Work Text:
Title: Igraine
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None, but, to be safe, shall we say for the first season. No intentional spoilers for the second season though the fic references events mentioned in it.
Notes: I hadn't really intended to post this. I'd written it in February, and I'd always meant to try something else with it since it was intended to be a short character study to see if I wanted to explore this character further. But, after 2.08 of Merlin, I thought I'd post it as it is a little interesting to see where I was at the time and where the writers ultimately went with the idea. So, yeah, it isn't intended to reference the second season or the most recent (2.08) episode. Anything there is entirely coincidental and the product of an unoriginal brain.
Oh, the dragons are gonna fly tonight.
They're circling low and inside tonight.
It’s another round in a losing fight.
Out along the great divide tonight.
We are aging soldiers in an ancient war
Seeing out some half-remembered shore
We drink our fill and still we thirst for more
Asking if there’s no heaven, what is this hunger for?
Emmylou Harris, "The Pearl"
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When the child first moved within her, Igraine felt fear, not joy. Cold seeped into the marrow of her bones for she knew that she was too old to quicken and she feared that the child would be her death. She never thought to be rid of it, despite the sickness that would not end, the legs too swollen to move and the terror that caused her to wake with hands that shake and sweat that trickles down her spine.
She is a queen. She has but one duty; she must give the king an heir.
She has failed for too many years, seen her husband's face go grey and cold as he decides which lord will try to take his kingdom and whether they will do so before or after he has died.
He does not reproach her.
He does not, as she thought he might and she believes he should, set her aside for another, a fertile woman, a wife who can bear him a son.
He sits and stares at his maps and his charts, and he watches his men and makes his plans. He entertains the neighboring lords, and he sees them covet his kingdom (but not his barren wife). She knows he wonders if all he has achieved will crumble and turn to dust.
She had not thought this would happen, that golden day she wed a man with bright hopes and great ambition. She had thought and he had believed that they would have a child. She had quickened thrice in their marriage before this child. Two times she could not carry the babe to term. The third time he did not live out the day. After that she saw her husband's face turn old and she was afraid.
She watched him speak with the priestess, a young woman of great power and greater ambition, more and more frequently and more often alone. She wondered what he asked of the girl, what Nimueh promised him and what she demanded in return. She thinks that now she can guess.
Her face is pale in the mirror, thin with shadowed eyes, hollow cheeks, and fair hair turned brittle as straw. She forces food down her throat and into her belly, almost raw meats, things she would never want for herself but that the baby craves. She stays thin but for the swollen belly and hideous legs. It seems to be eating her from the inside out.
She is certain she knows the terms of her husband's bargain.
She wonders if he does.
Despite the fear that still wakes her, she thinks that it matters little for she would have made this bargain herself had she known how. She is a queen; her life means little, the life she bears means everything.
She begins to speak to the child, thinking herself mad and desperate to do so. Huddled in her room, she tells him (surely her life has been bartered for a son and not a daughter to be given, kingdom in hand, to another, not a daughter to suffer her mother’s fate) that he shall be great, that he shall accomplish things of which his father can only dream.
She tells him that he shall be good, wise and just for if she shall die to bring him forth, he shall be such a king as has not come before.
They are, she thinks, both owed that much.
She tells him that his father is clever, strong and good, but he is proud, quick to anger, slow to listen and prone to cling too much to the wrong things. She tells him that his mother is weak in body, prone to anger herself, slow to forgive, sometimes vain and often a fool, but that she will see him born.
She explains to him that it is not his fault and that it is only how things are. She tells him that men go into battle expecting to die, that he is her war and that she shall win it, no matter the cost. She tells him it is her duty and her honor and it is what she owes the kingdom he will rule.
She says that when she can no longer leave the bed.
When the pains come, she is still frightened for all that she knew this end would come. She gasps and clutches at the sheets, her breaths coming fast and shallow and her body being ripped apart by the child. She tries not to scream more than she must and, for the most part, she succeeds, but she is very tired and the pain is very great.
She can hear the note of panic in the instructions the physician gives to her and to the midwives, and she turns her head to meet the desperate look in his eyes and sees her own death fast approaching. She tells him that he must ensure that the child lives, that nothing else matters nearly so much. He touches her face gently and returns to work.
Endless moments later he shows the child to her. She sees that she bore a son and that he is fair-haired with eyes that, now, seem blue. His skin is dyed red with her blood. She is fading, can no longer feel, can hardly think. She can, however, hear her son cry. He sounds strong. He will survive.