White Queen

Family Bond

Please note that I have zero idea of how childbirth feels and looks like, I have only read other fics and watch clips of scenes from various shows, so if there is any error in what I write, please forgive me.

Time felt as if rolling slowly and yet quickly at the same time.

She couldn't understand it let alone describe it. The pain was barely bearable, nothing in her life could be compared to it, teeth gritting as another contraction drove her muscles to buckle and her fingers curling around the sheets below her. Her heart pound hard against her chest, breath coming in quick and short gasps, and she could barely register the faces of people around her, of those moving around to prepare of the necessaries needed to welcome the royal heir once it was born into the world. Even the cold cloth that Anna dabbed against her temples could barely soothe the heat growing under her skin that was able to make the Snow Queen sweats.

Some women gave up their life for their child's.

There was no denying that she was afraid, very much so, for quite some time now. The wait had only been exciting but at the same time nerve-wrecking; people around her were giddy for this time to come, impatient as they desired to see the child the Queen bears, and they failed to see how scared she was. The haunting possibilities of bad things happening during the labor, of the complications that she could be in that endangered not only her life but her child's, loomed above her like a dark stormy cloud. And now that she was truly there, that the labor was really happening right now, her fear had only been turned into a dawning reality.

"You shouldn't be here, Your Highness." A voice spoke, the midwife perhaps or maybe one of her ladies, she couldn't tell, couldn't focus her mind to figure out. "This is no place for a man."

Her hand moved in an instant the moment she felt the mere shift at her side, fingers curling around her husband's arm. "He stays." It was a command rather than a request that came through her gritted teeth, determined and unchallenged. He was her husband and the father of their child, he would not leave her side no matter what happened or what people said.

Her control over her magic thinned out.

Yet she had anticipated such thing to happen, had expect her magic to slowly get out of her control as the time rolled by, and so she had worn the pair of gloves stored in one of the drawers of her vanity. Her Mother's.

She had requested for it to be fetched by her sister earlier, and although the Princess was bewildered by the fact that the older sister still had a pair inside her bedchamber –as her gloves had all been stored up in the attic, she had nodded knowingly after she was told of who they were once belonged to. Her fingers itched with the swirling magic, but no frost had grown on the sheets, only a small amount had been spotted at the edges of the glass windows as the sky outside darkened, and she knew that the gloves had helped with that.

Hours passed, exhaustion heavy against her body and mind, and yet her child had not yet come.

"The baby has not moved much." She had pushed with all her might until tears gathered in her eyes and blurred her vision, she was sure of it, so why it seemed that the energy she had spent had brought nothing, she just wanted to have her child. "We have to do something."

Something is not right.

We have to get the baby out.

"Hans," her chest heaved as she turned her head to look at her husband, eyes searching for his. "Remember your promise."

"What promise?" She could see the solemn look at Hans had on his face as he looked up to meet with the Princess' question. "Hans, what did she made you promise to her?" Anna's voice was edging into a warning tone as her hand gripped the older sister's, and when his lips did not move to answer her, her voice rose. "Tell me!"