Fragile
A/N: Baby Akela is about 2 weeks old here!
Summary: Geralt deals with a sick baby.
The baby was sick.
At least, that was what he thought. She'd sneezed and wailed all night, her tiny button nose was red, and her breathing sounded odd; all raspy and certainly not as it had been for the two weeks she'd been with him already.
He hadn't known what to do, so he'd simply walked around the room he'd gotten at the inn, bobbing her up and down against his shoulder and shutting his eyes to block out the scratchy screams in his ears. He was used to being tired, so his (admittedly hoped-for) night of sleep not being fulfilled didn't matter much. The endless hours of hoarse crying did, though, and after a long while he had found his fists tightening and his jaw clenching, and he'd put the baby down on the bed and turned his back on her, calming herself.
For one short moment, he deliberated, not for the first time, the idea of leaving her with some farmer's wife in a nearby village. Just let her go. Untie the stupid, unrelenting knot she'd managed to wrap around his heart and carry on as though he'd never even come across her. Forget the mornings he woke to her lying atop his chest. Forget the times he'd managed to accidentally make her laugh, and the way his heart had beat more each time. Forget the little face, and the tiny hands, and the thin wisps of hair he could already imagine flowing down her back when she became older. Forget the feelings. The emotions. The damn, fucking love he was already feeling for this child he barely knew.
And none of it was because he hated the child and wanted her gone. In all honesty, though the weeks had been hard, he'd never wished for that. He'd never regretted it. At least not as much as he'd perhaps believed he might. No. He'd thought about it because he hadn't been sure that what he was doing was right. That he—a witcher—couldn't possibly take care of this fragile little human. That… maybe, in some way, he'd caused her sickness. He had no reason to look out for himself, and he'd never given much thought to the vulnerability of humans, so could he have possibly forgotten to do something? Had he made her stay outside longer than her body could handle? Fed her something wrong? Not allowed her enough sleep?
But each tiny sneeze, each minuscule cough, each little whimper that caught his attention, made him turn those thoughts away immediately. Made him remember that humans were weak, and with weakness came illness, and there was nothing he could have done to prevent it, and that he was not to blame.
So, he'd heaved a deep breath, and toned in on them. On the screams. Because yes, the baby was fragile—he often worried one wrong finger placement would break her—but those screams meant she was still alive. Just sick. And he could handle sick. He'd been sick as a child. His mother had…
He bent to pick her up, furrowing his brows as he tried to remember what his mother had done, and instinctively began to bounce the child. Her tiny arms waved about, grabbing fistfuls of his hair that he dutifully ignored.
Garlic.
The thought hurtled towards him so suddenly that he had to blink and re focus… but, yes. Garlic. His mother had used to crush cloves into goat's milk and feed it to him whenever he'd been playing outside in the cold for too long and would come back into the house sniffling and rubbing at his nose. It was an old remedy, and he wasn't sure if people still used it, but if it had worked then, there was no reason why it wouldn't work now.
He brought the baby down to cradle her in his arms and hummed, watching as she curled her tiny fingers around one of his. "Let's get you better, little girl," he mumbled, walking towards the door.
She didn't stop crying, but he would be damned if he saw that as anything but a sign that he'd managed to keep her alive.
