Boscobel Roses
A/N: Set during the final episode of season 1, when the merchant takes an ill & hallucinating Geralt home to his farm. Akela is about 18.
Summary: Sometimes, the only way to bring someone out of the darkness, is to enter the darkness with them.
Waking up face down in the dirt didn't surprise him. The fact that said dirt was in a rose garden, did. Not just any rose garden, either. As he got to his feet, his stiff bones working hard to push him up, he caught the sweet aroma of the familiar flower.
Boscobel roses.
His mother had planted them in her garden. The house and the land around it constantly smelled like elderberries and almonds. He'd often wondered if that was what had brought the ones who'd taken him to their house. If the scent of the roses had tempted them closer and closer until what happened, happened.
He stood and rolled his shoulders back, taking a moment to look around. It didn't startle him like he thought it should have to realise that he was in the exact garden his mother had planted the boscobels in. The exact garden he'd spent his childhood playing in. The exact garden he'd left with his mother before they had taken him from everything he'd ever known.
"Geralt? Geralt, wake up! Hear me!"
He drew in a quick breath and shut his eyes at the voice which seemed to echo around the garden. He recognised it, but...
There. He could hear gentle footsteps. Opening his eyes, he saw a woman approaching him. Not the owner of the voice, no. Someone else entirely. He knew this woman.
"Mother."
"What do I do, Yurga? He's burning up!"
Visenna, the woman, his mother, smiled. She picked a rose, coral-pink and as sweet as anything, and held it out towards him when she stopped. "Geralt. My child."
Geralt didn't take the rose. It felt...hazy. This moment had never happened before. He was imagining it all. But still...still. There was a desire in his heart to speak to her that seemed to be winning over everything he had to lose.
"Lie beside him and see if he reacts. I've heard old tales, stories of a person succumbed by illness...if someone they loves lies beside them, they eventually come around."
"This isn't just an illness, Yurga. He was bitten by a necrophage. He needs to be healed by something stronger than love!"
A second voice added to the echo, both distorting the other as they circled the rose garden. Geralt shook his head, pushing the words from his conscious mind for a moment as he returned his attention to Visenna.
"You left me," he said.
Tears stained Akela's face, mixing with the mud and blood. She hovered over Geralt on the back of the merchant's wagon, one hand on his sweat-soaked forehead and the other instinctively placed over the left of his chest.
Akela didn't know this area. She didn't know if there was a mage or a healer nearby who could help, and the merchant didn't seem to know either. They were trundling far too slowly along a bumpy path, heading towards unfamiliarity, and she could feel the panic settling in her chest.
She turned, removing the hand from his forehead to grab the pack she and Geralt carried on their journeys. He'd started mumbling incoherently now, his brows moving about as he shook his head from side to side. Akela rummaged through the pack, hoping above hope that she'd somehow missed a vial of mutagen or a white willow bark earlier in her many prior searches. Coming up empty, she slammed the pack down on the wagon and put her free hand to her own forehead, her breathing coming in quick gasps. She glanced up at the merchant, intent on the road ahead, and looked back at Geralt, his mumbling becoming more pronounced.
Akela bit her tongue and blinked, holding back the tears she could feel brimming. There was nothing on this wagon or on the current road that would help, so, with little to no hesitation, she moved to lie beside him, resting her head against his chest and grasping both his hands in hers. She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the sluggish beat of his heart.
"Better...than..."
She focused on his words.
"Didn't let her go...'Senna..."
She gripped his hands tighter, praying to anyone who happened to hear, supernatural or not, to give him a chance.
"You let me go...I kept her..."
She knew he was a witcher, and she knew that this was what a witcher had to expect when they went out hunting, but she didn't have to accept such unfairness.
"I'm better...than you...I kept her..."
A tear leaked from under her eye as the vibrations of his words sounded in her ear.
"I kept Akela...I'm better...than you..."
