"The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you, in my arms"
—Jimmie Davis
. . .
These are the things she knows to be the truth:
No one is going to want to take responsibility of the... the thing that's alive, growing inside her. Not her, and not... not him apparently.
Autumn knows this.
He know this.
She is now carrying the bastard spawn of Hades.
A demigod, an actual god's child is growing in her womb, slowly but surely. An impossibility that should've stayed written only in myths and not in reality.
The thing was barely three months old when the father of the child finally deigned to inform her of the truth, of its existence, of what he had done and was going to be leaving her with when Autumn had been feeling under the weather most of the time, had been throwing up almost everything she ate.
At first, Autumn had laughed.
Then cried when she realized he wasn't lying.
She never saw Hades again after he told her of the child.
(...his spawn, who was already growing in her womb.
His. Her's.
...the spawn who was destined to be powerful as it was bound to be and how it must be protected at all costs, hidden until it was strong enough to fend for itself.)
No matter how much she called or cried.
Hades might as well have never existed in her life, had never been real if it weren't for the fact that her stomach seems to grow bigger and bigger as proof every waking moment, the feeling of something... there, of being at his presence but not. Lingering like smoke, incorporeal, of seeing the shadows that weren't supposed to exist desperately reaching out to her from the corner of her vision the same way moths would do to flame.
When Autumn's father finally, finally finds out (it was only a matter of time really), he had her escorted to be returned home almost immediately.
And during all that time, Autumn feels as though she was trapped in a glass cocoon, feeling nothing but sadness that the one she loved and trusted the most had truly left her behind, that she had been nothing but a means to an end.
There was no room for love in her heart after everything that has happened.
There was only fear for her life and hate for the god that abandoned her and a child she was expected to raise and protect on her own.
And from the hate, comes her guilt.
Sometimes, she feels her hand wandering down to her bulging stomach from time to time, still somewhere in between denial and fear, trying to feel if there's truly a life now growing inside of her, if it was even possible in the first place... given who and what the father of the child is.
Sometimes, she finds herself crying to sleep.
Or just lying in her bed in a fetal position, the same way the thing she's supposedly carrying most likely is in now.
It was curious, frightening, in a distant sort of way how Autumn had mixed feelings regarding the child growing within her, of how she wanted it to disappear, gone, just so she wouldn't have to deal with all of this. Hades' spawn. Her's.
The both of them.
...she thinks Hades knows.
In some awful way, she thinks he might have been able to sense these mutinous thoughts and dreads of how she will act, what she will do to the—his—unborn offspring... because the shadows wouldn't let a sharp object anywhere near Autumn soon after.
Every scissor, needle, fork, even a particularly sharp hairclip that will be found subjected to her distant stare would be sinking so suddenly within the never-ending depths of a sudden pool of shadows that would take form in the nearest surface out of nowhere, no matter how improbable against the light or it should be in reality... until it could never be seen, could never found.
Autumn almost wishes to sink in it and hide in there too.
But it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what she even wants. It doesn't matter what her opinion is because Hades apparently wanted for Autumn to keep the child—for some absurd reason—had wanted his bastard, half-breed spawn to live despite his apparent distance, despite the fact that this was the ultimate proof of the god's infidelity, that he was no better than the other gods as he had abandoned her so readily.
This, Autumn was inclined to believe because no matter how many pills or any sort of medication she forced herself to go down her throat, she still lives...
And by that extension, the child as well.
Autumn hates it.
She hates it so much that she has a half in mind to actually rip it out of her. Just get it over with, the consequences be damned.
(...and she has never hated herself all the more for so much as even thinking like that.)
She hates her father too, for not letting her get rid of it, for not even being the slightest bit of mad about what had happened to her. It was as though he thinks that this was something to be proud of, had considered a great honor of some sort.
And above all, she hates Hades the most for... for making her believe that he even loved her and then doing this to her, for leaving her and their child alone, for everything.
Everyone too.
And yet—
And yet...
There were some nights Autumn would remain seated in the darkness of her room and just look at her swollen fingers, at the hands resting above her protruding stomach, at the shadows swirling reluctantly but almost... almost protectively by her side like a shield as she finds herself thinking ways to end this. She had never done anything to deserve to be left behind like this.
And as she looked down to her stomach, really looked at it, she thought of the child... her child, who had also done absolutely nothing wrong to deserve being regarded like this, of its own mother thinking of ways to snuff out its chances at life.
Before it even had a chance to be born. To know what it was like to cry and laugh, to simply be alive. To live.
The shadows inched a step closer, almost hopeful.
Autumn slowly blinks at them.
That... was probably the first nice thought she had of it.
She closes her eyes, resigned, and allows the shadows, for the first time since everything, to brush through her stomach until they were all but a blanket of darkness hovering above her, weightless but real—like a caress, a ghost of a kiss.
Before she fell asleep, she thinks she feels one on her forehead too.
