Tu Es Ma Lumière

179 - Struggle *Modern*

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Side Note - Same AU as 178 and 130.

Side Note - Sorry for the first version of this. If anybody saw it before I noticed and unpublished, Wattpad published instead of saved the first part of this before I wrote anything. Super weird, but here's the actual chapter.

"I should have been with you!" is how Mary de Valois-Angouleme wakes from her dozing in the hospital bed. She's exhausted, everything hurts. She feels hollow, like all of her insides have been ripped out and placed in places they weren't supposed to be in. She can feel the blood seeping out of her, her throat hurts from crying out. She just wants to rest, but the door opening so suddenly and the lanky blonde figure lunging towards her is the opposition.

"Papa!" James babbles loudly with relief, lifting his tiny blonde head from his mother's shoulder and neck, where he had been perched like a little angel for hours after hours. He was so little, but he hadn't left her for even a moment. His blue eyes are big, and he all put leaps into Francis' arms. The little toddler is caught by his father with ease, while the door opens again. In come Henry, Sebastian and they're trailed by Kenna. They're all so dishevelled, there are bruises under their eyes and their clothing is crooked. But they're here, finally.

"Francis," Mary weakly croaks, looking up at her husband through her very drugged state. Her eyes are hazy, the pretty image of her husband is disorientated. He's murky, all she can really see is crooked blonde curls and worried blue eyes, and some sort of pale skin. Mary's eyes are dull and dark, glazed over with her fatigue and disorientation. The blonde man fishes his right hand through Mary's tangled mess of hair, whilst holding their son in the other arm.

"Oh, my love. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry I wasn't there. Are you okay? Is the baby-" he looks down at the little thing that's suckling on Mary's breast. It's so little, so much smaller than James was. Francis can't really see his newest child, although he does know it's a girl. She has dark hair, that's all he can really see, the blanket dwarfs her, and the hat she wears is too big.

"It-it was too quick," she murmurs weakly. Her eyes flick to her father, half brother and half sister in law as they pester her poor birthing team relentlessly. They keep looking at them, their voices are louder than they should be with two little children and a drugged up new mother twice over. All she can really make out from the foggy mess that is Mary's world is worry for the month early little girl, and possible repercussions and a harsh healing process for Mary. She hears the words NICU and tests, but it hardly matters, she's been hearing those words for five hours already. "She was too early." she murmurs into Francis' worried eyes. "No progress, so much blood. Then it all happened so quick, all of a sudden her head was out, but she-she got stuck." Mary reveals, closing her eyes as if it would stop the memory of the fear and the desperation. The nurses hopping up onto the bed, pushing her legs so far backward that she honestly feared they would snap. "Her shoulder, got stuck. They couldn't get her out. It hurt so, so much. I was so scared, they were yelling and he was crying," Mary looks at James quickly, her beautiful little blonde haired, blue eyed little angel who hadn't left her for a moment in the hard birth of his sister. "she got out, but they wouldn't let me see her. Something about her heart rate and breathing, I-I can't remember." Mary murmurs, her eyes falling closed. The drugs had worn off during the actual birthing process, so she was glad they pumped her full of the stuff now. "My bone, it fractured. They had to, to get her out. It hurt, Francis. It hurt. She's too early. I-I can't-" her eyes fall closed again, her drugged up state beginning to get the best of her.

"Don't sleep, not yet." he urges. Logically, it would be better to do what his father, half brother and half sister in law had been doing, and to ask the nurses what had happened in the horrid birth, but it felt right to ask the mother herself. "Is she healthy? Is she okay?"

"They'll let her feed for a little because she can, but she has to stay in the NICU for a while. A month early, Francis. A month-" she trails off as the baby finishes suckling. Husband and wife are approached by nurses, and they take the little child from her mother. Mary doesn't protest, she knows the women well by now. 

"I assume you're the father? Mary's husband?" one asks, adjusting the hat on the baby's tiny head.

"Yes, I am." Francis remembered James' birth at home on Christmas eve during the horrid snowstorm, they had gone to the clinic for a few hours on Christmas day and gotten him weighed and registered. It was anything unlike this, since Mary had developed a fear of hospitals thanks to childhood trauma that had yet to be resolved. A month early hospital birth, and what appeared to be a horrid one at that, was anything unlike the clinic birth they had planned for. Mary and James had been staying in Belcastel for a small holiday before baby was due, while Francis had been called away for work in the US. Lola and Greer and Leith and Julien had been with them, and they had gotten Mary to the hospital when she started to bleed. Leith had made the call to Francis, so, he and Bash and Kenna and Henry had made chase. A sixteen hour plane ride from Mississippi to Belcastel, and another two hours to the hospital in the car, and then they were here.

"We're going to take baby girl de Valois-Angouleme to the premature baby unit for observation, since baby girl is over a month before her November twenty ninth due date. Would you like to come and see your daughter?"

James babbled loudly, suddenly, turning over Francis' shoulder. Mary had passed out in the bed. She looks awful, her skin is pale and chalky, she's plugged into multiple machines and monitors and drips. Anything unlike the beautiful glowiness when James had been born at home in the bathtub.

"Your son was a trooper for her mother, Mr. Valois-Angouleme." the nurse holding their little girl says. "He refused to leave her side, even when her accompaniments had tried to take him away. He was there when little girl was born."

"Were you?"

James babbles, beaming proudly at his father. They look so alike, it's almost frightening. 

"Good boy," he praises. Bash comes over to take the toddler from his father. James goes willingly. "I'll go with my daughter, I have some questions about her birth." they leave the room, Kenna and Bash and Henry deciding to stay now that Mary could have visitors.

"The birth was hard?"

"Yes, it was, Mr. Valois. Your wife was bleeding with her waters when she arrived. Baby girl was stubbornly inside for many hours, she wouldn't drop for quite a while. However, she immediately made her way through the birth canal when Mary began pushing. Sadly, her shoulder got stuck after her head was birthed, we were forced to fracture Mary's pubic bone to get the child out safely. Shoulder dystocia is a horrible thing, we're lucky that both made it out with minimal damage."

"And my wife? My wife and daughter? Will they be fine?" Francis asks worriedly.

"Yes, sir. Your wife and daughter will recover."

They make it to the preemie room. Mary and Francis' daughter is lay in her glass crib. She's so small. It's now that Francis gets a good look at his child, there's no definite features, she's so small and new. But she has dark hair, and every making of being her mother's daughter, a beauty nonetheless.

"Is there a name in mind, Mr. Valois?"

"Yes, there is. Anneliese. My daughter's name is Anneliese Vivienna Evangeline de Valois-Angulème, we'll call her Anne."