved forward, but a moment later he was stumbling back, hand clutching his bloody nose, stick laying on the floor. Akela's panicked eyes snapped over to the one who'd punched him, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Lay another finger on her and I cut it off," Geralt told him, a fire in his amber eyes. Akela swallowed thickly, moving so that she was stood directly behind him.

"Geralt," she subconsciously breathed out, able to think properly now she knew she was safe.

Geralt glared at both the man and the woman, alternating between the both of them, clearly attempting to figure out the situation at hand. "Who are you?" One hand subconsciously reached behind him, stopping once his fingers brushed against the girl, and he drew it back immediately after, sliding out the dagger at his belt as he did so and stepping a foot forward when the man didn't answer immediately.

He flinched and lifted his chin to stare up at Geralt, who looked nothing less than pissed. "This girl's grandfather."

Geralt's head snapped around to look at Akela. His dark eyebrows were furrowed, frown lines creasing his forehead while she looked at him with an expression of as many questions as were racing throughout his mind. She shrugged, and one of his eyes twitched before he moved back around again to face both the man and the woman. "This girl," he hissed, "has a name. I gave it to her. Because her own mother-" Here, he turned his attention to the woman, who he was assuming was Akela's mother, though he hadn't been told. Something about the eyes- "didn't have the guts to keep her."

She rapidly shook her head. "I wanted to!"

He looked back at the man. "You made her give her up?" It was usually the fathers. Fathers who thought they owned their daughters and could make them do whatever they wished because it was their right.

As expected, he scoffed and nodded his head once. Harshly. "She was seventeen and her little boyfriend was dead. It was either that or she could leave with the brat."

Geralt's jaw clenched and his fist tightened around the leather hilt of the dagger clutched within it, but he reined in his temper and looked to the woman. "Did he give you that option?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"Then you should have taken it," he told her quite simply. "What kind of person chooses anything over their child's life, hm? You could have taken her away somewhere else and given the both of you a chance, but you didn't." The two stared at each other for a moment, and for him it was like looking into Akela's own eyes, blue like the sky during its stormiest of days, though older and dimmer, and he despised it. He turned away and steered Akela, still quite shell-shocked, towards Roach.

"Please, Sir! I want to take her back."

Geralt scoffed. "Take her back? You have no claim over her."

"She's my daughter-"

"No, she's mine," he hissed, turning his head to stare at her over his shoulder. His eyes bore into hers, daring her to challenge him, and she had the good sense to shut her mouth and dip her head in defeat, no matter how much she disliked his words. It was quiet between them for a while, Geralt's eyes locked onto her, his chest heaving with barely refrained anger, and he stayed like that until he abruptly spun his head around to face the old man, who was still nursing his bloody nose. "How long have you been following us?"

His drooping eyes looked up to Geralt. "A week," he grumbled.

"How?"

He scoffed. "Everyone knows the stories. Pretty heroic thing, that was, taking the baby. Not too emotionless after all, are you, Witcher?"

Geralt ignored it and turned back to the woman. "How do you know she's yours?"

She nodded towards Akela from where she was leaning against Roach, gripping onto the saddle in the only support she had now that Geralt had moved away. "She has my eyes." The corners of her lips drew upwards and Akela quickly looked away.

"That's the closest you will ever get to her," Geralt told her, glancing down at his dagger and twirling it in his fingers before returning it to his belt. "I'm sorry for what your father made you do, but you were old enough to know that your child comes first. You should have left."

And with that, he turned and readied himself to help her up into the saddle. The old man chuckled and straightened up. "Look at that, Missy. Left her to the wolves but instead, she got a Witcher."

Anger bubbled up inside Akela – she took after Geralt in that – and she turned, pushing past him and punching her grandfather's nose in the exact place Geralt's fist had met only minutes ago. From behind her, a dark eyebrow rose, and a tiny smirk graced the lips of her Witcher. He readied his hand by his dagger hilt, but he doubted he'd need it. It was all growing tiring now.

"And I'm happier than I would have ever been with you, you pig!"

The woman breathed a short laugh, despite the old man's injury. "Your father's spirit."

"Don't try that crap with me," Akela hissed in the woman's direction. "My mother's eyes, my father's spirit… you're not my parents. Geralt is. Both of them. One man, and he's doing a better job than you and your boyfriend would have done together." She was surprised to feel tears welling in her eyes. But she'd never had to deal with something like this. What even was 'this'? A damn right mess. "Please, just- just leave me alone. I don't want to see you again." Her voice had gone quiet at the end, and for a moment she felt completely and utterly lost, but she regained her composure soon after and turned to walk back to Geralt. He helped her up in the saddle and leaned forward to speak.

"Ride on ahead," he said quietly, "and I'll catch up with you. Don't go further than the crossroads."

She nodded and, without a second glance to the woman who called herself her mother, turned Roach towards the path ahead and kicked her into a trot. Geralt watched her go, thoughts swirling inside his mad head.

"I- I only wished to make amends," came the soft voice not a second later. He didn't turn around.

"You shouldn't have to make amends with your daughter. You made the decision to give her up, and that's something unchangeable and often unforgiveable." He moved, facing her again. "If you wanted your child back that much, then you should have come for her earlier."

Her bright eyes blinked, and she stepped back, accepting it. Geralt nodded and flicked his attention to the old man.

"Follow us again and you won't make it back home," he told him, and he only turned and began to walk off in the direction Akela and Roach had taken after he saw a flicker of subjugation shining on his bloodied face.

"A shame, really," he called back as he walked. "You missed out on a lot. The both of you. And, a bit of advice-" He turned his head slightly to the side, feet still moving- "perhaps you should get your nose looked at."

The moment he disappeared from sight the old man cursed. "That fucking Witcher!" he all but screamed.

She shook her head. "Don't, Father. We should never have come for her. She's happy with him."

"We need workers for the farm!"

"We'll find some," she assured him, "but not her. Leave her be." She sighed. "He's giving her the life I was too much of a coward to."

Geralt found Akela waiting where he'd told her to, sat on Roach in the middle of the crossroads. She was staring at her hands where they were wrapped loosely around the leather reins, face a troubled mess of mad and raging thoughts. She didn't even notice him as he walked up to her and stared at her for a moment before patting Roach's neck and grasping the end of her reins, only briefly looking up when she started moving, led by Geralt along the forest path.

It was silent between them, the only sound being the melodic songs of the birds in the trees and the gentle crunching of leaves as Roach's hooves walked among them. After a short while, Geralt stopped at a small clearing. He dropped his hands and walked to Roach's flanks, causing Akela to glance – strangely self-consciously – down at him. He rose an eyebrow. "Are you alright?"

She swallowed thickly and looked back to her fidgeting hands. A shrug followed not long after. "Is it okay not to be?"

One corner of Geralt's lips turned upwards. "Come here," he said, reaching his arms up, and no hesitation came when she turned in the saddle and grasped them. He lifted her down, but her feet had barely touched the forest floor before they were wrapped around his waist, arms entwined around his neck and head resting on his shoulder. Both his eyebrows propped up an inch, nevertheless he didn't jump to remove the leech suddenly attached to him, instead leading Roach one-handedly to a sturdy looking tree branch and expertly tying her to it before walking a short way off and lowering the both of them to the ground. Even sat down, Akela didn't move to pull away from him, only lifting her head when he tapped the back of it. "Are you hurt?" he asked with a frown, and she shook her head, reaching up to wipe at her eyes.

"But I hurt him," she told him, a smile on her lips, and he mirrored it.

"Mhm. My wild rabbit."

"Are they going to follow us?"

Geralt shook his head, rearranging her on his lap. God forbid she ever believe that she was too big to fit – which, she was, but who was judging? "Not if that old man wants his nose to remain attached to his face."

She leaned against him, head finding its place under his own, and stared ahead, eyes following an autumn leaf swirling down from a tree. "I don't want to talk about what happened again."

He looked down at her, studying her for a moment before nodding and subconsciously resting his chin on top of her head. "Alright," he agreed, "what's done is done and what's said is said. We won't talk on it anymore."

And she didn't. No mention of her parents or her grandfather was ever made again, because she never saw them again. They remained a distant memory. A leaf swirling in the light breeze.

As far as everyone was aware, Geralt was the only family Akela had and needed, and that was beyond perfect.

It took a good man to be father, mother and grandfather all at once, and Geralt was just brilliant.