Endless Possibilities

Then the Voice of the Maker rang out,
The first Word,
And His Word became all that might be:
Dream and idea, hope and fear,
Endless possibilities.
And from it made his firstborn.

From Threnodies 5

Chapter 1: All That Might Be

It was like West Hill all over again.

The screaming. The crying. The helpless anguish Maric felt at being completely unable to do anything.

The door was solid oak, banded with wrought iron, and still Rowan's cries of pain could be heard in the hallway. Maric paced, running a hand through his scraggly blond hair and rubbing at his stubbly cheeks. When he blinked, his eyes were full of grit. How long had she been in there? And why in the name of Andraste's teats wouldn't they let him in?

Another shriek split the night. Or was it morning? Maric didn't know anymore. There was little way to tell the passage of time in this hallway. The torches hissed and popped in their sconces, and the shadows were long and flickering. Maybe it just looked that way because he was so exhausted.

The door creaked and Maric looked up, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He tried to get a good look into the childbirthing room and saw the orange glow of a hearty fire, and silhouettes of people bustling back and forth. "More hot water!" one of the women barked, and there was even more scurrying.

"What's happening?" he asked Kilda the midwife, who'd left the room and quickly shut the door behind her, barring his view of the birthing room.

Kilda had to be as tired as he was, but she wasn't showing it. She carried herself with the professionalism of a woman who'd been in her career for a very long time. The lines around her eyes spoke of many smiles, though the creases in her forehead spoke of countless hours of care and worry over the years. "The Queen does well," she said. "For her first, the birth is progressing as well as can be expected." She smiled, but the corners of her eyes did not crinkle; in fact, she winced when a cry erupted from behind the door. "But a birth is a birth," she added, trying to be cheerful.

"Well… can I go in?" Maric asked after a pause. There was an awkward silence. The yelling had stopped for a time. "And is that normal?" he asked, looking toward the door. "The quiet. She was so… loud before," he said. His stomach twisted, and he felt as if he'd taken a dip in the Drakon River in the winter. His fingers tingled. His ears buzzed.

The midwife laid a hand on his broad shoulder. He looked down. Small locks of hair were escaping from her wimple. "All is as it should be, King Maric," she said. She squeezed his shoulder slightly, trying to be reassuring. "We have done this before for many noblewomen. Though this is my first time delivering for a Queen of Ferelden," she added.

Maric appreciated her attempt to lighten the mood. But she hadn't answered his question and that was what concerned him. "Thanks, but can I go in?" he asked again. He unconsciously took her hand from his shoulder and clasped it. He met her eyes, begging her with his gaze, and didn't realize how much he was squeezing until she gently, yet firmly wrenched her hand out of his.

"Rest assured, Majesty," she said. "The birthing room is no place for a man." With a nod of finality she turned her back on him and slipped back into the room. Maric couldn't even glimpse the interior of the room before the door closed in his face once more.

He leaned against the door, pressing his ear against the rough wood. He didn't know what he hoped to hear. Rowan's voice, not contorted with pain? Words of reassurance from the midwife or her team?

He was rewarded with another scream and he backed away, frightened. If he'd known childbirth was going to be this bad, perhaps he wouldn't have heeded Loghain's insistence that he and Rowan try for an heir. Surely some miracle could occur, granting Maric and Rowan immortality, so she could have been spared…

Maric crossed the hallway and slumped to the floor, staring at the birthing room door, willing the birth to be over. All he wanted was to be with his wife and child, for her pain to be ended and his wait to be over. He stretched his legs out in front of him and twisted the simple gold band around his finger that symbolized his union with Rowan.

Time passed. He kind of wished Loghain was here, if only for the entertainment his friend's gruff demeanor could provide. Loghain wouldn't let him sit here on the floor, wallowing in a pool of self-pity. He'd force him out to the practice ring, and make him bleed off his anxious energy with sword and shield drills. Or he'd put him in his bedroom, demand he get some sleep, and assign a regiment of guards to keep Maric locked in. Little would he know that Maric would simply climb out his window, or use any number of secret passages leading from the room…

Maric smiled at the thought, but didn't get up. Sneaking around just wasn't any fun when there was no Loghain to evade. Loghain was settled in Gwaren, running the southernmost Teyrnir with his own wife and young child. He'd hinted that he'd like to stay in Denerim, but Maric had only smiled and insisted that his old friend go be with his own family.

That was shortly after they'd discovered Rowan was with his child. Time had passed, but none of them forgot the dark trek through the Deep Roads and all that had transpired there. The last five years had proven profitable for Ferelden, and Maric was already making quite a name for himself and for Rowan as King and Queen. But there was always that shadow of the past hovering at the edge of Maric's being.

He didn't want that shadow looming over him, or looming over Rowan as they made ready to welcome their child into the world they'd prepared for him or her.

So Loghain was banished to Gwaren; though no one actually used that word, no one could pretend it was anything different. Loghain went home to his wife, Celia, and daughter, Anora; the tow-headed girl was already nearing five years of age. Rowan and Maric spent the intervening months preparing the nursery for their own child. And finally, after seemingly endless months of waiting, they were ready to welcome the baby into this world.

Fear suddenly gripped at Maric's heart with icy claws.

All of those tiny clothes Rowan and her handmaids had worked to knit and stitch… how could his own big, rough hands hope to handle them?

He'd slain Orlesians and darkspawn, but would he be able to handle a soiled diaper?

His hands had held swords and shields and dealt death. Was he equipped to handle new life?

So many questions. It made Maric nauseous. He hadn't even felt this sick at the prospect of ruling his kingdom. And he hadn't even been this afraid the night his mother had been killed and he'd stumbled blindly through the Ferelden countryside.

"I'm not ready," he croaked to the empty hallway. "Maker's balls. I have no idea what to do." The realization terrified him. A sudden shriek of pain startled him back to reality. Rowan probably wasn't ready for this, either, and here she was pushing a baby out of there. No wonder she was crying out so much. The difference was she had Kilda and a bevy of skilled women attending to her.

Maric had the stony silence of the hallway.

The door creaked open once more, but Maric was too tired to get to his feet. He looked up. Kilda stood in the doorway. Her apron was wrinkled and smeared with red, and what little was in Maric's stomach threatened to come up. "Your Majesty," she said. "Queen Rowan would have you attend her. And your son," she added with a sparkle in her tired eyes.

Whatever exhaustion Maric had felt miraculously vanished, and he nearly fell over himself with his excitement to get up and barrel into Rowan's room. Kilda stopped him. "She is quite tired, as you may imagine," she warned. "Her body has been through much."

"I will be gentle, good lady," he said with a smile as he sidled around her.

The first thing that hit him was the heat. A fire roared in the fireplace. A heavy kettle steamed over it. Then he was struck by the smell. It was strange: coppery, like blood, but not the acrid scent he'd grown accustomed to from the battlefield. He stood there taking it in, feeling lost in this room that, until a day and a half ago, had just been a spare room in the castle.

"Maric," Rowan called in a hushed voice. He looked over to his wife, propped up in a nest of pillows and bolsters and looking very small. Her skin was pale and shining in the firelight with a faint sheen of sweat. Her glossy chestnut hair had been twisted into a simple braid to keep it out of her face during birth, but small tendrils escaped around her face. "Come see your son," she said, and her gray eyes were glassy with tears, but she was smiling.

Maric was at her side in two strides. His heart fluttered in his chest as he perched on the edge of the bed. Rowan held what was little more than a bundle of blanket in the crook of her arm. "He's so…" Maric searched for the right words as he beheld the tiny thing his wife held, angling it for his inspection. "He's our son," he said at last, because there weren't any other words to capture what he felt.

He tentatively reached a hand toward the swaddled child, but pulled back, uncertain. He felt so huge and uncouth compared to the fragile infant, and to Rowan. She rested comfortably and looked so natural holding their son. "Is he… healthy?" Maric asked after a moment of silence.

"Kilda assures me he is," she said. "Why?"

"Because he's... well, purple," Maric said at last. There was no stopping the wellspring of love and joy he felt at seeing this thing he and Rowan had created. But the baby's skin was reddish purple; his head looked slightly misshapen, his nose flatter than Maric would have expected out of a Theirin male.

Rowan laughed. "You'd be purple too, if you'd just come out of there," she said, gesturing to her lower abdomen with her free hand. "Here, hold him," she said.

Before he could even process Rowan's command, she was passing the little bundle to him and he had no choice but to take his son in his arms, instinctively supporting that misshapen head on its weak neck, and cradling the boy to himself. He felt the tiny body shudder with every breath, felt the little limbs writhe about. Maric looked in wonder at each hand, with its perfectly formed fingers, scale miniatures of his own, that he would one day teach to wield a sword. Perfect little feet with impossibly tiny toes. Fine downy dark hair that he'd probably gotten from Rowan.

And the face. That squished face with the smooth, rounded cheeks and the lips parting in a cry…

Oh no. Crying.

"What did I do?" Maric asked, his eyes wide as he stiffened, afraid of what he might do if he wasn't careful enough. Because how could he ever take care of something this helpless, this fragile, this perfect?

"He needs to nurse," Kilda said from a quiet corner of the room. She'd entered after him, so unobtrusive that he'd had no idea they were being supervised. "Queen Rowan, shall King Maric leave?"

Rowan shook her head. "No, Kilda. This is his son. He should be part of this." She reached over, and Maric gingerly handed the baby back to his wife. He watched as one of Kilda's ladies helped Rowan slip her chemise off her shoulder, exposing her breast. Maric had seen his wife's breasts many times in their marriage bed, but never like this: engorged, ripe, as if it could rupture.

The nurse helped Rowan's hands guide the baby to her breast, and positioned them around to hold the infant in the proper position. Rowan's brow furrowed in concentration as she looked down, shifting her hold as she waited for the babe to latch on. When it happened, she leaned back, visibly more relaxed. "I may figure this out eventually," she whispered, eyes sparkling.

"Me too," Maric said, sliding onto the bed so he could be closer to her. To them.

"He needs a name," Rowan said after a moment.

Maric stared, mesmerized at the infant, at the tiny mouth vigorously nursing away at Rowan's breast. He was so tiny and fragile, so helpless, and yet one day he would be responsible for all of Ferelden. One day he would hold a sword and defend his people.

Maric reached out and touched the tiny cheek. "Let's call him Cailan."

A/N: This was inspired by reading the first chapter of Eve Hawke's "Of Noble Birth". She handled the chapter beautifully, and it got me to thinking about Maric as a father, and Cailan's birth. Then I figured I've written Cailan at every other stage of his life, and then some if you count the AU, so why not write about his birth and earliest years? Anyway, thank you for reading, and be sure to check out Eve Hawke's work and see why it got me started on this!