Chapter Text
i.
Around the table she can see many familiar faces. There are many more than she ever would have guessed, for all the years she spent saving her city, for all the years she spent with close companions who shared with her the most tumultuous years of their lives, there are so many who have departed. Some of these faces did leave for a time, like she did, and have returned, like she did, drawn back to Kirkwall by the obligations and opportunities created by thousands remaining homeless and a still-ravaged infrastructure. And some had never left—Aveline, Donnic, Charade, Gamlen, Merrill, all constant citizens, Orana who never wavered in her duties. She, Hawke, is grateful for that. More than for her loyalty Hawke also knows she owes her elven friend a profound debt of gratitude for preserving two families' legacies from looters and the indignities of dust and time and losing a carefully polished shine.
Sitting amongst those of them who always stayed are Varric and Isabela. They are both smiling. Maybe it could be said that the years have been kind to them, or at least kinder to them than to the rest of Kirkwall, this Viscount and this prosperous captain, but she didn't invite her friends over to pass judgement on them whether silently or not. The two of them are smiling and engaged in the game of Wicked Grace going on before them. Hawke thinks to herself vaguely about the luck that surrounds her at this very moment, so she tilts her head towards her sensitive chest, and smiles, lightly, so only she notices her tiny moment of gross fondness. She places her hand on the table next to a stack of sovereigns she's added to her apparently ever-increasing fortune. The cloth with which Orana has covered the table is smooth beneath her spread fingers; if she sniffs, she can catch a whiff of lavender and wind.
But she is wrong, if she thinks that she is the only one who has witnessed this brief but sweet shift in her condition.
Besides her he shifts. A tiny movement in him, too, a twitch of long slim fingers holding a not-so-bad set of cards he would gladly set down, a kind of unconscious preparation in anticipation of brushing his hand against her for the thousandth time this day.
Before he can look at her, however, she covers his hand with hers, and they do not need to look at each other. She smiles until she feels the wrinkles sprouting around her eyes; she can also feel the tightening around his mouth that he would prefer to hide even amongst such well-loved company. And even though there are surely a novel thousand and one ways he'd like to touch her itching under his fingertips.
With a roll of her shoulders she stretches out fully against the support offered by the back of her chair. It is a relief to have any weight off her pelvis and she sighs gratefully. If she could she would cross her ankles. Instead for now she presses her fingers in between his, tilts her head again, and turns her attention towards him to take in the soft glow of his satisfied—increasingly so, as the date draws nearer—countenance in profile. She doesn't need to, but she has ended up looking at him anyway.
They are close enough that, if he wanted to, he could lift both their hands and place them on the prominent swell of her stomach. He is as ever by her side. The distance between them is negligible but there at least and to be maintained while the others are present.
From across the game they are playing Hawke sees that Varric catches the sight of them in this moment. He would, of course, he has a writer's eye. She's sure Fenris is aware of this too but she's also sure that he doesn't care because he's proud to soon be a father. Strange, but it's true—fate or chance or his own actions have along with hers delivered them to this cusp of inevitable new direction to their future together.
Then, when something unexpected happens, he is there supporting her with one hand under her elbow before she herself understands completely that she should be standing up.
“Oh,” she says, looking down. Everyone is looking too. The chair is wet beneath her, the stain is creeping coldly up her robe, and the excess is now noisily puddling on the floor for lack of any other sound in the large silent grand room. This is how the dam bursts.
“Well,” Isabela says. “I guess that means one less week of having to watch you waddle around.”
“Typical of a Hawke to do things in their own way,” Aveline says with the show of a sigh.
Hawke smiles, but she does not say anything, not at first, for a few seconds she's too concerned to even quip. Everyone is looking at her, Fenris too, and he's the one whom she looks at when she's ready. He knows the answer to what the others are most likely wondering—has she been concealing her contractions up till now? Amazing, but not out of character, if she has.
The answer is simple: she hasn't. His fingers are tight around her arm and strengthened by a living love that has had many years of both natural and tended growth; health is evident in its sturdiness and surety, though if ever vivisected, evidence of their trials and weaknesses could be read easily from the variations and oddities in the grain.
She looks into his eyes and sees the faint faltering she expected but cannot feel in the composed pressure of his hand. He does not waver, that's not what this is about, but she knows the signs of his fears and—what he always wishes, prays to be—irrational anxieties. Though she has helped him hope he is too familiar with his own life to fully believe that such a desired thing could be delivered to him in perfect safety. These are some of his many doubts she's suspected from the very first time her weeks of puzzling illness turned into a potential promise. A tentative one, to start with, for they had not made any kind of mutual agreement yet, but there was a dazzling possibility on offer.
He'd said yes, decided to work out his swelling inchoate worries later when she wasn't biting her lip and trying to pace out of his reach to wait for a measured response. She'd come nearer to him after his answer and received what he could offer and didn't demand or ask for anything more than what he was capable of giving just then. As always. She'd given him his space and what he needed and in the early days that had sometimes been a night-long walk while she slept fitfully or shallowly or not at all and catalogued every single crack she could find in the ageing walls of her quiet ancestral estate.
And then he'd always come back before the dawn. He would crawl in beside her amongst their satin sheets, carrying with him wafting whiffs of the sea, wrap his arms around her, lay his hands over her stomach in a manner that was protective of two. This was when she felt him truly stake his ineluctable claim. His claim, his choice, his willing contribution to the history of the Hawkes and the Amells.
After that they had talked often in the future tense.
It seems that this, like the rest of the pregnancy, is not meant to be an easy labour. So it's fitting. A week early, but somehow he's still grateful for all of this. Something good is still coming his way.
.
Only it's not that simple. Of course not, nothing ever is, not for her, simplicity is not something that ever happens upon her and only very rarely upon him.
Merrill listens against Hawke's stomach with her superbly sensitive ears—which Hawke often thinks would surely hear better the Maker if there had ever been one to speak—and hears evidence of a very grave complication. She swallows, pulls up, and is about to say something when Fenris has already volunteered to go and fetch the specific midwife they spent careful weeks selecting. She's in Lowtown and not the most expensive but she is to them the most desired, for her decades of experience with every imaginable complication, in any possible circumstance, is beyond value. Wisdom is not something that can be trained.
“Stay here,” he says, and he gives Merrill a look like he hasn't in many years. The sharpness of his brow threatens more than the tone of his command; Hawke is here with them, and he has only very seldom upset her with the way he chooses to use his voice; even now he can manage such a level of restraint for her sake. “Don't leave her side.”
To Hawke he says, “I will be back soon”. He clenches her hands in his and could crush her knuckles if he weren't always so careful with her. His hands are trembling and that's so unlike him. Normally so controlled, so tight, so conscious and cautious. A part of him surely blames himself so she grabs his hands just as hard to reassure him that no, it's her body that's responsible for this disaster, with all its foibles and shortcomings and inconvenient failings.
A part of her thinks that this is what she gets for doing this past an age that would be responsible. Another part thinks that this is what she deserves because of all that she is.
She kisses his knuckles and twines her fingers with his. “We'll be waiting.”
And they will all have to, all of them, mother, child, attendee, and friends who have remained, none of them have any idea how to proceed with the knowledge that this is going to be a breech birth they'e facing.
As Fenris departs from their home, she swears that she sees him shudder a sickly pale-blue.
.
“Merrill?”
“Yes, Hawke?”
“If you call our child a half-breed, even in your thoughts, I'll know.”
“Oh, dear. Why don't we take another lap around the room? Maybe that will help your contractions begin. I don't believe you've even started to dilate.”
“I mean it.”
“I know, my friend. So do I.”
There is nothing else she can say.
…
ii.
“Are you certain,” the wizened woman asks as she removes her coat. She has been ushered in so quickly even diligent Orana was not able to observe basic courtesies to this most-honoured guest.
“What do you think about it?” Hawke asks, already knowing the answer. It's one that she wants for an array of reasons. She is bent over the back of a chair and pushing, pushing, straining herself into a stress that should be coming. Sweat already has dampened and flattened her hair against the shape of her skull. “What should I do?”
Imagine, for their revered Champion to ask someone like her such a question.
The old woman laughs and the sound comes from somewhere deep but dry, a chasm from somewhere forsaken like the farthest reaches of the Anderfels. It's impressive acoustics worth commenting on, if only Hawke had the mental resources to muster the concentration required for a response beyond a curve in one eyebrow and a vague sense of wonder that's quickly lost in her roiling sea of sensations.
The midwife is here now to steady her. “You're right,” the woman says, now setting down a great leather bag and gesturing over to Merrill without looking for a response. A profound reordering of structure has already begun to settle on the room: even the stones are attentive to whatever direction this woman may give. The midwife approaches Hawke and Hawke obediently straightens herself up without having to be asked or even gestured at. Someone is here who knows and that's enough to spread a sense of purpose through a relieved osmosis.
“You're right, it's better if he's not here. Those who know nothing can't be of any help. If you can't contribute you can only detract.”
“This is—this is my first time, you know,” Hawke says as she allows herself to be led to her own bed by a woman who doesn't even reach up to her shoulders. This stranger is guiding her through what should be a familiar space.
“Well, maybe you have an instinct. A lot of woman do. Also, you know, it's your own damned body pushing it out. I'd say that counts for something.”
She reaches into her bag for something and she offers it to Hawke. Hawke can't be sure what it is. It's evening already, so the light is low enough even with hearty fire Orana built for her, and sometime in the last few minutes Merrill has drawn the curtains and drapes and created a deep darkness.
“For the pain,” the midwife explains. “Not to remove it, of course, and you can't have it until I'm sure your labour has actually begun. But it will help if it lasts too long.”
Hawke has to slow down her mind to process what exactly is being said to her. Her thoughts are beginning to become boggy—hot as she is, flighty as her fingers feel around the impossibly solid glass, she is thickening and bloating and something unutterable is coalescing deep within her where her child should be.
“I—“ Even this close she cannot make out the colour of the woman's eyes. Or the features to confirm she's actually a human. What nonsense—she's not an elf or a Qunari, she saw the woman in broad daylight so she should remember. But she thinks now instead about the fact that when an accident occurs you can be choked to death by your very own tongue. “Why are you giving this to me?”
It is fear which is stirring, heavily, in the bottom of her stomach.
“It's your decision. I remember what you told me. You want no regrets.”
Had she said that? It is, Hawke thinks, something that she could and would say. She can almost imagine herself staying back after one of the visits she made with Fenris. Just for a moment or two, the few vital seconds she would need to convey a simple enough instruction, but one which Fenris might not understand, or might want to understand, or understand too well for her to ever quite look him in the eye. Almost she can imagine this scenario—she just isn't sure if she'd actually ever be able to go through with such a blatant betrayal.
She clenches the bottle in her hand and sinks into the mattress she has shared with him since the very first night they returned two years ago, together, to the city where they'd met and used to have something they now reckoned as a life. Though what was left when they'd arrived were just the remains of it. The important thing was that they were alive with one another. His hidey-hole was long gone and he hadn't needed to ask. Her bed has always been open to him. Whenever he wanted, he could have. And he did, in the end, take her up on everything she'd ever offered him.
No, she thinks, then says, “No, I don't. Tell him to remain outside. Tell him it's not waiting, after all it's not like I'm leaving him. I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying right here. I just have to take care of this.”
“Good girl,” the midwife says, and places her hand on Hawke's strong shoulder. “I'll take a quick look at you, and then we can take some nice turns around this lovely room of yours. You'll be done with your labour in no time.”
.
But it takes some time, and then more time. Twelve hours and a dawn later she's already tired.
Thirty-six hours later, without guile, she slips away in a slick of her own sweat. It's hot. Too hot. She can't stand the inferno raging across every centimetre of her flesh.
...