Author's Note: My response to a challege on the Dragon Age Writer's Corner challenges/prompts thread (see the link to the forum in my profile!) It's all pretty much accepted the Arl Howe is a right bastard. He's evil, and power-hungry, and all that awful stuff. But was he always like that? Or did he have a good side to him too? I want to see a short story about the softer side of Howe; could be him taking care of his people, or a pleasant time with his family, or something. Because even evil people have their good days.
Progeny
He has visible scars. He shuts out the memories of how they were received. But it's the invisible scars that he can't shut out: the memories that keep him awake at night, that make him think he's hearing screams even in the silence of Vigil's Keep. He doesn't talk to Leonas Bryland anymore, because he insists on talking about White River. Bryce Cousland is more sensitive, at least. But though they are free and have been for some time, Rendon can't help but feel imprisoned. Occupied.
He paces the stone corridors, draped with the gold heraldry of the Howe line. He pauses and observes the bulky, angry brown bear embroidered on a heraldic tapestry. A bear, of all things. Even Loghain, raised from the common state to that of a Teyrn, gets a Wyvern for Gwaren. And the Couslands get laurels, ever a symbol of victory. The Arling of Amaranthine, home to the most powerful port in Ferelden, gets… a bear.
He hears a scream, a real one, and not the ghostly voices in his waking nightmares. He waits by the heavy wooden door, but doesn't dare open it. He'd rather avoid the wrath of the midwife.
So he continues to pace, telling himself the cries of pain are a good thing: they mean his wife yet lives. The closed door is a good thing: it means the midwife has things under control. He tells himself being a father will be a good thing; that he won't make the same mistakes with his child that his father Tarleton made with him. He tells himself anything to make the time pass and quell the nerves that make his guts writhe like slimy swamp snakes.
A servant in Amaranthine livery brings a tray of bread, cheese, apple slices, and warm, spiced wine. Rendon merely shrugs and the servant places the tray on a small side table in the study, then bows and darts away before the Arl can decide whether or not he is displeased. He's noted his servants do that a lot, particularly when he's deep in thought. They fear him. It doesn't bother him. If they fear him they remember their place, unlike the familiarity the Couslands' servants share with the noble family.
Family. Rendon has tried to keep his jealousy of the Couslands at bay for years, especially after the way he and Bryce had to fight just to escape with their lives at White River. But Bryce seems to continually get ahead in everything, including family. Rendon recalls the bitter pangs he felt when he and his wife, who had just lost a babe, were called to Highever to help celebrate the birth of Fergus, now two years old. Bryce and Eleanor have a family now, and Rendon thinks that if he and his wife could just have one as well, maybe the nightmares would go away.
"Your Grace?"
He snaps his head up to see the midwife standing in the corridor, the flickering torchlight casting shadows over her drawn face. His innards twist and he feels a bit tingly upon seeing how haggard she looks. And how silent the halls sound. "What news?" he asks, his voice sharper than he intends.
"A boy, your Grace," she says and her lips curl into as much of a smile as she can manage. "The Arlessa's labor was difficult, but she is comfortable now, and nursing your son. His appetite is healthy, his color good."
She has barely finished her report when Rendon is pushing past her and into the room. A fire burns low in the hearth, but still warms the room. Candles drip white wax onto stone and wood surfaces, their soft golden glow illuminating the most beautiful sight Rendon has ever seen: more beautiful, even, than Meghren's head on a pike in Denerim.
His wife is propped upright on pillows and crimson bolsters. Her dark hair cascades over one shoulder, the candlelight catching the few silver strands that have taken hold. Her green-blue eyes look up and she smiles at Rendon, but places one finger to her lips as he approaches her bedside. He sits on the mattress, his weight shifting the bed a bit. The tiny, dark-haired babe in her arms, suckling at one breast, opens his eyes.
He has Rendon's grayish-blue eyes, but his mother's dark hair and fair skin. His tiny brow creases and he squeezes his eyes shut, his mouth opening in a toothless, voiceless cry. He is indignant at being disturbed, but too tired from the birthing process to protest vocally.
"Would you like to hold your son?" his wife asks, her voice barely above a whisper as she shifts the neckline of her chemise to cover her breast and hands the bundle to Rendon.
He takes his son in his arms. He feels the insubstantial weight of the infant and stares at each tiny finger, runs his thumb over the red-mottled cheek. His son whines but doesn't wake. Wonder floods Rendon's mind and heart, washing away the nightmares and visions of death for the first time in years. He finds his voice. "He needs a name."
They stare at their firstborn in silence. "Nathaniel. Gift of the Maker," she says at last, and Rendon recalls the years of pain and the loss of her last child and nods his assent.
The midwife rests in the adjacent chamber, and servants never let the fire burn quite to embers, though the candles eventually wink out. Rendon and his wife are left bathed in orange firelight, a family at last. When he drifts to sleep, one arm around his wife's shoulders as she nurses their son again, he has no nightmares.
Perhaps the healing has begun.