Title: Answered Prayers
Author: karebear
Rating: T
Characters: Isolde, Connor, some Eamon, Jowan later on
Standard Disclaimer (Dragon Age): I don't own these characters or the world they inhabit. Bioware built the sandbox. I just play in it.
Summary: "I just want what normal people have." If you try, denial can be powerful enough to hold a family together long after it should have fallen apart. Isolde, Jowan, and Connor try. DAWC challenge response.
Notes: An answer to a challenge posted in the DAWC forums by gutterxromance, who wanted: a fic depicting Isolde's mental state/thought process/reactions to Connor's magic, how she managed to keep it from Eamon and how she struggled with her beliefs and her love for Connor before finally hiring Jowan to teach him in secret.
"What do you want?"
"A child. More than anything. It's all I've ever wanted."
"Shhh. Sleep, Lady. Have no fear. You will have what you desire."
Isolde blinks her eyes open to find the bed empty.
Eamon had loved her in the night, gently and carefully. It cannot be said that he is one of those men who simply does a duty, doing what is necessary to produce an heir and taking no pleasure in it. He makes her feel like something more than a failure, he tells her as he holds her that it doesn't matter whether or not their coupling results in a baby.
But no matter how early she wakes, he is always gone already, burying himself in his work. He rarely meets her eyes, these days, and when he crawls into bed at night and she whispers her promise that she'll give him a son, they both knew, more with each month that passes marked by only blood and broken promises, that the words are meaningless, and hopeless.
She cries bitter tears at her inability to give him this one thing, and then she drags herself out of bed and washes her face carefully and dresses as though these gowns might truly be enough to shield her from the judgmental stares and rumors.
She retreats to the chapel, or, on days when she feels energetic enough to make the walk, to the Chantry in the village, where holy women watch her with sympathetic eyes, but she knows they cluck and roll their eyes after she leaves.
She spends half her day begging the Maker for deliverance, an answer to her prayers. But it is the voices in the night that give her the only fragile remaining wisps of hope to cling to. She puts her faith in the whispers of her dreams, far more than the crushing echoes of silence that are the only reply she ever receives in the emptiness of holy places.