"When I awoke, dear
I was mistaken
So, I hung my head and I cried..."
. . .
By the end of September (or so her father says, Autumn has long since stopped paying attention anymore, she didn't care, she told him as much and to herself that she didn't care), her stomach continues to grow and still grows despite the lack of any sort of supplements that she may need but didn't want or bothered to take.
(The shadows looked like spilled ink at her feet by now, lingering and stalking her every movement like a pack of eager dogs.
Unlike Hades, they never left.)
Autumn looks down at her belly.
The end of October draws near when she can no longer see her feet and her balance is precarious, so unstable these days.
Every part of her feels so heavy that she actually has to waddle lest she topples over her own two feet in her half-baked attempts to just be able to move about the four corners of her room. And her feet hurts so much, she thinks they feel just as swollen as they looked... but if she sits for too long, her back will start aching too.
Autumn feels someone should have at least informed her of these things before she had to find out on her own. A word of warning would have been nice.
She still couldn't bring herself to eat more than what was necessary though... even as her anger simmers and dwindles down to resentment, to sadness that lingers like the shadows at her wake. Autumn once thought that her anger would last long enough, a lifetime maybe... but... her baby—
Her poor, poor baby...
Autumn knows, she knows well enough that the infant had absolutely nothing to do with Hades, that she had no right to blame or to take out her anger on it. The sins of the father had nothing to do with the child, but she can't...she just can't...
She just can't bring herself to love it, let alone even want it.
As if hearing her thoughts, the shadows seemed to flinch all around her as though shocked, as though hurt, before they—slowly, oh so slowly, as though they were calming and showing a wounded animal that they meant no harm—backed away from her until they faded far beneath the four walls of her too-white hospital room.
She frowns.
Strange, they only do that whenever she starts crying.
Funny enough, her face feels wet now.
Autumn blinks, "...Oh."
She cries there and then once more.
Autumn has never asked for a child, although she has thought of having one in the future for sure but not wanting one at the moment, not without having someone to help her, to be with her, not now, but...
But now...
Now, she knows she had to come to terms with it..
The self-imposed isolation is most possibly a major factor to her growing an attachment to the child if she were to be honest. But then again, this child is still her flesh and blood, it couldn't possibly be that hard to... tolerate its existence.
Half of her is made of the baby growing in her womb, after all.
Autumn just hopes, truly hopes, and wishes (because she will never ever pray to these selfish gods, never, never, never...), that it'll be mostly human.
Or at the very least, her child will look like a normal human being.
She had read and heard of myths about some spawns of the gods coming out of this world looking like a monster or part monster, after all. That way, at least her child won't be killed or attacked on sight should it even be allowed to live... the child should still have a shot at a normal life, no matter how small the chances are.
And so, like a fool Hades and everyone must surely think of her as, Autumn resigned herself to wait. Until her due date is marked on a calendar somewhere around the first week of December.
The coldest time of the year.
...how fitting.
And giving birth was a fucking nightmare.
The gods must have been surely against her because instead of a snowfall or a snowstorm (as was normal, as was expected during this time of the year, in this place), it was raining, of all things.
The skies seemed to be continuously streaked with lightning that looked too much like claws reaching for the earth, thunder booming distantly in her ears that were amidst her deafening screams of pain... and that was when Autumn realizes, finally understands, as warm tears streaked down her face, that the gods has truly no intention for her to give a safe birth to a half-breed child that could lay claim to the throne of the Underworld.
According to the nurse standing near a metal table filled with equipment, it's been hours since Autumn's first contraction.
The disturbed look on the nurses' face unnerves her in turn.
How... h-how long has it been?
The pain was so much, too much, too much that the nurse's words doesn't make sense to Autumn for a scary moment, because this doesn't feel like hours.
It feels like years have passed her by.
Her father, who had been standing by near Autumn's side doesn't deign to hide the sheer disgust on his face when he looks at the tears and snot running down on her cheeks nonstop but didn't dare to move.
Autumn has a half in mind to curse or at least yell at him for not letting her big sister come take her far away from here. In fact, she finds herself regretting that she had left her sister behind but quite frankly, she could no longer feel it in her to give a flying fuck.
They can just all go to hell.
They don't feel or understand the pain that's tearing her apart from inside-out. But for now, Autumn is following, has to follow the doctor's orders, telling her to push, just please push the baby out.
Autumn hadn't known but it was actually the thirteenth night of December when she finally, finally gives birth to the being that will soon rule over the shadows. And. it's almost anticlimactic how exhausted—how utterly done and drained—she feels when all was said and done.
(For a second, Autumn thought she can smell incense coming from somewhere. It was a woody scent, fresh and powerful with a hint of mint.
The smell reminds her of Hades.
...Why did they even have incense in her room?)
Her fingers are practically numb and airy from gripping the sheets too tightly for what felt like hours on end, but she raises them still to wipe at her messy face the moment she feels it, her touch ghostly, barely there, as she sniffs miserably, the noise almost lost to the crackling thunder outside the four walls of her hospital room.
Lightning flashed as the doctor steps away from her.
...It's done.
It's over.
She did it.
She gave birth.
Now, all that is left for her to do is rest at the moment and just wait until her baby is cleaned up and listen as the... medical staff hiss out quick murmurs from where they gather over the baby who is... too... quiet?
Wait.
...What?
