"Hear my heartbeat? Just focus on that."
A/N: Akela's about 15.
Summary: Akela breaks her leg.
"Hear my heartbeat? Just focus on that?"
Akela's hand was white where her fingers were wrapped tightly around Geralt's arm. Her chest hurt, but her leg hurt more. She tried to ignore it, to focus on her ragged breathing and Geralt's heartbeat, just as he'd said.
He had his back to a wall, and she had hers to his chest, her legs stretched out before her, Triss bent over the left one, which was throbbing and stabbing and aching and every other synonym for agony.
"How does it look?" Geralt directed this question to Triss, and Akela was glad for it, because things were starting to get hazy.
Triss paused, wondering if she should speak the truth or lessen it to reassure the girl. "Quite bad," she seemed to decide on, prompted by a specific look aimed in her direction from the witcher. There was more than a touch of concern in her voice. Her hands were cold against Akela's legs, and every time she prodded a little too hard, she'd whimper and push her face into Geralt's arm.
"Can you stop her pain?" There was a hell of a lot more than a touch of urgency in his, and irritation strongly accompanied it. If there was one thing that could rile him, it was seeing his child hurt.
Triss glanced up and nodded. "I will put her into a medicinal sleep," she said, reaching for a vial of something behind her. "Then I can set the bones and properly heal it." She came to kneel beside Akela. The girl was seeing black dots. It was taking all she had to not pass out there and then, but for some suffocating reason, she felt as though if she did that, she wouldn't wake up.
Thus, leading her to flatly refuse the vial's contents as it was gently pressed to her lips. She groaned and moved her head away as much as she could.
Geralt's hand found her forehead, and his thumb rubbed across her temple. "Drink it, 'Kela," he soothed. "You'll be okay, don't be afraid. I won't leave you."
That was enough to change her mind.
