Alistair watched Aalish sit on the floor among the children, her regal skirt spread around her, clapping her hands in time to some silly rhyme she was teaching them, and his heart ached.
She had set them on this path at the Landsmeet, when she'd made him King, when she'd asked him, so quietly, her heart in her eyes but no tremor in her voice, if he would consider her as his Queen. They had known that producing an heir between them might be beyond their reach.
Two Grey Wardens, tainted, a Calling to come before either of them saw the twilight years, the blood coursing through their veins making children an improbable dream.
And he knew how she yearned for their child. He felt her pain when another courtier remarked on the King's lack of heir, heard the whispers about the Queen with the barren womb who spent much of her few free hours with other people's children. She took the well-meaning advice, the gifts of oils and teas and Maker knew what to ensure their fertility in stride, made no mention of how some of the Bannorn were calling for him to set her aside.
He loved her fiercely, his Aalish, his Queen, his Warden, his wife. There had never been another, for either of them, before the Blight. He remembered their clumsy passion, the sharp cry she'd made the first time, how he'd nearly stopped when he realized he'd hurt her, how she'd whispered it would be all right.
How it had been, later, passion and love inextricably linked.
How she'd cried, desperately, after he'd performed the Dark Ritual with Morrigan, to save them both from the archdemon. Because she'd told him he must. And he'd been unable to lose her or tell her goodbye, loved her too much to tell her no.
Morrigan's child, the child he would never, could never, think of as his, would be four soon. And here his wife, his lover, his Queen, had no child.
Alistair could think of no greater tragedy.
He must have made some movement at his post near the door for Aalish looked up, saw him, frowned. Nodding to the children's caregiver, she rose and came to him, making a pretty curtsey. "My King."
His hand came up, brushed a wayward wisp of flaming hair from her cheek, tucked it behind her ear. He knew his face was grave, serious. "My Queen. I have need of you."
Some emotion he couldn't read chased across her face and his stomach clenched. More and more lately he found her sitting, staring into space, some bit of work forgotten, her mind obviously elsewhere. It unnerved him, made him wonder and worry. This look, now, was the one he often saw of late. She made no comment, however, and rested her hand on his arm.
It was late in the day, not long before they usually supped, most often with their court or advisors. He saw her surprise, then, when he led her to their apartments and ushered her inside. This evening he had arranged a surprise for her, an intimate dinner for only them with wine, a fire burning in their hearth to chase away the mid-winter chill, and a hope that he could bridge the chasm that seemed to yawn ever wider between him. If it was their lack of children that was causing her such pain, he would buy her one and damn the consequences.
"This is lovely." He watched as she leaned forward to sniff the bouquet of crystal grace on the table, trailed her long, slender fingers over the linen tablecloth, and then turned to him, her beautiful face softening.
"Tell me what's wrong." He cursed his wayward tongue, the imperious demand in his voice, had meant to ease into the discussion, to ply her with wine and his limited charm, to hold her and love her and then, only then, to ask. But he was desperate, drowning, watching her drift away from him.
He couldn't bear it.
He stepped to her, framed her face, her beautiful, regal, beloved face in his big hands, and said, softly, "Please, Aalish. You can't leave me. I need you."
"Why in the world?" She saw in his eyes, those changeable eyes that were neither gold nor green but caught somewhere in the middle, that he honestly thought she might, felt the fine tremor of his hands on her face. Stepping up and into him, she pressed her slender body into the angles of his larger, more muscular one, reached up to cover his hands with her own.
She loved him so fiercely, this man she had fought with, bled with, slept with, made a King, married. He'd made her a Warden, a woman, a wife, a Queen. He sought her counsel, valued her opinion, trusted her bow at his back. And still, still, after all of this time together, some part of him was the little boy who'd had no one, who'd been abandoned by both his father and mother, who'd lost the only family he'd known when Duncan died.
"You've been … distant." He kissed her palms in apology when she frowned, then clasped them together over his heart. "I catch you dreaming more often than doing. A book forgotten in your lap, a letter half-written at your desk, a gardener or scribe or housemaid you've kept waiting. You don't train in the yard, haven't for weeks, your bow unstrung. When you aren't daydreaming, you're sleeping, hours at a time."
"That is a long list of very bad faults in a Queen." She tried for lightness, saw his face relax a little. "Alistair. I'm sorry to have worried you." And she was. She'd never realized, should have known, he watched her closely, worried over her.
"Can you tell me?" He asked now instead of demanded, arms sliding around to hold her close, cheek resting on the top of her head. Her arms slid around his waist and she leaned against him. "If it's...I know you want a child. I'm sorry it hasn't happened."
She tilted her head back, looking up at his handsome face, and smiled. Her real smile, the one just for him, the one that spoke of growing up together too fast, of slogging through mud, of splashing in cold mountain streams, of blood washed out of armor, of a Queen who was proud of her King, of a woman who loved her husband. Her voice was hesitant when she spoke.
"But it has."
When he could only gawk, his mouth falling open in surprise, she hurried into further speech. "I've been waiting to tell you. First, because I wasn't sure. Later, it was because the healers worried I might..." Here she stopped, here she stiffened.
He stroked his hands down her back, waited, had to nearly bite his tongue in half to keep from interrupting.
"The risk of losing the babies was … is higher, because of..." She couldn't bear it, had kept it from him all of these weeks because how could she tell him that even this small hope might be extinguished?
He pressed her back, just a little, to look at her face. Wonder and worry and awe vied for prominence of place in his eyes, in his voice. "Babies? We're having...more than one?"
"They might not...because I drank..." She swallowed hard, briefly closed her eyes, willed there to be no tears. "There are two. Because I'm a Grey Warden, because two Grey Wardens haven't produced a living child, no one knows if I can...if they will..." Her voice broke, her lips trembling.
"Aalish." He pulled her close again, sank down onto a chair with her in his lap, rocked her as she started to cry, the great, tearing sobs that left him helpless, left him bleeding for her. He stroked and soothed and murmured, kissed the crown of her head, and thought of two babies, his babies, growing inside the woman he loved. Of babbled words and sticky kisses, skinned knees, small hands learning to hold a sword or a bow, two small people he and Aalish had made together, out of love.
Of children that might never be born because their parents were heroes.
She felt the tremble in his big body, heard even through her own grief the choked, broken sound he made. Lifting her head, she watched as Alistair waged a fierce internal battle, as he fought his pain and his fear, his handsome, beloved face contorting. Two bright, hot tears escaped from his tightly closed eyelids.
Undone, she cupped his face in her hands, her own tears mingling with his as she pressed kisses to his cheek, his chin, his eyelids, to the corners of his lips where the tears gathered, salty and sweet and pure.
Together, the King and Queen of Ferelden mourned and hoped and wished and wondered.