Tu Es Ma Lumière

90 - Parturition

~/~

Prompt - I'd really like for Henry to be alive as Mary gives birth to Francis' child. I can see Francis being really worried about his wife and child, perhaps a hard birth? And Henry should comfort his son like he never did in the show, thanks!

Side note - the picture will resemble Francis' expression in the first part of this oneshot :)

~/~

It was a rare day in the history of man in which the King of France could admit his nerves to the physical world. After all, he was King Henry II of the house of Valois-Angouleme, he was a survivor of childhood imprisonment and later of war. He was a King in his own right, a strong ruler who bowed to no man or woman alike. Men quivered at the mere mention of his name, he had an entire country falling to their knees to serve him at his will.

One would think, however, that this scenario would cause him to barely bat an eyelash. Children were born every day, and with the amount of heirs and daughters his wife had borne him, birth should not frighten him anymore. Especially how hard the twins' birth had been, or his eldest son with his wife's had been. Yet, the King of France could readily admit that fear of this particular birth shook his core, in a way that hadn't in any other birth of a child of France. No matter how much he wished to believe that the culprit of this pain was simply due to the political importance of this childs' survival.

The King of France waved away the squire that followed him, and the guards before him, spotting the blonde head a good few feet away. The blonde head did not turn towards him at his entrance into the large foyer chambers, it didn't really acknowledge him at all. Just stayed staring out of the window, a goblet occasionally falling and inclining at the side of the impressive, overstuffed armchair. 

Unlike what had been told to him by various courtiers that entire day, the King of France heard no screams of pain emanating from the royal birthing chambers of Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. There were no cries of any sort leaving the chambers at all, only the clicking of heels and the hushed whispers of midwives and physicians that weren't as quiet as they thought they were. The voices were sombre and hushed, giving no implication that a birth was going on at all. 

"How is she?" Henry asks the blonde head quickly, marching over to where his heir sat upon the overstuffed, dark armchair. He stood tall over the King Consort of Scotland, the seventeen year old King slowly raising his azure orbs to look his father and King in the eye. The young, handsome, resplendent King looked awful, his face a worrying shade ashen. Should his mother not currently be placed firmly in the birthing chambers, Henry had no doubt that she would be frittering over her favourite child frantically, as she had done his entire childhood. He was wrapped up in an imposing black fur coat, one of the items of clothing he had inherited after his wedding to the Queen of Scotland. He had received it after their first trip to Mary's homeland, just after after Marie de Guise's death, starting a never ending cycle of going back and forth from Scotland to France. The Queen had found herself carrying a child just after they had returned to the land of their childhood, and that was where they had stayed until this very day, where the child was trying to come into the world. "Is the babe arrived?" Henry gruffed, startled to see his son so sombre and sickened on the day that he would finally become a father.

Francis shook his head slowly, bumbling up from his chair to look his father straighter in the eye. He wrapped the coat around his body, hiding himself from the fierce bite of winter's chill. The sun had long set, it neared the next day. The bite of the preview of another snowstorm echoed in the air. Henry breathed in slowly as Francis opened his mouth to reply. "She's been labouring all day, father." Francis began, his voice gruff from hours of uselessness. "Her waters spilled in the late hours of last night, it's been over an entire day. And the babe struggles to join this world. Mary grows more and more exhausted from the pain and the loss of blood. They have a priest in there now, giving the last rights, in case she does not survive." he gruffed, taking a long drag of the goblet. Henry glanced into the silver, saw not wine, but rum. "It's possible I may loose them both, father. And I do not know what I'll do if it happens." he gasped miserably, too numb and too drunk to register the shock of his fathers' arms bounding around him and yanking him into his arms. The King of Scotland closed his eyes slowly, still barely acknowledging that, perhaps for the first time in his life, his father finally held him close and whispered to him that everything was going to be alright.