Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: Suck it, SteveGarbage. You lose.
It Goes In Pieces
"She keeps the sheet in her grasp, just past her knees, her knuckles white in their grip. She turns her gaze to the chambermaid and swallows thickly before speaking. 'Get the healer.' It is a strained whisper." - Anora loses more than a child with each miscarriage. The story of her barren life through the years.
Anora doesn't cry when she loses her first unborn.
It is all rather clinical. The handmaidens gather the bloodied sheets and the now-cooling buckets of water from her room. The moonlight streams in through a single wide slant from the window, breaking upon the orange firelight from the torches. The healer rubs at the space between his eyes, his shoulders sagging in exhaustion as he exits the room.
No one has spoken in the last hour.
There is nothing and everything to say.
Anora sits up against the headboard, one hand clutching tightly in the now-clean sheets pooled over her form, the other held loosely in Cailan's own warm palm as he stands at the edge of the bed. She stares ahead at the wall and tries to breathe.
Cailan's face is a shadow beside her. He lays his free hand lightly along the crown of her head and threads his fingers through her damp hair. His fingers clench in the strands. She blinks up at him.
His mouth opens and closes. He clutches her hand to his chest.
Her throat is dry. She licks her lips and keeps her gaze steady on his. "I'm sorry, Cailan. I'm sorry I lost it."
He dips his head and plants his lips against the sweat-slicked skin of her forehead. His lips tremble against her flesh, pressed firmly, unwilling to disconnect. And then he pulls back as the first sob leaves him.
She reaches for him. He falls into her arms.
Later, when he is curled in her lap, his hand alighting atop her empty belly, Anora brushes her fingers through his hair and watches him sleep.
She wonders if she'd have seen that golden, gleaming hair on her child.
She imagines what it would have felt like in her hands.
She does not sleep that night.
Cailan comes to her nearly every night after that for four months.
She opens up to him each time, never denying, never questioning.
He pants against her ear and curls his hands into the sheets. She writhes beneath him, buries her hands in his hair. His name on her lips always brings him to completion.
Later, when they are sated and drowsy, Cailan lays on his side next to her and rests his hand along her naked stomach. He curls against her, mumbles incoherencies against her shoulder.
Some nights they discuss names.
Most nights they go again.
After four months of constant intimacy and no news of a pregnancy, Anora does not question when his visits to their bed slowly grow infrequent. She does not remark on it. She does not initiate intimacy on her own. She waits. And she rules.
She treasures the stolen moments of his smile and his steady hands and his heavy-lidded gaze.
She quietly and unobtrusively resents that she yearns for him still.
She learns to fall asleep easily on her own.
She manages to grow accustomed to a sometimes-husband.
Anora has mastered the art of seeing without ever needing to really look.
She is not with child again for nearly two years.
Gossip is rampant through the halls. Whispers in corners and averted gazes. She has not given the king an heir.
As though she only had value when her womb was full.
She clutches her hand in the silken robes against her stomach and turns her proud gaze from the servants. Her shoulders stiffen. Her gait quickens. She finds herself braced against the back of her bedchamber door.
If only they knew.
If only they knew that it was her hand behind every edict and her voice behind every proclamation. She is more than her womb. She is the Queen of Ferelden. She is the very reason Cailan is loved and admired.
She tells herself this.
Even when he crawls into their bed smelling of other women's musk.
The second pregnancy is smoother than the first. She does not wake every morning with nausea. Her back does not ache. Her ankles do not swell. She breathes her first sigh of relief when she reaches the fifth month.
Her previous one had not lasted so long.
Anora stands in the palace courtyard with Cailan. He is wearing his brilliant, sun-splattered armor. Golden as his hair. She finds a slow, delicate smile make its way to her lips, unannounced, as she raises her hand up to touch the smooth strands of his hair. It is light against her fingers, sifting through her grasp like a song she cannot recall.
He smiles at her, all boyish charm and arresting beauty. He reaches for her hands and holds them between them.
Anora allows herself a small moment of traitorous honesty. "I will miss you." She has always hated the words. But she has always meant them.
He cocks his head and quirks a brow. Her heart clenches at the sight.
"And I, you," he says warmly. "But I'll be back for you," he finishes confidently, leaning forward to capture her lips in a soft and lingering kiss. He tastes like brandy and cloves.
He pulls back and releases one of her hands to light his touch along her slowly-swelling belly. His thumb brushes tenderly along the fabric, his gaze steady on the bulge. "And for this one."
Her throat constricts and words fail her.
She has never liked the feeling.
He grants her one last fleeting smile and then he is off, making his way to his royal guard and the regiment readying for Ostagar.
Anora feels a hand along her shoulder and she turns to find her father's face before her, shuttered and grave.
She offers a quick, close-lipped smile and turns to embrace him. The metal of his breastplate is cold along her cheek, his encircling arms stiff and short-lived. They pull from one another.
Anora will not admit to the tremble lighting her skin. She raises her chin, eyes stern on her father's. "Keep him safe," she demands, swallowing tightly.
Loghain grunts in acknowledgement, his gaze shifting across the courtyard.
They are gone that morning beneath the mist, before the sun can well and truly rise.
Anora folds her hands along her stomach and watches the gate for many long minutes before she moves to return through the courtyard.
When news of her husband's death makes its way to her ears Anora does nothing at first. Barely blinks. Barely breathes. There is the ragged croak that leaves her, a heavy plea for her father.
She sinks to her knees in the fire-warmed study.
Erlina kneels beside her and wraps her small hands around the queen's shoulders.
She shudders in her handmaiden's embrace.
She does not cry.
Her face hardens, her hands bracing along the carpeted floor and she stares into the swirling crimson and olive of the rug beneath her fingers.
She stays like this until her father comes to her.
His words are hollow in the slowly-chilling room.
She grips at her burgeoning stomach and shakes her head at her father's false comfort.
Anora wakes to a sudden, searing pain low in her stomach. She blinks into consciousness, her brow drenched in sweat, the muscles of her stomach clenching and releasing tremulously. She pushes at the sheets. Too hot. Too slick and too suffocating.
Her thighs are sticky and glistening darkly in the moonlight.
Her breath stills in her chest, her hands tightening on the cover of sheets half raised from her lap. She calls out for a chambermaid. It is a shaky whisper that leaves her. She clears her throat, calls again. This time a shout. This time desperate. She slowly parts her legs and finds the dark bloom of something wet and warm staining the bed between her thighs.
She screams again.
A chambermaid bursts through the door, a lone bright candle shifting light through the room. The woman dashes to her, eyes wide, her mistress's name along her lips. When the bright lip of the candlelight reaches the bed the chambermaid halts, gasping.
Red.
Anora can finally see the wide blossom of red beneath her. The bed is soaked with it. She keeps the sheet in her grasp, just past her knees, her knuckles white in their grip. She turns her gaze to the chambermaid and swallows thickly before speaking. "Get the healer." It is a strained whisper.
The chambermaid leaves without another word and Anora can hear the woman's hysterical wailing slowly dimming through the halls. And then there is the steady waking of the castle, the heavy footfalls of other servants making their way to her chamber.
She glances back down to the bloody remains of her unborn. It is mostly a thick film of blood. But there are small pieces of tissue as well. Tiny, solid chunks of flesh. Indiscernible. Globs of crimson unnamables.
She thinks of that golden hair.
Bile rises along the back of her throat. A single, choked whimper escapes her. Her fingers release the sheet, pushing it to rest past her knees. She bends over the pool beneath her.
She has nothing left of Cailan.
Thought leaves her. There is only the desolate desperation that moves her.
She reaches a hand out to the edge of the dark pool and scrapes the blood back toward her. Reaches the other hand out. Drags the bloody bits closer. As though she can bring them back to herself. As though she can reclaim it.
As though she can stuff it back inside and not be empty anymore.
Anora trembles violently, sweat-drenched. Another dragging sweep of her arm. Her limbs are covered in it.
The palace staff find her like this.
Handmaidens burst into the room and stop at the sight of her.
She looks up, eyes wild and frantic on them. "Help me," she pleads, looking back down to her wasted unborn. Dragging her bloody arms and the soaked sheets closer to the apex of her thighs. Closer. Back inside.
One of the young handmaidens turns from the sight and retches into the hallway. Another raises a hand to her gaping mouth and gasps into her palm.
Anora pants frenziedly, her chest heaving with the strain of her desperation. "I can't lose it," she mutters. Her eyes are dry and focused. "I can't lose him." Her voice breaks and she squeezes her eyes shut.
The healer rushes into the room, pushing past the gathering staff and their meager candlelight. It jolts the room into action. The chambermaids are rushing to the kitchens for water and herbs. Erlina darts into the room and is beside her queen immediately. The healer is at her knees then, spreading her legs as delicately as he can and barking for more candlelight.
Someone brings the light forth.
Anora looks up into the healer's face, her eyes gleaming, mouth hanging open.
He sighs and sags back at the sight of the sheets. He gulps visibly, his eyes moving to hers with a grave look in them. "Your Majesty, I am too late."
She only shakes her head. Only looks dumbly at him. Her blood-drenched fingers gather the crimson sheets against her thighs. She does not let go.
"I can't lose him," she breathes lowly.
The healer has no words.
Her father asks her one day what happened to the child.
She stares silently at him, her hands folded before her. She thinks back to days of scraped knees and knotted hair. To when her father balanced her on his lap, his face soft and inviting, his words laugh-lined and gentle. She remembers how she loved him for it.
Loghain's brows furrow, his gaze drifting to her flat stomach and then back to her face. "I am sorry, my daughter."
She believes him when he says it. She knows he means it.
Not like when he had turned from her, face shadowed and grim, at the words 'Did you kill Cailan?'.
Some days Anora looks at herself in the mirror, turning from one side to the other. Tries to remember what the swell of her belly had looked like.
Some days she thinks she sees it.
But mostly she waits.
There is a bastard prince who has come to steal her throne.
He wears that treacherous golden hair and Anora knows she will hate him for life.
The kingdom is the one thing she has left.
No Cailan. No father. Not even her reputation.
'We need Theirin blood on the throne' they had told her.
She clutches at her barren stomach and does not flinch at their stern gazes.
She agrees to the marriage. She even leaves her sneer at the door the day of their wedding. She looks into Alistair's gentle face and feels sick. Before the alter, his hands are sweaty and trembling on hers. His eyes drift to the elven Warden at her side. The elven Warden with a sword coated in her father's blood.
Anora glares at Alistair and when he looks back to her his eyes blink wide in startled recognition.
Yes, Anora thinks she may hate him for life.
Anora is the first to propose the sharing of their bed. She comes to him in only a thin robe. She drops it to the floor as he sits along the edge of the bed.
Alistair swallows thickly and stumbles over his words, hands gripping his knees tightly. His cheeks blaze red.
Anora stalks forward until she is just before him, until he cannot avert his gaze from her naked skin.
"If that Theirin blood is so necessary," she barely gets out, her teeth clenched tight, "Then don't you think an heir is appropriate?"
He gulps once more, inching back slightly.
Anora huffs, grasping for his hands and placing them along her hips.
He looks up into her face and she sees nothing of Cailan. Her gut clenches uncontrollably at the sight.
"But I…I mean the taint…" he stammers, licking his dry lips. "We don't even know if…if it would take." He takes a single slow breath, his fingers folding around her flesh without him realizing.
She leans into him, placing a hand along his shoulder, the other bracing her weight along his thigh. He starts at the touch, glancing down to the image of her hand along his leg. His breathing deepens.
"Then we will continue until it does take," she whispers, eyes intent on his.
Alistair is silent for a long moment, his hands slowly gripping tighter to her hips, his gaze raking over her naked form. He licks his lips once more, eyes flicking back to her own unblinking blue ones. He nods, silently, shakily. He pulls in a last, steadying breath and tilts his head up toward her, eyes closing, lips seeking hers.
She pulls her head back, just out of his reach, and he opens his lids at the sudden shift, his brows furrowing.
Anora's mouth is a tight line. Her hand along his shoulder curls until her nails are digging into his skin. "I am not your elven Warden," she says calmly, deadly.
He opens his mouth, an unintelligible croak falling from his lips as he watches her.
She narrows her eyes and then pushes him back roughly until he hits the bed, startled. She slowly, purposely, climbs atop him. "You will not make love to me. You will not caress me. You will not touch me as you would she."
She hovers just over him, her fingers trailing to the drawstring of his trousers.
He stares wide-eyed at her.
She reaches a hand beneath his pants and he hisses in response, arching up into her.
"Do you understand?" she seethes.
He nods quickly, mutely. His hands lay unsure on the bed.
Anora clenches her jaw. "Good." She lowers herself toward him.
There is nothing of Cailan in the way Alistair touches her. He is hesitant at best and fumbling at worst. She moves his hands to where they do the most good and instructs him on what pleases her. He is unsure and cautious but does not require any repetition of instructions. He listens, his brow furrowed in concentration whenever she speaks in the privacy of their bed. He is a studious pupil if nothing else.
Anora suggests they lay with each other every night to ensure a pregnancy. Alistair is opposed at first, and when she finds him many a night drinking along the balcony, eyes glazed, she sighs with resignation and leaves him to his wine.
She finds him crying some nights. She turns from the sight in derision, returning, instead, to the familiar work of ruling. Alistair does not object to her decisions, though Eamon and Teagan urge him constantly to partake further in the overseeing of Ferelden.
She asks him once why he is so willing to forsake his rule.
He looks out the window a moment, light shifting through the study in a gentle haze. He scratches at his chin and then cocks his head at her. "I trust you."
Anora blinks at him. And then her mouth sets into a frown. "You are a fool to relinquish your power so."
He quirks a brow. "Would you rather I try to run the kingdom myself? The failed Chantry boy? Failed templar and Grey Warden? Think I could add 'failed king' to that long list of qualifications?"
She shifts in her seat, her hand clenching tightly to her quill. "You would be an even bigger fool for that," she says with narrowed eyes.
Alistair shrugs, arms held in the air, palms up. "Can't win then. Might as well leave Ferelden to those who know what they're doing."
Anora stares at him for a long moment, thinking. "And you do not object to the way I rule?" The words are a challenge.
Alistair pushes from his seat along the window and brushes his silken trousers to smooth them out. "Like I said, I trust you. This king thing's not really my forte."
She nods mutely, looking to the quill in her hand. She breathes deeply, brows knitted together.
Alistair sighs and it makes her glance up to him.
He is watching her with a look she cannot name. "I think you'd be a great mother," he says suddenly.
Anora's chest constricts, her fingers clenching the quill in her hand until she thinks it might snap. A harsh breath rakes through her chest.
He offers nothing else. And it is said with such casualness, such earnestness, that she must tear her gaze from his.
"Please leave me," she breathes warningly.
He does.
She feels the weight of his steps long after he has left the study.
Anora loses her third unborn before she even knows she is pregnant.
She is railing against Alistair in the middle of the throne room. Her decision to erect a monument in her father's likeness sparks the first inkling of ire in him. He vehemently opposes it.
She lays out her immutable decision.
He attacks it with fervor.
She scoffs at his dramatic petulance.
He slings venomous words.
They stare each other down. They whittle away their patience. They wage a silent war with their unrepentant glares.
When he swipes his hand through the air on his last words the breath collapses in her lungs.
He is unmoved. And there is no way to alter his decision.
She will not admit to the quake in her brow, the tremble along her jaw. She will not let him see her like this. Her love for her father, tainted and spent like her bloodied bed sheets, is only for her. She carries it around in the silence of her heart like a secret. It is not for his viewing.
She stalks from the room, hands thrown up in the air. When she finally makes it to her bedchamber she is still fuming, still shaking with the rage. And then she feels it. That sudden, painful clench in her womb. She nearly doubles over from it, one hand grasping at the iron door handle, the other wrapping protectively around her middle. She falls into a crouch behind her shut chamber door and cries out.
The blood is nearly instant.
But she has seen it in her dreams too many times to be surprised anymore.
When the pain has finally ceased and her breathing has evened out, she stumbles across the room and grabs for a bathrobe. Once the robe is secured around her she makes her way, a bit unsteadily, back to the door and calls for a chambermaid. The woman steps through the threshold to find the small puddle of blood on the cold stone and she looks up with wide eyes to her mistress. But there is nothing to be seen underneath the thick robe and Anora orders the bath to be drawn too quickly and too tersely for the woman to stay long and question.
Anora lays in the heated bath and sends the maids from the room with a firm demand for silence. She stays in the water until the dull ache in her abdomen has left. Until the water runs pink. Alistair does not come to her that night. She is grateful for it. She thinks about the loathing in his eyes when they had spoken of her father.
She curls her hands into fists beneath the water and then slowly unfurls them. Clenching again. Releasing once more. She sinks further into the tub, her arms sliding around her frame to hold against herself.
She decides that this one is hers.
Anora burns her bloodied dress that night and watches the embers flare.
In the two years following the Archdemon's demise and the subsequent royal wedding, Alistair has proven, surprisingly, to be a valued asset in the political connections with Orzammar. Having helped the newly crowned Harrowmont to harness control of the dwarven realm, Alistair's personal relations with the king have helped to somewhat draw the royal recluse out of his shuttered kingdom and into on-going, if not tentatively assured, trade relations with Ferelden, and Denerim in particular. Anora hides her surprise well.
Alistair is often on business at the mage tower in those first couple of years, supporting the rebuilding and restructuring of the Circle. He seems a calming and assuring presence to both Knight Commander Greagoir and First Enchanter Irving. Anora is content to leave decisions and relations concerning the Circle largely in his hands, with only the minutest oversight.
And then there are the elves. Denerim's alienage is a priority of Alistair's. Anora does not question why. She already knows. She lets him improve conditions, only occasionally cracking down for tax and sanitation purposes. Alistair grumbles but often agrees, unable to deny her practical arguments. He is loved and known throughout the alienage, and has soothed many a possible rebellion. Anora does not voice her gratitude. Will not voice it.
He disappears there some days.
When he comes to their bed in the dark of night and touches her, she doesn't pray for conception anymore.
She prays it isn't the Warden's name on his lips as he pushes inside her.
Five years pass. Her womb stays unfilled. Anora begins to look to other mages outside her healer. She continues with the herbs she is prescribed. Nothing changes.
Eamon dies.
She finds Alistair alone in the chapel that evening. Candles flicker meager orange light around the silent room. The king kneels in the second pew, hands clasped before him, head bowed. She makes her way to the end of the pew and when he looks up at the sound of her footfalls she sees the glistening trail of tears on his cheeks. She swallows tightly and looks at him, eyes softening minutely.
He opens his mouth but nothing comes. So he braces his hands along the bench before him, his knuckles white momentarily along the wood, and then pushes back to sit in the pew, a weary sigh leaving him as he settles heavily. He is silent then.
Anora looks up at the statue of Andraste gracing the center of the chapel's main stage. Shadows flit across the womanly visage like underwater waves. Washed out with the tide.
Alistair grips his hands in his lap and Anora sighs when she lowers herself to a seat beside him.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Alistair." Her words are a whisper in the empty room. Deafening.
He only nods, only grips his hands tighter.
She ponders him for a moment, the graceful bow of his lips, the knotted line of his brow. The golden flash of his hair in the candlelight.
Her chest is tight with remembrance. She raises a hand to brush along his cheek and then fall to his shoulder. She cannot name what makes her do it.
He turns to her. "He was like a father, you know?" It is a strangled choke of words.
Her eyes lower, her gaze upon his trembling hands. "This world is full of men like fathers."
He watches her in the half-light.
She sighs, looking back up to him. "Their fates are hardly ever as we imagine them to be." Her hand slips from his shoulder and he catches it so quickly in his own that she jumps in surprise, her mouth caught open as he leans toward her, his eyes earnest and desperate.
"I will be a better father than the ones we have known," he breathes.
Anora cannot stop the whimper of something painful that falls from her lips. She clamps her mouth shut and strangles it. Her fingers flex against his own warm ones.
Alistair's face grows tender. His gaze falls to her lips momentarily and he visibly gulps. When he looks back up at her there is grief splashed starkly across his features.
She doesn't pull away. She watches him expectantly, her shoulders loosening their taut tension.
He inches forward, just a hesitant lean, a cautious look in his eyes.
Anora shifts her gaze between his bright irises.
"I promise you," he breathes in the space between them.
She lifts her free hand and traces his brow, her eyes lighting along the motion. She brushes her fingertips through his golden hair.
That golden, brilliant hair.
"I believe you," she whispers, just before he leans the rest of the way forward and presses his lips to hers. They are dry and trembling. But there is need in the kiss, her mouth opening to his instinctively when the warm touch of his tongue is against her lips.
They kiss for long moments in the haze of the chapel, Alistair's hands releasing hers to dig painfully into her hair, holding her face to his. He pushes up against her. Her hands fall to his shoulders.
There is the faintest sob as he pulls from her, but he keeps his mouth barely brushing hers. He shudders with his releasing breath.
Anora watches him with knowing eyes.
Alistair moves his lips against hers once more, faintly, just a soft brush, a wonder at the warmth. His breath floods her mouth and she tastes apricots and wine on him.
No brandy or cloves.
Her fingers dig into his shoulders and hold him there.
When they finally move, it is Anora who grips his hand and pulls him from the pew. He trails after her, his hand never leaving hers as she leads him through the castle. His eyes are fixed to the spot between her shoulder blades.
They make it to their bedchamber and she disrobes immediately. Alistair is not far behind.
When they lay naked and spent in the tangle of sheets, Alistair is on his side, curled into her. He doesn't lay his hand tenderly along her stomach. Doesn't offer up any names. He looks up at her, his face in her shoulder. He reaches along her waist and lights his fingers along her bare hip, anchoring to her.
She turns her gaze before the tightness in her chest can grow.
When his hand beneath her chin slowly pulls her gaze back to his, she doesn't resist. They lay watching each other for many moments, Alistair's steady touch lingering over her hip.
Her chest heaves beneath his stare.
He pushes up from his position and leans over her, his mouth seeking hers once more.
This time she is the one that sobs against his mouth.
This time she is the one who is unsure and cautious.
This time she doesn't say a word or offer any instruction.
He has already learned how to listen when her body speaks.
Alistair has begun to grow his hair out.
Anora lays her fork down on her plate and lifts a hand to brush a stray lock from his cheek. He smiles with his mouth full of hog meat.
She narrows her eyes and lets out a sound of distaste.
He has the decency to swallow and lower his shamed gaze.
Anora sighs, her hand falling back to the tabletop. "It's getting long," she muses, without really expecting an answer.
Alistair licks his lips and reaches for his goblet. "I thought you liked long hair." He takes a sip of wine.
Anora purses her lips, her face pinched tight. "You should cut it."
He lifts a brow, his goblet stilled at his mouth.
Anora straightens her shoulders back, her hand picking her fork back up as her attention returns to her dinner. "It does not suit you," she lies, words clipped.
Alistair does not answer. Only watches her. And then he shrugs, stabbing his fork through another slab of meat.
She does not tell him it reminds her too much of Cailan.
She feigns a headache that night from too much wine and goes to sleep with her back to him.
Alistair stands in the courtyard for their goodbye. He leaves for Kirkwall within the hour, ready to greet the new Viscount after the quelled Qunari threat.
Anora cradles her arms around her as she waits a few paces away from him. When he secures the last strap of his horse's harness he moves to the space before her.
She offers a stiff smile, her arms kept securely around her frame. "When shall you return?"
Alistair runs a gloved hand through his short hair. "Within the next fortnight I should venture."
She hums a soft acknowledgement, looking out to the gate past the courtyard. The morning is thick with mist. She has this irrational fear that he will not return through the gate.
But he is not wearing sun-splattered armor and her stomach has been flat for years now.
Alistair leans his weight to one leg and a smirk slowly breaks across his face. "Going to miss me?"
Her gaze snaps back to his and her shoulders are rigid. "The quiet will be welcome I assure you."
He barks a laugh.
It does things to her she will not name.
"Well," he begins, one hand moving to rub against the back of his neck, his eyes on the stones beneath his feet, "I'll miss you."
Her brows knit together. She does not release her arms. "You have always been needlessly sentimental," she answers.
He looks up and smiles at her.
She huffs.
"You'll miss me," he asserts, moving to grasp her shoulders. He leans forward to plant a kiss on her lips but she shifts her head downward, so that it is her forehead he meets instead. He stills against her. And then he is clearing his throat and stepping back.
They lock gazes for a single taut moment.
Anora rubs her hands down her arms. "Be safe." Her voice is strained.
Alistair parts his lips as though he will say something but then stops, thinking better of it. He nods, adjusting the breastplate of his armor. "Of course," he answers, his breath leaving him in one long exhale. "I have much to return to."
Anora nods mutely, watching him tug his horse toward the gate.
That night she spreads her palm over the empty space of their bed where he should be and she tries to breathe.
Three years later the healer tells her she is with child. Alistair's face is bright and gleeful beside her, his hand reaching out to grasp tightly to hers.
She can only grant him a hesitant smile before it shudders away. She turns her face.
Alistair thanks the healer profusely and the greying man is backing from the room, head bowed, hands reverent in their farewell. The door closes behind him.
Alistair gathers Anora in his arms before she can fully turn to him. They stand in the middle of their bedchamber and breathe together.
He sighs into her hair and whispers words that should be loving but only sound haunting to Anora.
Her fingers curl into his chest and she shakes.
Anora wakes to Alistair jostling her into consciousness. The motion is disorienting and jarring, her eyes blinking in the faint light of their bedchamber. His face swims into her vision. A low moan leaves her.
"Anora!" he calls, and the panic in his voice jolts her fully awake.
She bolts up in the bed at his fearful shout, their heads almost colliding. A wave of dizziness overcomes her and there is a sharp pain in her gut.
A telltale, familiar pain.
The shuddering groan leaves her before anything else can process.
Alistair is kneeling beside her on their bed, his eyes wide and tearful, hands shaking in the air before him, as though he isn't sure whether to hold her or the slowly pooling remains of their lost child as it bleeds from between her legs.
He is deathly pale and sweating. His eyes glance back and forth between her face and the crimson pool below. There are thick webs of tissue and minute chunks of flesh. Unspeakable.
Anora can see the heavy gulp of Alistair's throat where she imagines the bile has risen swiftly along his tongue. She shuts her eyes and feels the hot stickiness of her unborn coating her thighs. Her hand lashes out and grips his arm. He winces beneath the strength of it.
"Get the healer," she mutters lowly, resignedly. She opens her eyes to his.
He stares at her, mouth agape.
Her eyes tell him that it is too late. "Go!" she urges anyway.
He stumbles off the bed, racing to the door and flinging it open, running into the darkened castle halls in his blood-speckled smallclothes.
When the healer arrives he tells her what she already knows.
Alistair sits along the bed beside her and pulls her form into his embrace. She lets him.
A chambermaid softly offers to draw a bath and change the sheets when the healer leaves.
"Wait," Alistair chokes out, unable to say more. "Wait." He cannot move from the position.
The chambermaid leaves the room silently, shutting the heavy door behind her.
Anora can feel the heavy tremble of Alistair's arms around her and the warm trickle of his tears along the crown of her head. Her own eyes are dry. She reaches one hand down to grip the wrinkle of bloody sheets between her delicate fingers. Her other hand is trapped against his chest.
She thinks maybe she should say something. Offer up an apology. Soothe his tender ache.
But she is just so tired of apologizing for being empty. To Ferelden. To her husbands. To herself.
So she stays silent.
And she begins to wonder if the taint is truly at fault. If maybe she has been the reason behind all the blood and the loss and the throbbing, constant ache in her gut that has never truly left her. Not since that first night.
Not once.
She wonders if she only carries death in her womb.
She wonders if it is not kind to stop trying.
Alistair mumbles something into her hair and she strains to hear it, stills against him and grips the sheet in her bloody palm even tighter. There is the soft rush of wind from the open window. The lulling warmth of burning candle wax. The sharp acrid scent of blood in the air. And then she hears it. Choked and barely-there. Over and over.
"I'm sorry."
He whispers it into her hair and cries against her.
Her lungs clench tightly around a jagged huff of hair that she drags through her chest. She quakes in her skin. She tries to shake her head at his whispered apologies. Tries to hush his gentle sobbing.
But she doesn't know the words. And she doesn't even know if she would believe them.
So she curls against his chest and lets him cry.
And for once, she stays silent.
For once, she lets someone else carry the loss.
She is just so tired.
Alistair is distant and avoiding her for months afterward.
They have not slept together since the miscarriage. Anora finds the unease unexpected and difficult to bear. She catches herself turning to him in the night to find him gone. It is a gradual break between them, a steady sliver of space edging its way in, slowly, almost imperceptibly, leaving her in a state of sudden, unexplainable loss when she looks back wondering what exactly happened and why and how. How without her noticing. She watches him when he heads to the stables and the mabari kennels. She watches him when he takes his dinner to his study and shuts the door behind him. She watches him when he leaves for the Denerim alienage.
She confronts him one night, closing the chamber door behind her and latching the lock. She braces against it, shoulders held rigid.
He looks up from buckling his belt over his leathers and swallows at the sight of her.
There is ire in her eyes he has not seen for a long time.
"You will not visit the alienage tonight," she demands. No room for discussion.
He drops his hands from his belt and sighs. "Anora…"
"You will not," she repeats, words icy.
Something snaps inside him and he brushes forward, stepping closer to her. "Let me pass." It is a hollow voice. Hardly demanding. Mostly helpless.
"No," she seethes resolutely. Her palms spread against the cool door behind her.
He stares her down, his face crumbling.
It almost makes her yield.
Almost.
"Please," he whispers, gaze suddenly averted, throat constricted tightly. "I have to…have to get out of here." He sweeps his hands around their shared room.
Here.
Bloodied sheets and the scent of death.
Like salt and copper.
"It hurts too much," he offers needlessly.
She already knows how much it hurts.
Anora lifts her chin and pushes from the door. "A king cannot run from his duty, Alistair."
His mouth sharpens into a frown, deep and cutting. "I'm not running."
She takes a step closer, a sneer along her face. "Do not lie to yourself. And do not lie to me. Offer me at least the decency of an honest admission if you're going to so shame me with your cowardice," she spits. Her anger claws at her throat.
Alistair's eyes go wide, his mouth parting but no words forming.
Anora lets out a sharp noise of disgust as she twists her gaze from his, crossing her arms over her chest. She focuses on the smooth lines of their untouched bed. "Cailan, at the very least, never lied about his dalliances."
A gruff, resonating sound emerges from Alistair's throat that Anora would almost call a growl if she hadn't known her husband better. But the noise brings her gaze back to his.
"What are you on about, Anora?" He stands only a couple feet away, so that she could reach for him if she only tried.
So that she could brush her fingers along the stubble-lined edge of his jaw if she so wanted.
She quells the unexplainable urge and clears her throat. "I understand that you gave up your lover, the Warden Commander, when this marriage was arranged. And I understand that I did not make our union an easy one to begin with. But I will not be made a fool now, Alistair." She huffs, aggravation bleeding into her skin until she is rife with it. It drowns out the stabbing sense of betrayal. She is grateful for the searing taste of rage along her tongue.
Alistair gapes at her. "Wha – Anora, you – what?" His indignant near-screech is sharp, and genuine enough for her to blink in startled recognition for a moment. But it passes quickly, and she steadies that uneasy flutter of a breath in her chest, her fingers flexing tightly over her arms, her eyes hard once more.
"I have never questioned you about it before. Never demanded the absence of her from your heart. But now? Now? To flee back into her arms the moment you detect a fault in me, to treat me as the failure the court has been whispering I am behind my back for years, this – this I will not abide." Her teeth clench harshly, her voice dangerously close to cracking. She moves her arms to rest stiffly at her sides and her hands curl into fists as she tries desperately to settle the violent quaking that has overcome her. "I may not have provided an heir for your Highness, but I have done more for this nation that you may ever hope to accomplish. Afford me the respect and the courtesy of not shaming me with your infidelity. Afford me the honor you rightfully owe your wife."
Alistair can only stare at her in the wake of her words, spitting hot and irate between them.
The air fractures and splits.
He takes a step forward, hands raised toward her, needing to be closer, and then he flinches at her subsequent step back.
She braces once more against the door at her back and something flashes through her eyes that she will not give voice to.
Hurt.
Alistair sees it all the same.
She stares him down and grinds her teeth, nostrils flaring. But her eyes are blinking furiously, her whole body curled sharply as though she were ready to bolt. Everything about her screams pain.
He clenches his jaw, stopping just before her. His face is pinched tight with anguish she cannot place. She hates that the sight softens her. That she wants to bury her face in his neck and breathe him in. That her mouth waters for apricots and wine.
Alistair exhales slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. "Anora."
Even the sound of her name on his lips nearly makes her break. The sensation only makes her more furious.
She doesn't flinch when he reaches up and traces the smooth line of her cheek with his hand. "I have never – never – been unfaithful to you," he gets out in a struggling whisper.
She sags against the door.
"You are my wife," he continues, hand falling from her face.
She misses the warmth already. But she will not voice her loss. She swallows thickly. "You do not love me," she manages to get out, surprising herself with the evenness of her tone.
He opens his mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. "Anora, I…it's not…"
"And I do not love you," she finishes before he can say anything else. Before either of them can sift through the lingering loss in the room and grasp for the truth. Before she betrays herself.
He only watches her, words dying in his throat.
She pulls in a heavy breath of air and lets it linger in her lungs. Relishes the sharp tingling that distracts her from the real hurt.
Alistair looks to her folded fists at her side and reaches for one, his hand curling tenderly along her own fiercely clenched hand. "I made a vow to you, Anora. The day of our wedding." He keeps his eyes on their single joined hand, on the white, taut flesh of her knuckles as his thumb brushes over them. "I keep my vows."
A sound escapes her that falls somewhere between regret and rage. She silences it quickly.
He looks up at her.
"If that is true," she begins slowly, not even allowing herself the relieving acceptance of such a thought, "Then why do you so frequent the alienage? Does some elven whore not remind you of her? Do you not whisper her name when you go to them in the night?"
Alistair's face hardens and his grip tightens on her hand. His touch is searing on the tender flesh of her wrist. He does not yield beneath her accusatory glare.
She regrets the words instantly. But she does not take them back. Too much pride.
Always too much pride between them and not enough air.
"I have never," he seethes through clenched teeth, "gone to the alienage for such an act."
"Then why?" She hates the pleading tone that breaks free. Her nails dig half-moons into her flesh.
"Because I feel needed there."
She blinks at him.
His hold on her begins to quake.
She licks her lips and tries to speak. "You are needed h –" She doesn't get to finish.
He scoffs.
The harshness of it stalls the words in her throat.
He shakes his head, eyes downcast. "I have never been needed here." The words are a hollow resignation.
She steps into him without thinking and he glances up at her proximity. "You are a fool, Alistair." She tries to sound chastising, but it comes out like longing.
He offers a dark chuckle. "So you tell me. Constantly."
Anora's features steel and she lifts his chin with one agile, slender finger. His eyes catch hers. "The kingdom needs you. Why do you think you were made king?"
"For my bastard Theirin blood," he nearly spits.
She allows him that. "Admittedly, that was the initial reason but it has grown beyond that. The years have molded you into, well, perhaps not a great king but a decent one. A compassionate one, if not an overly sentimental one."
She has never promised to be anything but honest and will not deny him that now.
His mouth dips into a frown.
"But that does not mean that you have not been good for this kingdom, for this court, for m – " She cuts herself off, eyes shifting between his. Her hand falls from beneath his chin.
Everything and nothing passes between them.
They are intimates and strangers all at once.
Alistair looks at her. Maybe for the first time. Maybe for the last. It could be a moment or a lifetime that passes between them.
He takes a chance. Pulling her still-curled fist up to his mouth, his fingers press against her delicate hand until she unfurls her fist. He keeps his gaze steady on hers when he brings her fingertips up to his mouth.
She sucks in a sharp, uncontrollable breath when his lips press tentatively to the pads of her fingers. He holds her hand to his mouth for several seconds, breathing against them, his lips brushing achingly over her skin.
His eyes are dark when she glances up from the motion to catch his gaze.
Words leave her.
"And you?" he breathes against her touch, his voice sounding both frightened and hopeful at once. "Do you need me?" He finally lowers her hand but keeps it locked in his own. Braces it against his chest and splays her fingers over his beating heart.
Her eyes flick to their joined hands over his chest and she swallows tentatively before trying to fashion words. "I think…," she begins, hating the break in her voice and then clearing her throat. "I think perhaps, right now, we may both need each other." Her words end on a tremulous exhale.
He leans toward her, breath fanning her cheeks. "Is that enough?'
Her lids slide closed and she thinks of golden hair. She thinks of stained sheets and long years and the exhilarating thrill of his mouth so close to hers.
She thinks of the smooth, silken heat of his hands.
She thinks of the constant, lingering emptiness that burrows deeper to the pit of her. To the heart of her. Where no one knows.
"It will have to be," she breathes shakily against him before his mouth covers hers.
Before she can convince herself to turn back.
He presses her into the door, his hand holding hers along his chest moving to brace the back of her neck, his other sliding familiarly around her waist. He cradles her to him and she breathes into him. She winds her hands into his hair.
His short, golden hair.
When he breaks from her mouth, panting, she whispers against his lips. "Stay with me tonight."
He moves his mouth to her neck, his lips grazing against her pulse point and she shudders. "Yes," he breathes into her skin.
Her hands grip him tighter to her.
He makes love to her that night.
She lets him.
Anora and Alistair make their way to Redcliffe after news of the mage rebels and their Tevinter allies claiming the village for their own and running Teagan off the land. The threat that is the Breach still lingers in the backs of their minds but they have neither the resources nor the intent to lend aid to the Inquisition at this time. Their people come first, what is left of them in the midst of this mage-templar war.
Redcliffe is still several miles away on horseback.
Anora glances over to Alistair as his hands tangle stiffly in his reins. "Alistair," she calls calmly, soothingly, from atop her own horse.
He glances up at her as though startled from thought.
She cocks her head, steadying her mount beside his. "What is troubling you?"
He shakes his head, a low chuckle falling from his lips. "You wouldn't want to hear it."
She squares her shoulders, her chin lifting. "Do not presume to know what I want, Alistair. Now speak."
He cannot help the laugh that escapes him. He reaches a hand up and rakes it through his hair, his gaze drifting over the sun-drenched hills. "Alright but I'm warning you. You'll only call me a fool again." His laugh is something singular and warm.
It lights a fondness in her heart that scares her.
He blows a heavy breath through his lips and lays both hands along his mount, reins tucked securely beneath his fingers. "It's the first time I'll be back," he explains softly. "To Recliffe that is. Since…" He cannot master the words.
"Since Eamon's funeral," Anora finishes for him.
He nods, eyes focusing on the tangled strands of hair in his horse's mane.
She sighs beside him. "You are not a fool, Alistair."
He quirks a disbelieving brow her way.
She looks straight ahead. Does not catch his gaze. "Do not be ashamed of grief," she says, her brows furrowing. Her throat feels tight.
Alistair hums a soft acknowledgment, but he doesn't really hear her.
She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. "Nothing good comes from turning your back on the truth of your loss."
This time he looks at her. Really looks at her.
She bristles beneath his stare. But she is tired of hiding away the pain. She is tired of burying those bloody, unnamed pieces of herself in the vastness of the palace's verdant grounds and calling it finished.
It is never finished.
It is never over.
She never named her unborn because then they couldn't really die.
She finally turns her gaze to him, her voice a tense whisper, raking along her throat. "I should know."
They march in continued silence toward Redcliffe. Just before they approach the gate, Alistair spreads his hand out toward her. She looks at it a moment, and then slides her fingers through his.
She feels the warmth of his palm through his gloves and remembers what it is to feel full once more.
Anora lets out a shaky breath as she presses her hands to the growing bulge in her stomach. Her fingers slide against the smooth silk of her bodice and she braces her palms just beneath the swell. Imagines she feels her unborn, just on the flipside.
Alistair's hand covers her own and she looks up at him, a tentative smile breaking along her features. The air is warm and bright in the open space of the courtyard. They are walking along the eastern gardens when she stops and looks to her growing stomach.
Alistair pulls her hands from the bulge and holds them between them, planting a kiss along the knuckles of each. She rolls her eyes at the sentiment but does not deny him the soft flutter of her own smile.
"If it turns out to be a girl, you will spoil her rotten," she says, a slight scolding tone to her words.
Alistair's grin is brilliant.
Anora swallows back her awe at the sight.
"Then I hope it's a girl," he responds.
She cocks her head and looks out over her gardens, musing. "I have yet to consider any girl names."
"Really?"
Her mouth dips unconsciously into a mild frown. "My first thoughts were of a son." She tries to keep the tremulous anxiety from bleeding into her voice but it is there all the same. Tries to keep the word 'heir' from her tongue but nonetheless, it hangs unspoken in the air around them. Always.
Alistair pulls her hands against his chest. "What about Celia?"
Anora's mouth opens of its own accord but only a strangled choke comes out, her eyes wide on his. "That's my mother's name," she whispers.
He rubs his thumbs over her knuckles as he holds her hands to him. "I know," he answers warmly.
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and holds it there, watching him. A short, unexpected laugh breaks free. It is gone in an instant. But it is enough to light a quaking smile along her lips. "My mother was but a cabinetmaker," she says softly, taking in a heavy breath.
Alistair shrugs one causal shoulder. "Well, I was but a bastard."
She steps into him, her head shaking vehemently. "You are more than that, Alistair. Don't be –"
"A fool?" he interrupts, his smile wide but not reaching his eyes. Something passes along his face that silences her.
It looks too much like the kind of pain she sees in the mirror herself.
She shifts her gaze between his gleaming irises, her fingers clenching reflexively around his own.
He is silent for many moments, his brow furrowing deeply, his mouth a thin line. And then there is the quick lilt of his lips. The hopeful ache of his words. "Do you think you could love me, Anora?"
She blinks at his words, her mouth parting in surprise. She closes it quickly. Looks to their joined hands. The sun is gleaming and hot against their backs.
"I am learning to," she whispers. And then she looks into his eyes, clenches her jaw, lifts her chin. She does not shy away from the vulnerability her words bring.
He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against hers.
"And you?" she questions breathlessly. "Do you think you could love me?"
He laughs. Bright and elusive and warm against her lips. "I think I already do."
She does not expect it. Not really. Not fully. A hesitant croak leaves her trembling lips and he stops it with his mouth.
She feels the steady weight of her swollen stomach press against him and she breaks the kiss slowly, hesitantly. She doesn't understand the tears that line her eyes.
"I'm scared, Anora." He keeps his forehead braced against hers. It is a breathless quake of words.
She almost sobs at the sound.
He moves a hand to brace the back of her head, to hold her to him as though her presence alone could drown the fear from him. His eyes are fixed on her burgeoning stomach between them.
Her first instinct is to admonish. Or dismiss. Or Maker, even to ignore it. She does not expect the words that leave her. She does not expect how right they feel. How true. "As am I."
He scoffs softly, the sound crackling through the whisper of air between them. "You've never been afraid of anything in your life," he chuckles, but it is laced with reluctant tears, stained in slow-bleeding terror and desperation.
She pulls from him so that she can lock gazes with him. So that he can finally see. Finally know.
So that she can bear her tears fully and unashamedly for the first time in their twelve years of marriage.
He blinks in wordless surprise at her face, at the glistening wetness brimming in her eyes. At the first steady trail that breaks across her pale cheek.
She pulls his hand to her stomach and lays it there, spreads her shaking fingers over his own. "I'm afraid of this. I'm afraid of losing our child." She says it heatedly. Like a challenge. Like a demand.
The way she says 'our'.
Alistair pulls his hand from her belly and wraps both arms around her, pulling her into his embrace. She clutches at him, the tears hot against her lids now, her whole body shaking and righteous and terrified.
"I don't think it will last," she chokes out against his shoulder. "I don't think I can keep it." Her voice breaks, her tears staining the silk of his sleeve. He holds her tighter. Threads his fingers into her hair and breathes her in.
"It's okay," he murmurs into her hair. She can feel the tiny vibrations of his voice through his cheek pressed against her and she cries harder. She cries like she is full of oceans. "It's okay, because I'll still be here," he finishes.
She believes him.
She lets the words wash over her. She lets them fill her in places that have been barren for years and years and aching, rending years. She lets them bring her back, in pieces, in fragments that have been lost for too long. Slowly stitching back together until she can no longer remember what had taken her so far from herself in the first place.
"I'll still be here," he whispers into her.
Anora realizes, for the first time she can recall, that she has forgotten what it feels to be empty.