Work Text:
PROLOGUE: 1998
Emica Akechi sat down gingerly on the edge of her bed after a long day, hands automatically cupping her stomach. Although, the meaning behind it wasn't at all tender. No, it was just instinctive now.
Even after carrying it for all of those months, Emica didn't feel attached to it at all. She felt... withdrawn - almost as if the baby wasn't even going to be hers. Hell, she didn't even know it's gender yet. The doctors had offered to tell her, but would it even make a difference? What was the point?
It was his baby regardless...
It made her sick knowing that some part of him was growing inside of her.
In the first few months, Emica had hesitated. She'd been too wrapped up in the trauma of the incident that had resulted in her pregnancy to begin with. She'd been a mess.
Even after abortion had no longer been an option, how many times had she almost swallowed a bottle full of pills to be rid of it?
Yet, here she was at thirty-eight weeks, that man's child a large bump through her dress. Still alive. Still feeding off her and robbing her of energy, just as its father had done to her very life.
Emica dug her painted nails into the rim of her mattress, gritting her teeth as Shido continued to torture her, now in the form of her own body. She could no longer escape the constant reminder that was her stomach. Self-contempt was a routine.
And God, she was so tired.
Why couldn't the nightmare come to an end?
But unfortunately, for Emica Akechi, the nightmare had only just begun.
She realized such when her water suddenly broke, splattering against the mattress, pouring down her legs and trickling onto the floor below.
“Oh, fuck!” she gasped, jumping to her feet, “Shit, no! God, no! Not now!”
She wasn't ready. No way was she ready! She hadn't even put together a sleeping space for it still. She didn't have much of anything for it, just what a few girls from work had gifted her out of pity was all.
“No! No! No! No! No!”
Emica continued to chant breathlessly, her entire being trembling as she stumbled her way to her telephone. She snatched it with quaking fingers, her blood flowing cold in her veins although her heart seemed to be pounding at a rapid rate.
As she desperately punched in the numbers for an ambulance, seeming to dissociate as she screamed over the phone that she was having a baby, it was then that she realized the nightmare wasn't just a nightmare anymore.
Now the nightmare was real, and there was no going back.
She wouldn't be returning to her tiny, run-down apartment as simply Emica Akechi. Next time she stepped foot inside, it would be with the baby.
She was really going to raise the child of a rapist... and let it be a constant reminder of what she'd never been capable of escaping from to begin with.
It was too late to change it now.
It wasn't for several more hours after she'd been taken to the hospital that she was ready to finally deliver.
It was a notably perilous birth, especially without having a hand to hold. Encouragement from nurses was better than none at all, but it couldn't replace the warm reassurances that should have come from a loved one.
She wept and sobbed until her voice was raw, tears blurring her vision.
It was undeniably Masayoshi Shido's spawn. It was a demon that would tear its way through her flesh and bone, claw its way out of her corpse.
It was going to kill her.
A few times, she thought that maybe she'd lose consciousness. The concerned expressions plastered on the faces of the nurses who tried to aid her through the blur told her that maybe she wasn't wrong. God, how much blood had she lost? Through hazy vision, the doctor's hands looked to be coated in it...
Even their voices sounded so distant now as they seemed to be fluttering all around her, poking and prodding at her.
It wasn't until she was plastered in sweat, breathless, that she refocused just enough to witness the sight of her child cradled in the doctor's hands. They attempted to show it to her, and the fear was enough to jolt her awake.
“NOOO!”
Emica wailed, turning her head and burying her shame away into her pillow as much as was physically possible.
“Akechi-san...”
She could feel one of the nurses gently touch her shoulder, but she refused to budge. If anything, it only encouraged another sob to escape her.
"That's okay, let's give her a moment. I'm sure she'll be ready to see him once he's all cleaned up," one of the other nurses murmured, "I'm sure she's just emotional from the drugs. She had a very tough labour."
Him.
So it was a boy.
Emica curled up into herself, balling her hands into fists and digging them into her palms.
If they hadn't already been bleeding, they were then.
- - - - -
When the medical staff attempted to introduce Emica to her newborn child a second time, she was propped up in her hospital bed.
At some point during her labour, she'd been given an IV for the sake of fluids and the like, so she was feeling much more alert than the last time.
She'd calmed down significantly too. Maybe she'd even consider herself somewhat curious.
As they approached with the blanketed child in hand, she could still feel herself shivering, however. Uneasiness gnawed away at the inside of her stomach, and her mind raced.
'Oh God, please, please don't look like him.'
She couldn't keep the dread from intruding.
As she hesitantly accepted the newborn into her quivering arms, her teeth chattered and she was essentially preparing for despair.
Except, when she peered down at her baby with an uncertain gaze for the first time, Emica didn't have to surrender to any such thing. Instead, she hung her head and wept, thanking God that her son had her eyes.