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The child is a problem for a number of reasons, Letho’s lack of patience notwithstanding.
She won’t talk to him at all, for starters, won’t even tell him what to call her. She doesn’t follow directions, won’t tell him why she’s trailing after him in the first place but refuses to leave when he tries to send her away.
The girl just stares him down, jaw set and arms crossed, and if looks could kill then Letho wouldn’t be breathing.
So it would seem he’s landed himself a flaxen, blue-eyed shadow that likes to try and swipe bombs off his belt when he isn’t paying attention.
# # #
“Gonna tell me your name today, snakelet?” Letho rumbles one morning, not expecting an answer.
The girl has been following him for three weeks, he’s been calling her snakelet for two; the name stuck after she presented him with a full coinpurse she’d snatched from the alderman who stiffed Letho on his payment for a contract. Her smile was all teeth as she’d handed him the dagger she’d also stolen, from his belt, to cut the fucking purse with; he hadn’t even noticed it’s absence. Letho could admit privately that the girl had impressed him. ( “Alright, then, snakelet. Maybe you’re not so bad,” he’d grinned and she’d just rolled her eyes. )
“No.”
Letho is so startled at the sound of her voice he nearly drops his breakfast. “Alright,” he recovers quickly, “plannin’ to tell me anythin’ today?”
“Like what?”
“How old are you? Where’d you come from? Why the fuck are you followin’ a witcher ?” he offers.
She gets a calculating sort of look in her eye.
“I’m eleven and you know where I came from,” she points out. “You knew I was following you before you even left the market square in Hagge.”
“Fair,” he allows, because he had noticed the girl immediately and if he’s being perfectly honest he hasn’t made that much of an effort to get rid of her either. “Why’d you follow me?”
The girl doesn’t respond, just sends him a little smirk and goes back to her food.
Stubborn little viper, this one.
# # #
It takes time, but the girl begins to share little bits and pieces of information with him. She has a tendency to do it when he’s otherwise occupied, though, so he sometimes misses portions of what she says.
He’s fighting half a dozen drowners after he’d all but tossed the girl up a tree when she informs him that she’s an orphan.
“ Really? ” he bites sarcastically, in between beheading a drowner and dodging two more. “I had no fuckin’ idea.”
“There’s no need to be so rude. You wanted me to share,” she sniffs.
“Not the time,” he growls, still ducking three drowners, but she only giggles while he finishes them off.
A week later she tells him that she decided to follow him out of Hagge because she’d had a fascination with Witchers as long as she could remember.
“Seemed like an adventure,” she says, “and it’s not like I had any better options where I was.”
“Your idea of adventure is different than most, snakelet,” Letho rumbles.
She eyes him thoughtfully, gnawing at her bottom lip for a brief moment before they stretch into a smirk. “You leave your left side open when you fight.”
Letho scowls at her. “What do you know about how I fight?”
“I’ve been watching you for weeks now.”
“Doesn’t mean you know what you’re looking at, girl.” He shakes his head and props his elbows on his knees. “I don’t leave holes in my guard. Period.”
“Whatever you say, Viper,” she grins. Letho rolls his eyes and goes back to his dinner.
( The girl spends the next three fights she witnesses shouting ‘ left!’ at him. He receives two sets of gashes from drowners’ claws and a bite from a wild dog, all on his left arm, before he begrudgingly admits that the girl is right and adjusts accordingly. )
# # #
“ I told you to stay at the inn! ” Letho roars. His heart is still racing in his chest, eyes black as night and his hands trembling, as he stalks back and forth between his snakelet and the fucking bruxa that nearly gutted her right in front of him. “Do you have any fucking idea what she could have done to you? Didn’t we make a deal weeks ago ? I’d let you come along as long as you did as you were fucking told! ”
“I was worried about you…” she protests, voice shaking and limbs trembling. Letho can still smell the sharpness of her fear in the air and it’s making him nauseous.
“What did you think you were gonna do against a monster!?” he growls.
“I don’t know!” Shouted through the tears leaving tracks down her cheeks. “I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing, though! I don’t have anyone else,” she’s whispering by the end and all of Letho’s anger bleeds out of him in an instant.
He heaves a sigh and goes down to one knee so they’re eye to eye. “Me either, snakelet,” he reminds her, “so just don’t do anythin’ like that again. Leave the monsters to me, yeah?”
She nods, still teary eyed, and throws her little arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, Letho.”
“I know, snakelet,” he murmurs. “Me too.”
# # #
“You’ve been with me near a year, snakelet,” Letho comments, when he realizes the weather is turning cold again.
“Guess so,” she agrees, mostly focused on skinning the rabbits Letho has been teaching her to track, trap, and prepare.
“Still don’t know your name,” he hints.
“Nope,” she pops the ‘ p ’ to make the word into two syllables but says nothing more.
“Planning on sharing it sometime in the next decade?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?” Letho questions, because it bugs him, alright? It fucking bothers him that this girl is trailing after him, living on the fucking Path, and he doesn’t even know what to call her besides girl or snakelet , and it’s fucking weird . It’s just strange and it sits in Letho’s head like an itch he can’t scratch.
“Just ‘cause, alright.”
“Am I gonna have to guess?” he asks, trying to tease it out of her.
“Just leave it alone,” she mumbles.
“Do you not like it?” he presses.
“What does it matter? We’ve been doing just fine.”
“Because not knowing is driving me insane, snakelet. At least give me a hint,” he tries, “the first letter or-”
“I don’t have one, okay!” she shouts, jumping to her feet with her hands balled into fists at her side. Her eyes are indignant and defiant and embarrassed all at the same time.
Letho only controls his expression because he’s been doing it for a century already.
“Everyone’s always just called me ‘girl.’ ” Mumbled to the ground now, as she visibly deflates.
“What about when you were little?” he asks carefully. “Your parents?”
“I don’t remember them,” she shrugs. “There were older kids that didn’t have any families either and they looked out for the little ones as much as they could but mostly it was just me.”
“You never picked a name for yourself?”
“A name should be given to you, don’t you think? By someone that cares about you enough to choose it…” she says quietly and swipes at the wetness on her face. “Enough to keep you.”
Letho watches the child sleep later that night and thinks, I’ll keep you, snakelet.
# # #
It takes him a while, the whole winter, to settle on one he likes. His palms are sweaty and his heart beats unusually quick in his chest when he turns to her over dinner in their inn room one evening.
“I’ve got somethin’ for you,” Letho starts.
“What is it?” she questions, excitement creeping into her tone. ( The last time Letho told her that, he’d presented her with twin silver daggers; just like the fangs he keeps sheathed at his hips, sized for her small hands. )
“It’s… uh- it’s a name,” he murmurs, “if you’d like. I can keep looking if you hate it, s’why it took so long in the first place. I wanted to find one that fit.”
His snakelet is quiet for so long that he worries he’s gotten it wrong. Before he can backpedal and attempt to smooth the situation over though, she raises her eyebrows at him.
“Well? I can’t tell you if I like it, if you don’t tell me what it is,” she says, almost teasing , the little menace.
Letho huffs a laugh. “Fair. What about Aella ?”
She’s silent again, face contemplative for several moments before she asks, “What made you pick it?”
Letho sighs. “Don’t get mad at me?”
“No promises, Viper,” she grins.
“Good girl,” he chuckles. “Means whirlwind . Seemed appropriate.”
Her eyes light up.
“Whirlwind, huh? I kinda like it.”
His snakelet’s- Aella’s smile is so full of mischief that Letho can practically see the schemes forming in her little head in real time.
“It’s yours, if you want,” he tells her softly.
She nods, still grinning, and goes back to her dinner so Letho does the same. If he weren’t a witcher, however, his dinner would be on the floor because she’s diving into his lap without warning. Her arms lock tight around his neck, she smells of joy and saltwater and something that Letho doesn’t dare put a name to for fear he may lose it.
“Thank you, Letho,” she whispers, “for keeping me.”
Letho closes his eyes and wraps an arm around Aella’s waist. “Always will, Aella.”