Rose

Disclaimer: I do not own IC or anything affiliated with Paolini and his publishers

Warning: This chapter contains a childbirth scene, and while it is not necessarily gruesome or overtly detailed, I would advise viewer discretion in choosing whether to view this. Neither is it intimate or grossly mature viewing of the subject (not to say it is immature) and I am inclined to think a 'T' rating will easily cover the content present. (Nothing of the knowledge contained within this chapter is overly necessary for the understanding of the reader, and I will recap all events in the next chapter, though not in any gory detail.) Feel free to not read this chapter, especially those under the age of 16.

Apology: Sorry for the extremely late update

I think I have given you due warning, proceed at will.

Before Galbatorix's death: From one hour

It was the most inconvenient time to give birth, thought Aria as she hurried towards the patient lying convulsively on the straw mattress. The war, and subsequent siege, had already taken its toll on the city; the mood in the ward was particularly gloomy. While no one thought King Galbatorix was in any danger, the sounds of fighting could be heard from the hospital, and every so often, a stream of soldiers went running past. No wounded had been able to make their way back, but she had the distinct impression that the Empire was winning the fight.

Earlier, Lord Barst had marched past, hundreds and hundreds of soldiers had followed him. Everyone had fallen silent at the sight of Barst, the tales of barbarity surrounding Lord Barst justifying the unearthly quiet. While she was still learning to deal with childbirth, she already knew that the job made her feel distinctly nauseous. This was not quelled either, by the sight of her best friend giving birth in a time of immense trial.

Regardless of whether the rebellion succeeded or not, the next hour would be crucial in the birth of the baby. She grabbed a piece of cloth, dipped it into a nearby pot of water resting on a table, and proceeded to dab her friend with the cloth in a pitiful attempt to cool her down. She repeated this motion several times, each time in different places. At other times she would have felt squeamish about what she was doing in such intimate places which would have prevented her from doing it: but knowing how excruciatingly painful childbirth could be, she stomached the feeling for her best friend and did what she could to make the ordeal less painful. Futile as the gesture was, her friend gave a weak nod of approval.

She breathed a sigh of relief as the Doctor arrived back. A man in his forties, he was accustomed to dealing with childbirth, strange as the suggestion might sound she thought. Even in his age he had traces of a handsome bygone youth, like the thin wisps of dirty blonde hair resting on the top of his head. He had finely chiselled features which, coupled with amazing deep blue eyes, made him the envy of all his age, and even some of his younger colleagues.

"What do we do now" she asked him, squeezing her friends hand in reassurance that everything was fine.

"Just wait" he said, staring at the wall as to be respectful.

"Is there no way to hurry it up" she pleaded.

"Unless you happen to have a hidden talent for magic" he said, momentarily diverting his gaze to her in a querying glance.

She quickly shook her head. Not reporting to the Magicians Guild if you possessed even a scrap of magic was equivalent to treason. Although she was sceptical of how long people could go without revealing to Galbatorix their magical ability, or even if it was possible to hide magic from someone so powerful. She shuddered at the thought of being discovered if you had a talent of magic. Under Galbatorix's rule, it was detrimental to be adept at magic. You would almost certainly be pressed into service under the Magician's Corp, and sympathy for magicians among enemy soldiers was not very high.

She was disturbed from her reverie by an audible sigh from her friend, to whom she immediately inquired in a frantic manner as to what the problem was. As far as Rose was concerned, there was nothing discernibly wrong, but she just wished that the kicks would start soon, so the ordeal could be cut short as soon as possible.

Her wish would be shortly granted, for within a minute, the fetus, as if sensing an impatient host, started kicking. While Rose attempted to stifle her moans, Aria quickly geared into action, knowing that she would be needed almost imminently in order to assist with the childbirth. She quickly gathered the tools of the trade, but before she could transfer the necessary ones to the table closest to the bed, the Doctor motioned for her to stop and nodded towards Rose. The top of the infants head had appeared, and evidently Rose had no need for further assistance.

Gradually as the minutes progressed, Rose made more and more progress, until eventually she was required to cradle the baby's head in her hand, even as her friend continued to push. She had not often been awarded a position of major importance in regards to pregnancies, having spent much of her nursing life watching on as an apprentice. She was glad in the respect that her master had not opted for her former position to be filled by another novice. She had enough on her hands without having to deal with questions she herself had asked all those years ago, and now which she often looked back on as being considered exceedingly infuriating remarks at the most awkward of times. Although she knew ultimately once she was trained, she would herself be the master teaching the apprentice, whether she liked it or not.

The doctor for all intents and purposes looked on impassively, but hidden beneath his calm, tranquil façade a sea of turmoil existed. It was all going to plan, he reasoned, having had no evidence to the contrary. It was a 'text-book birth' as far as some of his far-flung contemporaries were concerned, a phrase he derided due in part to its assumption that something such as a 'perfect birth' existed.

His apprentice, Aria, with whom he had ingrained the need for care and precision, was doing an exemplary job attending to the needs of her friend – whom he had quite forgotten the name of -, yet he could not shake off the feelings that something was not right, quite apart from the fact that he could not remember the name of the patient. A trivial detail, humoured the doctor, compared to the pains of childbirth and their present situation at the moment.

Although he, Erland, lacked the nuance to sufficiently understand military tactics, having witnessed the might of the Empire he was in no state of uncertainty in thinking who would win. The only possibility which he concerned himself with was the remote likelihood of Urgals breaking through the lines and wreaking havoc. Having dealt with patients for the majority of his life, he was more useful to the Empire, and therefore to Galbatorix as a doctor.

Quite apart from his sympathy for the certain devastation upon which was to be inflicted on the rag-tag army that called themselves the Varden, he was neutral in respect to their agenda. He sympathised with the Varden to a certain extent, yet he was always weary of what could supplant Galbatorix's reign. A fragmented society is always prone to radicalisation, he reflected, and he was well aware that Galbatorix could quite possibly be considered moderate when you compared the new and the old. You only had to look as far back as The Fall to see that people for wished for political change that they ultimately did not want. People, in their notoriously fickle ways, had often called for the abandonment of the Dragon Rider order, and now look where it had led them, he noted morosely.

Gradually, the distressed sounds originating from his patient gathered sufficient enough loudness for him to shift his gaze from the utensils he was cleaning with a damp cloth, to her. She was almost done, he noticed, as he swept his gaze from his apprentice to the baby being forced out of the woman's pelvic area. He swiftly set his tools down, and gathered the bundle of white linen in which he was to wrap the baby in and the cradle intricately woven from reeds. Just as he was doing so, he heard a distant rumble, which was remarkable, considering that only a few nights ago, Shruikan's muted roar had scarcely been heard within the confines of the ward.

After a moment, the distant sound that could only be described as softened thunder, ceased, leaving little lines of worry sketched upon three of the faces in the ward, the baby being completely oblivious to the differentiated circumstances which it was subjected to, save for its customary wailing. Dismissing the brief concerns of his sub-conscious, he proceeded to bring the basket and bundle of linen over to the operating table.

After five or so minutes, by which time they could now hear the sounds of men screaming through the thick stone walls, Rose started panting very hard. It was obvious that the pregnancy was placing an immense strain on her body, and the closer she got to completion the more pained her moans became. With an immense effort, Rose pushed one last time, before collapsing into a fit of sobs as the ordeal – although not the pain – finished. Aria cradled the baby, taking particular care in carrying the head, while he grabbed the scissors from the operating table and cut the umbilical cord at both ends, before tying it off with some special string a few inches from the baby's glistening stomach.

Aria walked around to his side of the operating chair while he quietly unfolded the linen into a square. Thereafter she laid the baby down gently, before tenderly wrapping it up in bundles of white cloth. She scooped up the infant, taking extreme care, before leaning over Rose and revealing her newborn daughter. Despite the pain and physical exhaustion, Rose managed a smile as she lifted her hand to run over her daughter's head, who gurgled with evident delight. Curiously, in all the births he had attended, this was the only one in which the baby not cried immediately after the umbilical cord had been cut. Rose accomplished one final smile before she motioned for Aria to take her offspring away.

As Rose drifted off into a hazy dream world, Aria gathered the tools which they had used and placed them into a bucket filled soap flakes. They would wash them later, before sterilising them by heat. Soon after Rose had fallen asleep, and the baby had been safely secured in her cradle, Erland took his leave, quietly announcing his attention to see if he could help out down at the field hospital. She nodded, wishing him luck under her breath, although she wasn't sure whether he had heard her over the distant din of the fighting, albeit which was steadily growing louder.

After he had gone, she went over and locked the door as a precautionary measure. Sitting down on the ground beside the doorway, she looked around at the ancillary room to the main hospital – albeit one without a connecting door. Sunlight was streaming from the glass windows above the high ledgers, shoving the room into contrasting levels of brightness. The luminous sun revealing particulate matter that eddied and flowed with the air flows, not that the room was very draught, having only one entrance.

The room was stripped to the barest of necessities; no ornaments adorned the walls, no rug masked the unforgiving stone floor, the two beds that lay adjacent to the door- which led out onto the small cobblestoned alley- were stripped of all bedding and the fireplace had been stripped of all wood. The room itself was very monotonous, her line of sight only broken by the operating chair and table at the centre of the room.

She soon started dozing off, but was promptly awaken by a large banging at the door. Her breath quickened as she heard someone outside mutter in guttural, foreign tongues. While it continued she held her breath, fearful that the very pounding of her heart might give away her position. After a few moments where she had literally stopped breathing, she heard them grumble before stomping away. She let out her pent-up breath, if the Urgals –whom could only be responsible for the large thudding footsteps - had found her; they would have most likely killed her. She let out a large sigh of relief and let her gaze fall to the floor as she steadied her breathing.

It was the sigh that gave her away, she thought immediately, as a clever elf started shouting out, drawing the attention of everyone nearby. She cursed her stupidity as a loud thumping emanated from the door. Thankfully, the door looked like it would hold for the time being and she set about trying to hide Rose, who was fast asleep and oblivious to the present danger. The baby she hid out of sight of the doorway, behind one of the beds. Having wasted the element of concealment, she wasted no time in an effort to cover up the loud scraping noise created by the bed as she dragged it across the stone floors towards the door. Hopefully, she could just hold out long enough before the uninvited doorknockers were distracted by some Imperial soldiers.

But over the next minute, the pounding only grew louder, causing the door to show signs of strain. She recognised that it wouldn't hold for another minute, but instead of feeling fear, she felt an unrestrained sadness at the prospect of never passing on her own knowledge and experiences to her own child. As she attempted to reconcile her thoughts, she thought of all the things that the world still had to offer to her and more importantly, what she had to offer it.

She stared dumbly as the metal door, reinforced by spells, crumpled against the force of the Urgals pounding bodies, and her indifference when the door fell down was palatable, even though in some important part of her brain the crash still registered. The brutish face of an Urgal peered through the dust, registering her and the surrounds before barrelling into the stone chamber. Chuckling, he pulled up his axe and she finally registered his intent to kill her, although all she could do was stand there and wait. Before he could lift his axe to the full height, and hence bring down the killing blow, an audible roar emitted from the inner citadel. It could only be Shruikan.

Another roar shortly followed, this time the Urgal dropped his arms and turned around to face his fellow Urgals. He had just started to say something, before being cut off a noticeable vibration. An elf darted inside and slammed the door shut, just as a burst of pure light assaulted their senses and knocked them over.

A few minutes later she became aware that she was lying on the floor, listening to the sound of a baby screaming. She picked herself up, having suffered nothing but bruises, which were healed easily enough. The Urgal in front of her groggily started to get to his feet, lifting his axe as he did so. She backed away, careful to lead him away from the baby and Rose, however futile the gesture was. Before the Urgal could swing again, the silvery-haired elf that had darted inside moments before, laid an hand on the Urgals axe and motioned at the tools in an apparent attempt to convey to him that she was a nurse. The Urgal growled grudgingly and lowered his axe, before stepping aside to the elf and attempting to resuscitate his drowsy fallen comrades.

"Are you all right" asked the grey-eyed she-elf, dressed in a set of burnished silver armour with a motley green tunic underneath.

She nodded, glancing towards Rose's daughter, who was still crying out, although less shrilly than before, and whom seemed to be glowing with an inner sort of light.

"Are you able to help operate on the wounded?"

Again, she nodded.

"Only, however, if you guarantee the safety of my friend and her newly born daughter."

"Naturally" said the elf, betraying not even the slightest flicker of surprise at her demands.

"Of course, if you want them to survive, you might want to move them out of here soon" she said, gesturing at the cracked ceiling.

Her only answer was to hurry over to the seemingly luminescent baby and try to coax her to fall silent. Aria's companion silently followed her with bounding strides, keeping pace easily. The elf lifted up Rose as if she was made of feathers, before hurrying to the door as a shower of dust came down over the operating chair. She hurried to catch up, having finally silenced the baby by rocking it to sleep. The sounds of fighting had all but ceased, she expected that against all the odds, the Varden had somehow found a way to win.

As the elf exited the door, she was unprepared for the destruction and horror of the battle, where once was the courtyard, was now a field of unmoving bodies. Even from a block away, she was able to see that the stones of the courtyard that were exposed to the air were turning red. It was partly because of her fixation with this sight that she bumped into the elf, whom had suddenly stopped in the otherwise empty street.

About to apologise, she stepped back as the elf turned around.

"Your friend is dying, and only the elven healer's expertise can save her. I suggest we hurry."

A/N

Sorry for the long wait. I have holidays soon, so I will be able to update more regularly.

Thanks

WiseBeyondYears