Work Text:
15th of the 5th Moon of 1109
She cradles the child in her arms, rocking it softly as it weeps quietly. She can’t stand to even look at it now—her own horrific creation. It galls her now that she’d been proud when the sample of her own blood and the black growth hormone had produced new results. She’d been elated as she peered down at the small fetus. Years of study finally amounting to something new.
The baby croaks, working up to cry again. Nosramus shushes it quietly, tugging it closer to her chest. She looks down at it through misty eyes. It’s a grotesque purple, with skin that seems nearly translucent. Its eyes are dim and a muted yellow color. It doesn’t look at the world around it or respond to sound, as a normal newborn child would. The child only knows agony and hunger. It responds to no other stimulation.
She should’ve known better.
She pulls the swaddle around it tighter, suspecting the pressure might alleviate some of its pain. Possibly it might, though likely it won’t.
Nosramus brings a spoon of milk to the babe’s lips with a shaky hand, praying it’ll take milk now that it’s quieted down. The pain seems to be so unbearable for this creature at times that it won’t—it refuses—to eat. It wails on end for hours until its throat goes hoarse or gives out entirely, and then it thrashes around in the small basket she puts it to sleep in. Nosramus hasn’t slept in days.
The child takes the milk with a pitiful sniffle and a hiccup. Nosramus sighs a breath of relief, going to give it another spoon.
Perhaps the feeding will encourage it past this stage. Perhaps, if she can get it to eat enough, it’ll grow—or at least the pain will go away.
She pets its uncanny head and shushes it softly as it weeps quietly, stroking a thumb where its eyebrows might be if it had any hair. The child doesn’t respond to her touch or voice, only sucks at the spoon.
She laments the cruel thing that she has done.
1st of the Halfmoon of 1109
It does not grow. She spends hours agonizing over it, waiting for the child’s discomfort to wane so she can try to feed it--but it still doesn’t grow. She’s switched from milk to a thin paste consisting of different nutrients, thinking that perhaps a change in food will encourage growth—but it doesn’t.
She analyzes it nearly every hour, checking for signs that something has changed. She takes its balled up little fists and splays its hands open, checking its small fingers. It’s such a little thing, so delicate and precious despite its appearance. She hopes that it might grab her back, hold one of her fingers in its weak grip. She coos and talks to it, thinking maybe it’ll eventually respond to her voice. She holds it to her chest and wraps it up in the nicest fabrics she has, thinking the constant shivering and thrashing might stop. It doesn’t.
Nosramus tries to work in between feedings with the child. It wails and screams for hours until it gets hungry, which then it quiets down to small sobs. Then Nosramus feeds it, spoonful after spoonful of whatever watery concoction she’s come up with to see if it might stimulate growth--and it never does.
She blinks away the tears in her eyes now as she feeds the whimpering thing in her arms, frustration and sorrow both eating away at her very being. She still talks to it, whispering small words of love and adoration to it.
Sometimes the Knight--or whatever fragmented piece of the Knight there is now--stands in the doorway of the lab during these quiet moments with the child. It’s his way of checking up on Nosramus, a silent show of some sort of support. But now it enrages her, it makes her feel sick. She cries when he walks to the lab now and clutches the baby tighter. “Leave,” she whispers, unable to keep the detestment out of her voice. She might be shaking, she can’t tell. She would’ve yelled--she should’ve screamed at the Knight to leave, what difference would it make? The child wouldn’t notice.
But for once, she’s happy the child cannot react to the world around it. It continues suckling on the spoon Nosramus has given it, tears drying on its cheeks.
2nd of the 6th Moon of 1109
She cries with the child now. It’s screeching in her arms and kicking its small legs around. It unknowingly grabs a lock of her hair in a small hand and yanks. It’s the only development with the child--it kicks and grabs now. But it doesn’t grow, and the agony doesn’t wane.
Nosramus weeps for the child and for herself. She can’t take it. She can’t take it. She rocks it and shushes it anyway, wishing she knew any lullabies--it’s been so long since her own mother. She doesn’t remember what her mother would sing to her.
She puts it in the basket and it screams louder. She wipes her face with the sleeves of her robe and takes a few deep breaths. She can barely think over the wail of the child, her thoughts scattered, her work laying undone for too long now.
She paces the lab. She knows what she has to do but it makes her dizzy with dread. She clutches herself, wishing that someone--anyone--would hold her now, that someone was here to help her.
She goes back to the child. She picks it up, resting her cheek on its head. She coos at it and tells it how she loves it, how dear it is to her. The child’s wailing quiets down to a small sob as if reacting to the soothing words Nosramus is giving it. It makes what Nosramus has to do so much more terrible.
She now paces the lab with her child, holding it tight, and then tighter. She feels sick as she tightens a hand around the child's neck--she ignores the crying, the sputtering coughs, the way it chokes. It’s so human, it sounds so real.
It goes still in her arms eventually--she wasn’t sure when it did.
She holds its still form for a while longer as she stands in the middle of her lab, staring at the wall. She killed her child.
Tears well up in her eyes and she holds the limp form in her arms in an odd mimicry of the first time she held it. She doesn’t look at it, just rocks it in her arms as she walks to the basket. She puts her child back in the basket, its little makeshift crib, and swaddles the delicate lifeform as though it had just fallen asleep and she was putting it down for a nap.
She sits down and admires the picture of the child resting peacefully in the basket; a demented what-if plays through her head. Perhaps she did the calculations wrong. Perhaps, if she had done something differently, things would’ve turned out better.
She wipes the tears from her eyes and decides she will bury the child outside of the dungeons. She will walk into the forest, a bit aways from this place, and bury it somewhere nice. Perhaps under a tree, or near a bed of wildflowers.
She has done a terrible thing, creating this child. And she worries she will never make recompense for it.