Summary: A slip of the mind during their torrid affair made for even further complications to an already difficult parting between Nimue Lavellan and a certain elven apostate. Pregnancy Fic. Because I've always wanted to try my hand at one. Warning: mature themes. This story is not for the young.
Beta: Michelle T
Chapter 1: Change
"The trees have no leaves and may never have them again. We must wait till some months hence in the spring to know. But if it is destined never again to grow, it can blame this limitless trait in the heart of men"
Dragon 9:43
There were rumors in the first month of our triumph against Corypheus that the Inquisition would end. I will tell you now, there is a kernel of truth within such rumors.
How could this be, you ask. It's simple. It concerns the heart of the Inquisition, the Inquisitor herself. Nimue of the Dalish clan Lavellan, First to Keeper Istimaethoriel, sent to spy on the conclave of mages and templars. It took one cataclysmic event to turn a Dalish elf into possibly the most important individual of concurrent Thedas history.
Under her lead, we have had great victories. But since the very start, it was clear to all involved that the Inquisitor herself never bought into the moniker 'Herald of Andraste' the adoring masses bestowed upon her. She was Dalish by birth, Elvhen by blood, and an honest pragmatist to the core.
The end goal had always been the defeat of Corypheus. This war harms everyone, she said. Once that was done… I suppose none of us felt the courtesy of asking her intention. We were high on victory, jubilant and unwilling to look at a moment of unravelling. There were talks of further development of the Inquisition. We had done good work, honored before all of Thedas, and more and more nobles and resources were pouring in. It seemed unthinkable that someone, anyone, would be willing to leave all that, to step away from wealth and power and return to a simple life of anonymity amongst the wood traipsing Dalish.
We never thought to ask, perhaps we did not want to and she herself never said a word of her private thoughts. Mayhaps she hadn't wanted to share in the event that the drastic needed to happen. But now that I looked back, I could see the looks of longing, the homesickness, the barefeet on the cold winter ground, the effluvial ghost of bone deep sorrow.
But how could one person quitting bring down an entire organization, you say. I suppose if it were any other, it would not have happened. But the Inquisition was young and spent after a year long campaign against the greatest enemy Thedas had ever seen. The Inquisitor was… still is… our heart and our symbol. Countless looked to her to find hope, courage, trust. Her departure would have been accompanied by the belief of many in our ranks. The result would have been an eventual but unavoidable unravelling of the Inquisition itself.
Thankfully, it never passed. But not for any effort in our part nor moments of clarity on hers. Rather… she stayed because of a… misstep, some would say.
A slip of the mind, fruit borne unexpected.
A child, a chain, a reason for living differently, a cause to fight the bigger, longer, lonelier fight against the world itself. Truly, who among us knows?
- From the Journal of Lady Seeker Cassandra Pentagast. Dated Dragon 9:43 -
The stones that paved the floor were dark, green, and cold. Moist mold and stains on the wall. The sick chamber smelt wet, the scent of dew and mountain air from the wide open window and old, spoiled wine from the basketful of dirty rags. The fire burned, crackling in the back. Its warm, golden light threw dancing shadows on the walls and floor.
The surgeon, who wore the scent of antiseptic and roasted poppies on her skin like Orlesian women wore perfume, swirled the glass flask with one hand, the movement slow and deliberate and so so familiar. The sounds of the sloshing liquid inside felt loud in the hush of early dawn.
Nimue Lavellan eyed the mixture through the clear glass. Piss and alcohol, in the right percentage. The color was pale lemon leaning to off white. How ironic for such a thing, her own piss and some old alcohol neither suitable for drinking nor wound dressing, to capture her attention so completely.
She sat there on the hard wooden stool, dressed in nothing but a formless cotton sleeping gown, her hair undone, spilling haphazardly from her shoulders. Her back ached. Her butt ached. And there was an uncomfortable, warm and wet sensation in a pit deep inside her stomach.
"So…" she coaxed when she read the hesitation on the surgeon's face. It was a well veiled face and it was painted in a tumult of emotions. Exasperation from being woken at an unholy hour before dawn restrained with respect. Slivers of doubt, resignation, awkwardness, uncertainty. It held the sharpness of knowing a secret one wasn't mean to. The surgeon wore the face of an unwilling peeping tom with ease born of practice. She had not meant to intrude into another's private affair, but intruded she had, through no fault of her own. Nim imagined that there had been plenty of such occurrences where the doctor had to bear witness to her patient's sometimes painfully personal matters.
"You are with child." To her credit, the surgeon did not stutter, nor did she turn her eyes away.
"Ahh…" Well.. it wasn't like she hadn't already known. This was just… confirmation… for Leliana, who was patiently waiting by her side.
"I... suppose congratulations are in order?" said the surgeon, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
"Thank you," said Nim, mechanically, right before the Left Hand of The Previous Divine cut in.
"This does not leave this room."
"Of course, sister" said the surgeon in a voice affected with the barest of tremor. It might have been indignation. It might have been something else.
"My most gracious thanks. If you would please, I would like to speak to her worship in private."
"Yes, sister." And just like that, Leliana sent the surgeon running from her own office. She closed the door after the hurrying woman, locked it with the latch, turned around and eyed her. A moment of silence passed between them.
"You don't seem so surprised," she said finally, in a voice so deliberately blank she could have been commenting on the state of growing fungus.
"I know my body, sister Nightingale," replied Nim, smiling lightly if only to put Leliana at ease.
"Is it…"
"Solas's. Who else could it be?"
Leliana stopped there and though her face showed nothing but a polite calm, Nim had come to know her spymaster enough to tell the thoughts that ran in her head. She decided to take pity on the Left Hand of the late Divine and went on to answer the unspoken question.
"I never planned for it to happen. We were in the middle of a war. Even if I wanted it, it would have been cruel to bring a child into the world then," she said, voice soft and quiet. "I took herb tea with rue, ate salads full with the blooms. I was careful… until I wasn't" She stopped for a moment to collect herself. "You remember the battles we had before the Arbor Wilds? And during?"
"Of course…"
"We lost many. It was… difficult… so it was easy to seek solace in each other. But the fighting was getting intense. I might have forgotten to drink once… or maybe I threw it up somewhere along the road."
They said it was stupid for a female soldier to dally during wartime. They weren't kidding. Whereas in peace time things were so much easier to control the same could not be said for when the fighting was at its peak. Too many variables. Too many things could happen. Too many things could go wrong… did go wrong in this case.
"How long?"
"Must be at the end of the second month now, probably going on third."
"No I mean… how long have you known?"
"... a little more than two weeks."
Leliana raised an eyebrow, as if saying 'That long? Then why didn't you say a word?'
"... in light of our recent discoveries of Solas's less than perfect honesty… it seemed hardly appropriate. And… I had only an inkling… I felt... well, it doesn't really matter now does it?"
Even before then, it seemed hardly appropriate. He was still with them then but the pain of parting was still too new, too raw. What would pursuing concrete confirmation achieve? If love would not stop him from leaving, then a baby on the way would only make things more of a mess than they were.
"It doesn't," Leliana agreed. "What matters is, what will you do now?"
She fell quiet at the question. Before she knew it, her hands had gone to her belly, still flat. It was foolish, but she thought she might have felt something there. A touch, a nudge, something. The fleshly warmth that came through the layer of old cotton must have always been there, but today, it felt as if it suggested something else. What, she didn't know. It was a foolish thing to consider. Her thoughts were pulling her into a million directions.
"Nim…" Leliana's voice cut into her thoughts like knives sweet on flesh. The nickname, which she only used on a handful of rare occasions and always when they were alone, fell from her lips with the softness of spun silk. Her hands encircled Nimue's hands, drew them away from her belly. She looked her in the eyes. Her voice dipped into a whisper.
"If you are not ready… If you cannot… there are ways to make it as though it never happened."
She felt herself freeze, becoming hard and brittle as ice. Of course Leliana would know. Spymaster she might not be, but she could well imagine the situation many of Leliana's female infiltrators might find themselves in… as well as the consequences that must be dealt with in the aftermath.
She put on another smile for her friend's sake. It might have stretched out too long for it to look entirely without spite.
"Give me some credit, Leliana," she said. "I was First of my clan. I too was responsible for looking after my people. Herbs and healing were within my domain." She paused for a moment, catching old names from memories. "The pennyroyals grow along the East end of the forest, by the roots of the old oaks. We harvest the blooms, ground them to powder, make them into oil. The hunters use the oil as poison. They bring in lots of games with it. But the women don't tell them what they use the powder for."
Nimue did not stop.
"Papoose roots. A little difficult to find in the Free Marches but when we passed the shadow of Sundermount, we found them in the fields. The Shems call it Blue Cohosh, because of the flowers. But the flowers only bloom for a short while. The value is in the roots. We sometimes use it for sore throats, or to quicken along a difficult birth." She held up one hand, forefinger an inch from thumb. "Use this much on a girl who just finds out the bad news and it goes away."
She read the surprise on Leliana's face before it flashed away.
"Not all babies are wanted by the elves, sister Nightingale. Humans generally find us beautiful. You know that. To many human lords, Dalish elves are the exotic treat they are willing to go lengths to acquire. What they cannot buy with money or power, they will take… by force. Because we are always on the move, it doesn't happen very often. But once in a while, a girl comes back after going missing for days… and… if she asks it of us, we deal with the consequences."
"... I'm sorry."
"What for? It's not your fault." She withdrew her hands from the spymaster's grip, and with them patted her belly. "Not this one, nor the older ones. And… if he ever comes back, I guess this is just another reason for me to break his nose… or something."
When the joke failed to put even the ghost of a smile on the spymaster's face, she sighed in defeat. "You are right of course. I would do well not to dally. May I have a day to make up my mind?"
"On the contrary, there's no need to rush. Take as long as you need. It's a big decision and you need to think this through… and… no matter what you decide, know that you have my support."
Oh but there was a need to rush. But Leliana was only too mindful of her state of mind to push.
Before the Nightingale could say another word, Nimue stood up and made for the door.
The sun was pale and blurry on the skies as she passed through the hallways. All around her, the sound of Skyhold and its residences waking up to a new day. She could hear some doors being opened, the kitchen waking, skillets and pans click-clacking as they were being pulled out, the scent of bacon frying, the rumble of the great bridge being lowered in wait of the first visitors of the day. She passed them by like a ghost, skirt billowing around the slender calves of her shins, almost in a run. Though the hallways were still deserted there was something like fear of being seen in this state lumbering in the pit of her stomach.
When she reached her room she closed the door and ran for the chamber pot where she gave up a weighty heave. A pressure squirmed from her belly to her chest, to her throat, out into the open. She squatted there in front of the chamber pot and vomited for maybe five full minutes until finally, it abated.
She pulled herself away and up, stumbling in the direction of the bath and water bucket. The water was ice cold, having been drawn the night before but it served to sober her up. She washed the vomit from her chin and mouth, then looked herself in the washroom full length mirror. A face stared back at her, pale, bare, and wan with the pressure of holding back grief that should not be seen by anyone else but her and the one that caused it in the first place. The eyes were that of someone lost and far away from home.
Slowly, so very slowly, she drew herself up until she stood at full height in front of the mirror. With a pull and tug, she stripped herself of her sleeping dress and smalls and then she was standing bare in front of the mirror, naked, trembling with fear and uncertainty.
Pale, golden sunlight came in from the windows then and drew soft swooping curves on the planes of her body. It painted her skin with strokes of shadow and light. A dark shade here, a blurring sheen there. It made secret places in the dips of her collarbones and the divot of her belly. Her bare breasts round like peaches. The areolas pink. Her stomach still flat and firm after many horse rides across the countries. She ran her hand through it, feeling the tight muscles and velvety smooth skin.
For all that the body in the mirror hardly looked any different than it did two months ago, Nimue was filled with a sense of urgency, as if a great clock had risen from her flesh and was ticking away.
No need to rush Leliana said. Oh but there was. The papoose roots and pennyroyals would only work safely within a reasonable amount of time, within the first three months of pregnancy, two of which she had blithely thrown away. Any further and it would turn real ugly. She had seen it happen, in elven girls too weak or too broken to make a decision.
It would have to be soon. It would have to be now.
She put both hands on her belly, fingers cupping around the curves. Her body felt unknown, a great secret growing within it.
It would be easy. This early it would not hurt much.
Drink the powder with honey, lay down and wait for the cramp to pass. When it does, sit up and wipe the blood in between the thighs, and afterwards bury the thing that comes with the blood with flowers. Daisy blooms and wreaths of baby breaths. Don't give it a name. Don't think about it. Go on. Live.
This early it would be easy. It would have no arms or legs yet, no face, no eyes. It would be no larger than a coin, easily lost among the blood and fleshy sacs.
Nimue closed her eyes and imagined the space within her belly where something was growing, slowly but surely.
In the temple of Mythal, when the sentinel named Abelas asked, he said, 'Yes, Elvhen... such as I.' As if he and her were of separate blood, of separate races.
Leliana's report. The village where he supposedly came from had been an elven ruin for centuries. Why then did one of its citizens yet roam the earth? The elves had lost their immortality had they not?
Solas, kneeling by the smoking remains of stone pillars, hands cradling the broken pieces of the orb with familiarity not that of a scholar but a previous owner. Solas, in the Fade, shining and corporeal as he was in the real world. Solas, smiling, eyes twinkling with some great secrets he would not share.
In the end, what was he? Not who… but what.
Nimue imagined the thing within her belly growing, feeding off of her, eating her from the inside until it consumed her entirely.
She imagined a great hand reaching inside her, stopping it before it could feast, squeezing and tearing it from within the cage of her womb. She imagined the space within her that was filled now gutted, hollow, empty, bloody with the remains of life.
On the balcony overlooking Frostback mountain, as the sun set in a glorious halo, he kissed her and from the space between their lips spilled an overwhelming sweetness. Like honey, like wine, running down their lips and their necks like the juice of a freshly bitten fruit. Love. "My heart," he called her and branded his name on her being where they would stay, seared in flesh and spirit. Forever. In the ballroom of the Winter Palace, they danced, twirled, whirled with abandon despite the whispers and the stares of petty human nobles. Drunk, heady, high on the wings of ardour. In a magical glade in the aftermath of Mythal, he stripped her bare, gazed at her with profound love, and broke her heart.
Nimue saw herself flying, now unchained, now empty, now free of love and heartbreak, of fear and uncertainty, soaring higher and higher into the endless darkness where she cried out, forlornly, for the light to come, to please come, please come back, to please don't leave, please, please...
…..
… She pulled herself together, painstakingly, piece by piece. She glued herself whole. The pieces didn't fit right but they looked the part. She stepped away from the mirror, pulled herself into the bath where she washed her body with more force than necessary, meticulously scrubbing down every inch of skin as if by doing so she could cleanse herself of the taint he had left within her.
She patted herself dry with a cotton towel, then put on her formal suit like a soldier putting on armour. She brushed her hair, straightened the high collars of her suit. From the balcony, the sounds of the now fully awake Inquisition floated in. The noises of a new day, things to do, people to see, plans to advance. There was no place for little heartbroken Nim here, only Inquisitor Lavellan.
When she looked at herself in the mirror again, the eyes that stared back were blue and hard as steel.
"One day," she promised.
End Chapter 1
1. Nimue Lavellan has the appearance of the female elven inquisitor card (that card that you select during origin selection).
2. This fic began because my bratty little brothers introduced me to this thing called Kink Meme… Dragon Kink Meme to be exact and then dared me to answer one of the prompts there. Boy but were those prompts… umm… raunchy…. Well, anywho, the prompt I chose involved Solas, Lavellan, and pregnancy. I have always wanted to try my hands at writing about pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood. It's just one of those ageless, timeless topics that never fail to rivet the mind. Though… I've always shied away too for fear of not doing the topic justice.
3. Uhh… I think I'm supposed to post this anonymously on kink meme (or is that livejournal)... but I've never used it before so… I think I was also supposed to make it kinky. I think I'm failing spectacularly at this kink meme thing.
… I'm sorry? Maybe I'll try harder to be kinky next chapter?
4. Do let me know your thoughts on this first chapter, on Nim as a character (which is always tough because everyone has his or her version of their Inquisitor and the moment they read about someone else's Inquisitor can be jarring)
5. The overarching theme of this fic is faith, not in the divine but in common mortals.