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While there is still plenty of unpleasant scenario involving ichor, it is not played for fun. Read at your own risk. ", "description_bbcode_parsed": "What does it cost to be a mother?

Endless tears, and all the blood you can give.

Made for Mother's Day, commissioned by \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDarlonDemonic\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t		\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDarlonDemonic\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
, and entirely featuring his characters.

Unlike many of his commissions, this one is made to be far more serious. While there is still plenty of unpleasant scenario involving ichor, it is not played for fun. Read at your own risk. ", "writing": "As much as he was willing to do… As much as he was willing to admit…\n\n...this was never something he could face.\n\nIn a remote cave, far from everywhere and anyone, he sat. The only sounds were the waves crashing outside, and the soft drip…\n\n...drip… drip…\n\nBlood pooled around him. It trickled off of the Latias in his arms, and spread slowly across the floor...\n\nHe had always been very alone… None tended to have much trust for a demon. He tried to be as kind as he could, given his nature. He always felt such pity when they pushed him hard enough to come to violence… But now...\n\nIn his millennia of living, he had often been rejected just for who he was. His own kind called him soft. Others feared the horns on his head…\n\nNo one understood how much it meant to him… That he had someone who stared at him with nothing but adoration…\n\nSomeone who loved him… and now…?\n\nShe was gone.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nForina.\n\nJust a few kilometers from Mt. Chimney, and the perfect place to gaze upon the wonders of the cosmos far above…\n\n“Are you cold, dearest…?”\n\nThe words burned his tongue a bit. Affection and love always did, for his very nature. He had come to savour the feeling of it, because when the affection was returned it would soothe any pain.\n\nKurai’s eyes didn’t move from the beautiful swirls of stars in the night sky. Something about them reminded him of a time long ago, when he was just as happy. He ran his hands through his chillingly blue hair and then set it gently on the midsection of his…\n\nHis…\n\nHis eyes narrowed…\n\nThe Latias lifted her head, and then tilted it. A sweet smile on her face, her claws intertwined with his, and her eyes fluttering gently. Usually it made his heart thrill. He could scarcely keep his arms from being around her, and those beautiful, deep pools of blue and pink that she stared at him through looked more hauntingly fathomless than the starry night glittering in their reflection…\n\n“Laby…” he muttered, and turned…\n\nThey were sat under a tree on some tall hill. They knew they could be safe, because the terrain was treacherous enough that few humans ever came here. With her laid across his lap, his hand on her tummy, the expression on the Latias’s face went from cheery and serene immediately to confused to match her demonic mate’s…\n\nKurai’s eyes were elsewhere. His pupils unfocused, and his face a bit downcast. He seemed confused and unsure of what he was sensing. Laby frowned in fear…\n\nSomething inside? Something that would hurt her? A deformity or…\n\n“...Laby, I… I sense… Negative energy. Evil…”\n\nShe blinked and for a moment looked a bit scared… but Kurai’s face slowly brightened…\n\nAn excited smile spread wide on his lips…\n\n“You… You’re… Pregnant…!”\n\nThe Latias stopped moving. Her unusual eyes narrowed their pupils in shock. Was that even possible? She was a Pokemon, and he something much darker… She had never been clear on whether they were even compatible.\n\nBut apparently so. Kurai stood with her in his arms, laughing excitedly in that moment. He spun with her and hugged her firmly…\n\n“Isn’t this wonderful… Imagine it…! A baby… You and I… Parents… Ohh… I…”\n\nHe noticed her expression was quiet. He paused and blinked, but she noticed and quickly looked up with her usual cheerful smile. He breathed a sigh of relief and sat back down with her, cuddling her all the more tightly…\n\nHe talked endlessly about how eager he was to meet their little one, if it was just one! But at some point, he glanced down and saw his mate was fast asleep… He sighed and set his own head back, that smile still there… Nothing, seemingly, could unseat it…\nBut as he set his head back against the tree and closed his eyes to rest… Laby opened her own, and stared up into the endless night sky…\n\n...alone… She felt strangely alone… And very scared…\n\n\n\n===\n\n\nBy the morning, she was acting cheerful again. Kurai’s mind was briefly clouded by excitement, and nothing seemed to be able to stop him in those few weeks…\n\nThey couldn’t go somewhere to check Laby’s pregnancy, because it was partially demonic. After all, she had been only with one for long enough that there was no question, not to mention her species wasn’t exactly usual on its own. \n\nLaby mentioned more than once, quietly, that checkups were an important part. But Kurai couldn’t seem to find a way to make it happen…\n\nIt was an aloof decision that he hated to admit to later…\n\nOn a swaying boat, they sailed for Sinnoh. By now, the poor Latias’s pretty eyes were sunken, and she was floating lower… But that was to be expected, right?\n\nKurai emerged from the cabin of the small sailboat they had… er… acquired, one way or another. He looked over the vast ocean and breathed in the sea air. He felt invigorated and hopeful for the future… But he saw his mate sat upon a small chair near the ship’s bow. The waves swayed her back and forth like a rocking chair. He already had visions of her doing so in front of a fireplace at their home…\nHands in his pockets, he sauntered up to her. She didn’t turn to look at him, and he expected she might have been asleep. She was always nodding off nowadays… So weak and tired and…\n\nHis brightness fell as his gaze darted suddenly down. He had smelled something familiar…\n\n“Laby…!?”\n\nHe pulled the chair immediately to turn her around. The slumped Latias opened her tired eyes and looked up at him in confusion before she seemed to realize, and touched her claw to her chin…\n\nIt came away red…\n\nWith her in his arms, he steered the ship to the nearest islet. Abandoned by all but sea-faring Pokemon, it gave him the time and isolation he needed to pull together half remembered runes and powers…\n\nHe scanned over her body carefully. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, at least now, but…\n\n“...this… this is… bad…”\n\nHe hadn’t wanted to say it. As soon as he did, tears immediately came to her eyes. She put her hands on her face and broke down sobbing… And when Kurai tried to comfort her she…\n\nShe pulled away… Floated from the small table she was on and moving a few feet apart from him…\n\nKurai was so stunned that he didn’t move… Didn’t understand why his mate would ever run from him, especially now. She floated there with her arms hugging herself gently…\n\n“...I knew it… it wouldn’t…”\n\nKurai briefly held his head, as the sweet voice whispered into it. Her emotions flared through as well; terror and confusion and pain in her heart…\n\n“...It’s putting pressure on your rib cage… And your body can’t take it…” Kurai said, in as gentle a voice as he could. He didn’t want to approach her, lest she move away again. He wasn’t sure he could handle the sight of that right now…\n\n“If the pregnancy keeps going… Then… Your body will fail. The baby is… Is causing all sorts of internal damage. Demon bodies can handle it, and even if they can’t, they can regenerate after being destroyed… But you… You aren’t a demon… So as the months go by…”\n\n“...if?”\n\nKurai himself took a step back at the tone in her voice. She was so gentle and naive that to hear the sharp note of upset made his own chest tighten…\n\nShe turned to him. Tears were streaming from those pretty eyes…\n\n“If?! If it keeps going?!”\n\n“...Laby… The baby won’t die, unless you do… And… It… It will kill you… So we might need to… to…”\n\nHe swallowed and finally took a few steps forward. She gripped her head, turned this way and that in the air as she panicked. And then she jerked away from him again…\n\n“SO THIS IS IT?! I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE YOUR KID! I’M NOT GOING TO BE A MOM!!! I’M NEVER GOING TO BE A MOM! AND YOU KILLED ME FOR IT!”\n\n“...L… Laby… You… no, I…”\n\nShe was suddenly in his face. His own eyes were blurry now with tears that would never come… All he had experienced left him unable, but those words…\n\nThey at least brought him close… Wounded him enough that he felt the sting like it had gone through his stomach…\n\n“You are saying that either I carry this baby and we both die or my baby dies and I live with the fact that I COULDN’T SAVE IT. YOU WANT ME TO KILL MY CHILD!”\n\n“Laby!”\n\nKurai spoke in a deep and powerful voice for that word alone. Its echo made every Wingull on the island flutter up and away. For the longest moment, seeming to stretch forever, the two stared… Tears in her eyes, and a hollow expression in his…\n\nShe turned and was suddenly gone. Kurai lifted his arms as the sonic boom she created fluttered his clothes intensely…\n\nAnd like that, he was alone…\n\nHe stared forward for a full minute before turning and putting his fist through a rock. It exploded and flung shards so hard that they half embedded themselves in the nearby trees…\n\nThen he climbed back on his sailboat, tugged the rigging, and shoved off from the islands, eyes aglow and pointed up to the skies…\nThe endless blue ocean had felt so full of potential before. But on a ship alone, it just felt like it was taunting him with his isolation. He did not look at it, and instead looked to the skies…\n\nHis demonic gaze caught trails no other creature could see. He followed the parted clouds and charted the fastest course. For days… he was by himself… but thinking only of her, and how much pain she must have felt.\n\nHer body must have been wracked with pure agony. Demons fed off of it. And her heart… \n\nHe hoped he wasn’t too late, or it may have broken already…\n\nThe ship smashed firmly onto the beach. If there was a hole in it, Kurai would deal with it later. He leapt off of it before it even stopped moving and ran forward along the sands and towards the cave, barely visible in the splashing wake of the waves…\n\nIt had been days. Too long. But she was here. He knew it.\n\nHe stopped at the entrance of the cave, panting gently. The cold air of Sinnoh made each puff come as mist… But he didn’t feel it. He was focused on the trails of red that had dried here and there…\n\n“LABY!”\n\nHe called… Though unlike last time, the word was cried out with nothing but desperate love. It still echoed heavily within the dim shadows of the place…\n\nHis fists curled. He took a step forward… \n\nPlease… No… Not like this… Not with his last conversation with her being about…\n“...cough!”\n\nHe had dove forward in an instant, not caring anymore. The shadows were nothing to his wicked gaze, and he found her just a bit deeper in…\n\nShe was curled on a small ‘nest’ of leaves, wholly inadequate for a mother as wonderful as her. It was a sight that caught his breath in his throat as he saw how weak she looked. Her stomach was still shallow, and she had more than a few months before the labour…\n\nHe knelt next to her… Put his hand on her, and…\n\nShe sat up and hugged around his neck. She sobbed weakly as she did, and Kurai only held her back tighter because of the sound…\n\n“It’s okay… It’s okay… I’m here… I never thought for a second of anything but being by your side… We… can get through this…”\n\nCould they…? They sat for a long time in the quiet of the cave, him letting her work through her painful emotions and healing as much of her wounds as he could… He hated the fact that demonic powers were so in tune for causing pain, instead of healing. He wanted nothing more than to take all of this burden away from her…\n\n...but it was clear to them both… Neither wanted to lose their baby…\n\nHe took her back to the ship and sailed back to Hoenn. Here, there was a quiet place they could hide; as close to a home as they’d ever had. He let her rest every day, obtained the best medicines for her, did everything in his power…\n\nHe entered one day and came to her bedside. She was half term by this time, and… showing very prominently. Some might have thought she was nearing full term…\n\nHe sat the soup down next to her, and then knelt next to the bed. As usual nowadays, her eyes were closed and she barely seemed to be breathing. Her womb was alive with activity… Her over-eager child wriggling excitedly, as if nothing was wrong. Kurai couldn’t help but smile at it, despite everything…\n\nBut his expression fell when Laby opened her eyes and lifted her neck to look up at him. Even now, despite the confrontation, she seemed to stare with adoration and love. Maybe she truly trusted he would find a way…\n\n...it was more than he trusted, at this point…\n\n“Are you feeling okay? ...no, sorry, stupid question.”\n\nIt at least got a weak chuckle out of her as she set her head back. The steaming broth beside her held no appeal, and it worried Kurai immensely…\n\nHe stroked along her head, his eyes roving over her, going back to that blanketed tummy again in again. It felt so strange to love something unequivocally… and also hate that it existed, in some ways. But demons too easily felt hate… He was very aware…\n\n“...I…”\n\nHe lifted his head immediately as she began to speak…\n\n“...I think… I think she’s… upset with the… the...”\n\nHer arm lifted weakly to indicate the curtains, and the bright sunbeams that came through and bathed her in a pleasant glow.\n\nKurai’s lips pursed in a wince of upset. He set his head down on the bed next to her and sighed weakly…\n\n“There’s not many places we could go to fix that. Demons hate the sunlight, but most can tolerate it. In your condition… It just makes our baby uncomfortable…”\n\nThere was a long silence, broken only by the soft rush of wind along the hills outside…\n\n“...There’s a way… To… To save you, Laby…”\n\nShe opened those deep, shimmering eyes and turned them to look at him. He didn’t lift his head. He couldn’t look her in the eyes as he spoke…\n\n“You would have to… Become like me. To let your soul be corrupted and… To transform into a demon…”\n\nLaby sat her head up a bit, eyes widening. The very notion was vile to her for many reasons… And yet there was enough excitement bubbling at the prospect of…\n\n...meeting her child… Her baby. She had all but given up on the notion…\n\n“Will it… be hard?”\n\n“...It will be very hard, Laby… But if it works… you will live. You will be with me…”\n\nHe finally lifted his head. That hollow look in his eyes was back. He would have cried himself blind if he could have…\n\n“If we don’t… I don’t know what else to do. The little one is too much for your body to handle. And…”\n\nThe last part… The grim fate of those who attempted to host demonic spawn was better left to the imagination…\n\n“...Kurai...”\n\nThe Latias set her head back down. Her eyes were tightly closed now, as she wrestled against the evil shadows of despair and sorrow. She grit her fangs gently and put her arm on her eyes, before she breathed out a sharp puff of air…\n\nHer little one shifted in her stomach…\n\n“...Alright…!”\n\nShe spoke in a tiny, tender voice… But she sat up a bit, her jaws set and her eyes sparking with desire. Her mate pulled back a little in surprise… She hadn’t looked this determined in a long while, and yet here she was… \n\nFor her baby… Willing to march towards such pain...\n\n\nKurai winced… But looked up at her. She stared at him for a long time before she nodded, firmly...\n\nThe pact was sealed.\n\n===\n\nThe rituals and rites to make the dire event take place were nothing. A little bloodletting, a bit of sacrifice, and she was marked with a subtle rune. That was it.\n\nBut to become a demon wasn’t merely that. Now her biology had to change; the flesh that was wrapped around her slowly corrupting soul was to be warped until it was made anew…\n\nUsually a Pokemon was born this way. A full grown conversion like this was… intense. And as Kurai had warned her, it would be difficult…\n\nShe awoke more than one night, screaming and howling. Sometimes, the hormonal mood swings made her hard to approach. Sometimes he had to, and to hold her back… Lest she harm herself, or worse… Her baby…\n\nEventually the sun was too much, and the cabin couldn’t contain the agony she felt… She had fled to a cave by instinct when scared… Now she returned to the one she was born in, on the cliffs near their home. She wouldn’t be bothered there... More importantly, no one would hear her howling as the cave echoed the cries out across the sea...\n\nKurai had to focus forward. He continued traveling often to obtain the things she needed. Once he sailed from region to region, island to island, purely for the joy of exploration. Now he pushed his boat even against the wind, as fast as it would go. When it was no longer fast enough, he spread the leathery wings that he usually kept folded. He now abandoned the boat’s anonymity, though he knew more than one would look up at the sky and spot a streak of light, rushing as fast as it could… but he no longer cared about being secret. He wanted nothing more than to ensure that this process worked… To save his beloved…\n\nHe touched down on the dock he’d built, hidden in an alcove of treacherous rock. Even skilled human sailors couldn’t get through the jagged shards that jutted from the crashing sea… \n\nWith a bag under one arm, he entered the cave and looked around.\n\nRed now lined the walls and jagged slashes were gouged here and there into the rock. In the dark depths of the cave, he could hear snarling, and then sobbing…\n\nHe turned the corner and saw Laby. His face fell. She was in the corner, settled upon a bit more of a proper nest of cushions and comforting blankets. But they were now soaked with crimson ichor and her head was pressed firmly against the wall…\n\nHer belly was… immense. What might have been full term had passed a long few months ago. Now she looked like she was carrying twins. Triplets. A litter.\n\nBut Kurai had confirmed… One child. One very large child…\n\n“They still feed off of all the evil that is pouring through your soul, Laby… They are… Healthy… At least…”\n\nShe turned, baring her fangs as more blood dribbled from between them. Her soft, fuzzy plumage was utterly disheveled and her expression was one of hateful fury…\nBut those eyes… Those wonderful pink and blue portals to her inner self still sparkled with a singular, loving desire…\n\nHer family. It was the only thing that kept her alive at this point. She had lost so much blood and more than once he had found she had dragged a fish Pokemon into her den and…\n\nCravings. Nothing more. She radiated such a bad aura that any Pokemon stupid enough to get near her now deserved their fate…\n\nKurai was not a Pokemon, and neither was she anymore. Not fully. \n\nShe had endured so long in total agony. Her muscles burned and her veins were filled with acid. Her stomach barely could hold anything that wasn’t raw and still steaming with body heat. Her sunken eyes streamed tears almost constantly…\n\nHe embraced her without a second thought to any of it. To him, she was still Laby…\n\n“How do you feel? Anything changed?”\n\n“No…”\n\nShe spoke curtly. Her psychic abilities were acting like a bad radio signal right now; flowing in and out as her power fluctuated. But mostly she communicated by screaming… All she had to say nowadays was cries of pain…\n\nKurai let her go, and she floated back down to a heavy sit. Kurai set the bag near her, and watched it be torn to shreds. More blood soaked the wall, and the demon was forced to step back as his mate tore into what he brought her, sobbing the while…\n\n\nWould she lose the ability to cry too? He walked to the corner and stared into the shadow, trying not to think of it…\n\n“...Kurai…”\n\nHer weak voice. He spun immediately. She had finished her meal, and blood still streamed down her chin. He moved over quickly…\n\nShe was, in that moment, so weak and vulnerable. He sat with her in the nest and embraced her once more. He rocked with her as her insides were pummeled and her organs beaten. She sniffled hard and couldn’t help but sob…\n\nWhat if it didn’t work…? What if she went through all of this pain… Only for the final moments to be too much for her…?\n\nWhat if she failed…?\n\nKurai could hear her thoughts, as loudly as if she was broadcasting them. And he was glad she couldn’t hear his, and that his expression could be so blank…\n\nHe didn’t want to show how scared he was to lose her…\n\nHe awoke with a start as Laby screamed. His heart was in his chest as he realized it wasn’t simply one of her agonized screams as her insides shifted and changed. This was more intense… More terrible…\n\nShe arched against him, her claws going to her middle and dragging deep gashes down it, thoughtlessly. Kurai stopped her before too much damage could be done. To cut into her body like that now would bleed her dry…\n\n“Laby…?!”\n\nShe didn’t have the ability to say anything, but she didn’t need to. A sharp splatter of bloody water formed a jagged puddle just outside of her nest, below her spasming entrance…\n\n“Laby… Laby! No… Now?!”\n\nIt was too soon. There hadn’t been enough moons between now and the ritual! He wasn’t sure she was a demon yet, and…\n\nHis hand trailed over her belly, iron hard with the contractions it was forcing. She screeched again, thrashing as hard as his tight grip would allow. He was forced to hold on tight, lest she hurt herself in her panic…\n\n“Calm… Calm! As much as you can, Laby… It is time… You need to…”\n\nPush…?\n\nHow could she do this… Her belly… Her baby was so immense that it was difficult to expect that she would be able to get it out even if she was in her prime…\n\nAnd now… After months and months of her body being destroyed from the inside out… She looked up at him weakly… Desperate…\n“...I ca… I can’t cut it out, Laby… I can’t… It would kill you for sure…”\n\nShe swallowed and tears streamed down her face once more… It seemed all she did was cry nowadays… Cry and bleed…\n\nNow she had to face the final test of it…\n\nKurai adjusted her until she was more comfortably situated. And then he settled himself for the long haul. After all, despite her water breaking, that baby wasn’t moving… \n\nHe knew that a child this size in a body this small would force a long labour… Very long…\n\n...too long…\n\n“Push!” he cried. So many hours later her entrance had dilated enough that she had to risk tearing. The damage done to it would more than outweigh the relief she would feel if it was born quickly. Alas, curling into her middle and flaring her wings, all she managed to do was gush more bloody fluids into the rapidly growing pool below them…\n\n“PUSH!” he demanded… A day had gone by, and she was exhausted. He infused as much of his own power and energy into her as he dared to keep her moving. Too much and he could overload her, and kill her on the spot. Too little… And it wouldn’t matter anyway. She pushed and groaned tremulously, unable to scream anymore. Her throat was raw and bloody itself, and occasionally she had to spit against the wall next to her, splattering it with blackening fluid…\n\n“Push… Laby, please, PUSH…” he nearly begged. How many days now? Two… Four, maybe a week. Neither of them could remember. She certainly couldn’t keep track, her body going from a vibrant and healthy rose red to a terrifyingly pale pink… All of her red, drained into the vast and odious pool that had formed on the cave floor before them... She sat most times with her eyes closed, until her pregnancy squeezed her body and strained her spine, taking away her choice to rest…\n\n“...Laby… Laby…”\n\nHe whispered desperately into her limp ear, both tufts of matted and bloodstained feathers drooping heavily. She barely breathed, and he could only tell because of the unhealthy rattling gurgle that came each time her chest barely rose, and fell. Her body was once almost too warm for what gestated inside her… And now? It was as cold as the stone walls around… Frighteningly cold… Her stomach, so big that her pushes had shoved it down her frame until it was sitting uncomfortably on her ‘hips’, was half deflated. All the fluids had gushed from it, and now…\n\nNow there was only one thing left inside. The Latias’s ruined entrance was bulging sharply… Trickling more blood as she laid there… She was passed out. He couldn’t let her… She would bleed to death… The child wouldn’t be born…\n\n“No… NO! LABY! I LOVE YOU! PLEASE WAKE UP!!!”\n\nThe words… ‘I love you’. It burned to say. It was like fire spouting from his throat. But he would have screamed them again and again, if she would only lift her head and…\n\nShe breathed in sharply. Kurai panicked a bit and squeezed her claws…\n\n“Push… Please, push!!!”\n\nShe did so. She had forgotten how to do anything else. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut as she curled hard, digging her claws into his palm and forcing his blood to drip and mix with the unholy pool that had already formed…\n\nShe opened her mouth in a silent scream, her vocal chords long ago torn to shreds. Her entrance bulged… Her body strained… There was a soft, wet noise…\n\nSssskrrrrttch… SPLUT...\n\nThe child’s head fell from its mother. Kurai was shocked silent for a few brief moments at the sheer size of the little hybrid, covered in red so much that it almost blended in. But as soon as it squirmed and its expression wrinkled in upset, he gasped a breath of his own…\n\nHis child was alive… It was almost born…\n\nHer body shuddered, spasmed. Kurai stared confusedly… What was she doing? Her pushes had become so routine… With each day that passed, she fell into a rhythm, hard as it was. But now? Now she twitched… She exhaled sharply… A breath escaping her that seemed almost too long...\n\nAnother sharp push, and Kurai perked. More progress; her hole somehow hadn’t torn, and the baby’s head was now fully out. In fact, one of its shoulders was too…!\n\n“You’re doing great Laby… You’re almost done… You’re almost done!”\n\nSilence. Nothing but the crashing waves, and the dripping of fluid adding to the pool…\n\n“...Laby?”\n\nNo response. He shook her gently. His eyes blurred again…\n\n“Laby… Laby…!? LABY!!! NO! LABY!?!?”\n\nShe didn’t move… He turned her head, and…\n\nHer beautiful eyes, flecked with stars, were dull, even if her expression was serene and content. As he stared at her, he felt her muscles slowly relaxing. Her limbs went limp… Her body relaxed...\n\nShe no longer drew breath…\n\nKurai panicked. He pushed on her chest. He filled her with evil energy. He tossed his head back and roared loudly enough that the cave shook and stones fell from the ceiling…\n\nNone of it would bring her back.\n\nHe might have made poor choices if the child wasn’t there. Half out and covered with birthing fluids and red, he heard it whimpering after the roar. After a moment of hesitation… He was forced to reach down grip its shoulders gently, and slide it the rest of the way out. He turned his head away, unwilling to look as it happened…\n\nBut the child was in his arms. He held them to his chest and calmed them as they slowly relaxed in the presence of one of their parents. As they slept serenely, he sat in the nest for a very long time…\n\nNothing. No one. He had failed to save his mate.\n\nHis thoughts assailed him with angst. They whispered such dire courses of action that would bring him back to the dark realms below, and in ways he would never return from them. It would have been preferable to living without the one he loved…\n...but he couldn’t. He knew that wherever the Latias was, she would never forgive him for abandoning their baby.\n\nIn time, he mustered the courage and the strength to return to their home. The little cabin would be a strange place to raise a child.\n\nEspecially alone.\n\nAs the winter’s winds chilled his heart through its numbness… As snow cascaded down around his home… He spent the first night pushing a spade into the earth, under their favourite tree. He dug as far as he could… And then settled Laby into it. Her body was firmly wrapped in linen, and he had made sure that they were pure and white. She didn’t deserve to be entombed in bloody cloth…\n\nIn a moment of weakness… He thought of pushing the soil atop himself too…\n\nBut the soft cry of his hungry child from the cabin nearby was enough to snap him out of it. He put his hand once more on the simple stone he’d used to mark her grave. In time, he wanted to carve a grand monument that would assure that decades from now, her glorious form would be remembered by all who came to this place…\n\nFor now… He turned and walked back to his house.\n\nIt was no longer a home after all. It was empty of what it needed for that…\n\nThe hours before nightfall were painful. Every waking moment was filled with pitiful longing. He fed his newborn and then set her down, and for hours he sat in front of the hearth and simply stared into the flickering flames there…\n\nWhat was he to do without her? He would do anything to have her back…\n\nHe closed his eyes and imagined her… Wrapped in his arms once again…\n\n“Please…” he whispered, his head tilting back… “Please…”\n\nAnd then…\n\nHe felt the soft down of a newborn chick settle into his arms…\n\nHe jerked his head down with a start. His breath caught in his throat…\n\nThere in his arms was a tiny Latias. She was so freshly hatched that he could still scent the yolk on her barely dried feathers. Her skin was more crimson, like the blood she had bled in her efforts to give birth to her little one… As she grinned with happiness, he could see tiny fangs in her mouth...\n\nHer smile he knew… Her adoring eyes, swirling with familiar colours and now glinting stars, reminded him of the night sky so many months ago…\n\nHe said not a word. He put his arms around her and squeezed as hard as he dared. He let out a choked noise like a sob, and felt her nuzzle eagerly into his chest…\n\nHe stood after that, going to where his… No… THEIR child laid in her pram. He scooped her up, and she fussed and whined for a moment before falling back asleep, serene and content, moreso than she had been with a single parent…\n\nKurai sat in front of the fire again. He felt like he would never open his arms again, lest he risk losing her again…\n\nAnd Laby…?\n\nShe couldn’t stop staring up at him…\n\nWhere many saw the demon he was, she only saw an angel… Or at the least, a creature kind enough to have sat with her through endless months of torment… Through every sob of anguish, every painful symptom and agonizing moment… Through the strain and the hunger, the stretching of her swelling midsection and her little one’s every powerful kick, so intense that each night, she would have been terrified of closing her eyes to never open them again...\n\nWere it not for him, being there when she awoke… Each and every time…\n\nIt was all enough that he was there for her all those months… And after it all...\n\nShe remembered every awful moment of that birth… Every bit of pain, every lost drop of her life… She recalled the effort it took, and…\n\nAnd she finally pulled her gaze away to stared at her beautiful child… Hair a golden, glinting yellow… She reached out with her tiny hand and brushed the sleeping thing’s locks from their face…\n\nLike a sun… A star…\n\nShe set her head back against Kurai, listening to his heart beat softly in his chest, and watched the snow falling outside…\n\nIn the cave below… She had been born.\n\nIn the cave below… She had given birth…\n\nIn the cave below… Her demon self had been reborn...\n\nIn the cabin above… She would live forever, with her beloved...", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "As much as he was willing to do… As much as he was willing to admit…

...this was never something he could face.

In a remote cave, far from everywhere and anyone, he sat. The only sounds were the waves crashing outside, and the soft drip…

...drip… drip…

Blood pooled around him. It trickled off of the Latias in his arms, and spread slowly across the floor...

He had always been very alone… None tended to have much trust for a demon. He tried to be as kind as he could, given his nature. He always felt such pity when they pushed him hard enough to come to violence… But now...

In his millennia of living, he had often been rejected just for who he was. His own kind called him soft. Others feared the horns on his head…

No one understood how much it meant to him… That he had someone who stared at him with nothing but adoration…

Someone who loved him… and now…?

She was gone.







Forina.

Just a few kilometers from Mt. Chimney, and the perfect place to gaze upon the wonders of the cosmos far above…

“Are you cold, dearest…?”

The words burned his tongue a bit. Affection and love always did, for his very nature. He had come to savour the feeling of it, because when the affection was returned it would soothe any pain.

Kurai’s eyes didn’t move from the beautiful swirls of stars in the night sky. Something about them reminded him of a time long ago, when he was just as happy. He ran his hands through his chillingly blue hair and then set it gently on the midsection of his…

His…

His eyes narrowed…

The Latias lifted her head, and then tilted it. A sweet smile on her face, her claws intertwined with his, and her eyes fluttering gently. Usually it made his heart thrill. He could scarcely keep his arms from being around her, and those beautiful, deep pools of blue and pink that she stared at him through looked more hauntingly fathomless than the starry night glittering in their reflection…

“Laby…” he muttered, and turned…

They were sat under a tree on some tall hill. They knew they could be safe, because the terrain was treacherous enough that few humans ever came here. With her laid across his lap, his hand on her tummy, the expression on the Latias’s face went from cheery and serene immediately to confused to match her demonic mate’s…

Kurai’s eyes were elsewhere. His pupils unfocused, and his face a bit downcast. He seemed confused and unsure of what he was sensing. Laby frowned in fear…

Something inside? Something that would hurt her? A deformity or…

“...Laby, I… I sense… Negative energy. Evil…”

She blinked and for a moment looked a bit scared… but Kurai’s face slowly brightened…

An excited smile spread wide on his lips…

“You… You’re… Pregnant…!”

The Latias stopped moving. Her unusual eyes narrowed their pupils in shock. Was that even possible? She was a Pokemon, and he something much darker… She had never been clear on whether they were even compatible.

But apparently so. Kurai stood with her in his arms, laughing excitedly in that moment. He spun with her and hugged her firmly…

“Isn’t this wonderful… Imagine it…! A baby… You and I… Parents… Ohh… I…”

He noticed her expression was quiet. He paused and blinked, but she noticed and quickly looked up with her usual cheerful smile. He breathed a sigh of relief and sat back down with her, cuddling her all the more tightly…

He talked endlessly about how eager he was to meet their little one, if it was just one! But at some point, he glanced down and saw his mate was fast asleep… He sighed and set his own head back, that smile still there… Nothing, seemingly, could unseat it…
But as he set his head back against the tree and closed his eyes to rest… Laby opened her own, and stared up into the endless night sky…

...alone… She felt strangely alone… And very scared…



===


By the morning, she was acting cheerful again. Kurai’s mind was briefly clouded by excitement, and nothing seemed to be able to stop him in those few weeks…

They couldn’t go somewhere to check Laby’s pregnancy, because it was partially demonic. After all, she had been only with one for long enough that there was no question, not to mention her species wasn’t exactly usual on its own.

Laby mentioned more than once, quietly, that checkups were an important part. But Kurai couldn’t seem to find a way to make it happen…

It was an aloof decision that he hated to admit to later…

On a swaying boat, they sailed for Sinnoh. By now, the poor Latias’s pretty eyes were sunken, and she was floating lower… But that was to be expected, right?

Kurai emerged from the cabin of the small sailboat they had… er… acquired, one way or another. He looked over the vast ocean and breathed in the sea air. He felt invigorated and hopeful for the future… But he saw his mate sat upon a small chair near the ship’s bow. The waves swayed her back and forth like a rocking chair. He already had visions of her doing so in front of a fireplace at their home…
Hands in his pockets, he sauntered up to her. She didn’t turn to look at him, and he expected she might have been asleep. She was always nodding off nowadays… So weak and tired and…

His brightness fell as his gaze darted suddenly down. He had smelled something familiar…

“Laby…!?”

He pulled the chair immediately to turn her around. The slumped Latias opened her tired eyes and looked up at him in confusion before she seemed to realize, and touched her claw to her chin…

It came away red…

With her in his arms, he steered the ship to the nearest islet. Abandoned by all but sea-faring Pokemon, it gave him the time and isolation he needed to pull together half remembered runes and powers…

He scanned over her body carefully. She wasn’t bleeding anymore, at least now, but…

“...this… this is… bad…”

He hadn’t wanted to say it. As soon as he did, tears immediately came to her eyes. She put her hands on her face and broke down sobbing… And when Kurai tried to comfort her she…

She pulled away… Floated from the small table she was on and moving a few feet apart from him…

Kurai was so stunned that he didn’t move… Didn’t understand why his mate would ever run from him, especially now. She floated there with her arms hugging herself gently…

“...I knew it… it wouldn’t…”

Kurai briefly held his head, as the sweet voice whispered into it. Her emotions flared through as well; terror and confusion and pain in her heart…

“...It’s putting pressure on your rib cage… And your body can’t take it…” Kurai said, in as gentle a voice as he could. He didn’t want to approach her, lest she move away again. He wasn’t sure he could handle the sight of that right now…

“If the pregnancy keeps going… Then… Your body will fail. The baby is… Is causing all sorts of internal damage. Demon bodies can handle it, and even if they can’t, they can regenerate after being destroyed… But you… You aren’t a demon… So as the months go by…”

“...if?”

Kurai himself took a step back at the tone in her voice. She was so gentle and naive that to hear the sharp note of upset made his own chest tighten…

She turned to him. Tears were streaming from those pretty eyes…

“If?! If it keeps going?!”

“...Laby… The baby won’t die, unless you do… And… It… It will kill you… So we might need to… to…”

He swallowed and finally took a few steps forward. She gripped her head, turned this way and that in the air as she panicked. And then she jerked away from him again…

“SO THIS IS IT?! I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE YOUR KID! I’M NOT GOING TO BE A MOM!!! I’M NEVER GOING TO BE A MOM! AND YOU KILLED ME FOR IT!”

“...L… Laby… You… no, I…”

She was suddenly in his face. His own eyes were blurry now with tears that would never come… All he had experienced left him unable, but those words…

They at least brought him close… Wounded him enough that he felt the sting like it had gone through his stomach…

“You are saying that either I carry this baby and we both die or my baby dies and I live with the fact that I COULDN’T SAVE IT. YOU WANT ME TO KILL MY CHILD!”

“Laby!”

Kurai spoke in a deep and powerful voice for that word alone. Its echo made every Wingull on the island flutter up and away. For the longest moment, seeming to stretch forever, the two stared… Tears in her eyes, and a hollow expression in his…

She turned and was suddenly gone. Kurai lifted his arms as the sonic boom she created fluttered his clothes intensely…

And like that, he was alone…

He stared forward for a full minute before turning and putting his fist through a rock. It exploded and flung shards so hard that they half embedded themselves in the nearby trees…

Then he climbed back on his sailboat, tugged the rigging, and shoved off from the islands, eyes aglow and pointed up to the skies…
The endless blue ocean had felt so full of potential before. But on a ship alone, it just felt like it was taunting him with his isolation. He did not look at it, and instead looked to the skies…

His demonic gaze caught trails no other creature could see. He followed the parted clouds and charted the fastest course. For days… he was by himself… but thinking only of her, and how much pain she must have felt.

Her body must have been wracked with pure agony. Demons fed off of it. And her heart…

He hoped he wasn’t too late, or it may have broken already…

The ship smashed firmly onto the beach. If there was a hole in it, Kurai would deal with it later. He leapt off of it before it even stopped moving and ran forward along the sands and towards the cave, barely visible in the splashing wake of the waves…

It had been days. Too long. But she was here. He knew it.

He stopped at the entrance of the cave, panting gently. The cold air of Sinnoh made each puff come as mist… But he didn’t feel it. He was focused on the trails of red that had dried here and there…

“LABY!”

He called… Though unlike last time, the word was cried out with nothing but desperate love. It still echoed heavily within the dim shadows of the place…

His fists curled. He took a step forward…

Please… No… Not like this… Not with his last conversation with her being about…
“...cough!”

He had dove forward in an instant, not caring anymore. The shadows were nothing to his wicked gaze, and he found her just a bit deeper in…

She was curled on a small ‘nest’ of leaves, wholly inadequate for a mother as wonderful as her. It was a sight that caught his breath in his throat as he saw how weak she looked. Her stomach was still shallow, and she had more than a few months before the labour…

He knelt next to her… Put his hand on her, and…

She sat up and hugged around his neck. She sobbed weakly as she did, and Kurai only held her back tighter because of the sound…

“It’s okay… It’s okay… I’m here… I never thought for a second of anything but being by your side… We… can get through this…”

Could they…? They sat for a long time in the quiet of the cave, him letting her work through her painful emotions and healing as much of her wounds as he could… He hated the fact that demonic powers were so in tune for causing pain, instead of healing. He wanted nothing more than to take all of this burden away from her…

...but it was clear to them both… Neither wanted to lose their baby…

He took her back to the ship and sailed back to Hoenn. Here, there was a quiet place they could hide; as close to a home as they’d ever had. He let her rest every day, obtained the best medicines for her, did everything in his power…

He entered one day and came to her bedside. She was half term by this time, and… showing very prominently. Some might have thought she was nearing full term…

He sat the soup down next to her, and then knelt next to the bed. As usual nowadays, her eyes were closed and she barely seemed to be breathing. Her womb was alive with activity… Her over-eager child wriggling excitedly, as if nothing was wrong. Kurai couldn’t help but smile at it, despite everything…

But his expression fell when Laby opened her eyes and lifted her neck to look up at him. Even now, despite the confrontation, she seemed to stare with adoration and love. Maybe she truly trusted he would find a way…

...it was more than he trusted, at this point…

“Are you feeling okay? ...no, sorry, stupid question.”

It at least got a weak chuckle out of her as she set her head back. The steaming broth beside her held no appeal, and it worried Kurai immensely…

He stroked along her head, his eyes roving over her, going back to that blanketed tummy again in again. It felt so strange to love something unequivocally… and also hate that it existed, in some ways. But demons too easily felt hate… He was very aware…

“...I…”

He lifted his head immediately as she began to speak…

“...I think… I think she’s… upset with the… the...”

Her arm lifted weakly to indicate the curtains, and the bright sunbeams that came through and bathed her in a pleasant glow.

Kurai’s lips pursed in a wince of upset. He set his head down on the bed next to her and sighed weakly…

“There’s not many places we could go to fix that. Demons hate the sunlight, but most can tolerate it. In your condition… It just makes our baby uncomfortable…”

There was a long silence, broken only by the soft rush of wind along the hills outside…

“...There’s a way… To… To save you, Laby…”

She opened those deep, shimmering eyes and turned them to look at him. He didn’t lift his head. He couldn’t look her in the eyes as he spoke…

“You would have to… Become like me. To let your soul be corrupted and… To transform into a demon…”

Laby sat her head up a bit, eyes widening. The very notion was vile to her for many reasons… And yet there was enough excitement bubbling at the prospect of…

...meeting her child… Her baby. She had all but given up on the notion…

“Will it… be hard?”

“...It will be very hard, Laby… But if it works… you will live. You will be with me…”

He finally lifted his head. That hollow look in his eyes was back. He would have cried himself blind if he could have…

“If we don’t… I don’t know what else to do. The little one is too much for your body to handle. And…”

The last part… The grim fate of those who attempted to host demonic spawn was better left to the imagination…

“...Kurai...”

The Latias set her head back down. Her eyes were tightly closed now, as she wrestled against the evil shadows of despair and sorrow. She grit her fangs gently and put her arm on her eyes, before she breathed out a sharp puff of air…

Her little one shifted in her stomach…

“...Alright…!”

She spoke in a tiny, tender voice… But she sat up a bit, her jaws set and her eyes sparking with desire. Her mate pulled back a little in surprise… She hadn’t looked this determined in a long while, and yet here she was…

For her baby… Willing to march towards such pain...


Kurai winced… But looked up at her. She stared at him for a long time before she nodded, firmly...

The pact was sealed.

===

The rituals and rites to make the dire event take place were nothing. A little bloodletting, a bit of sacrifice, and she was marked with a subtle rune. That was it.

But to become a demon wasn’t merely that. Now her biology had to change; the flesh that was wrapped around her slowly corrupting soul was to be warped until it was made anew…

Usually a Pokemon was born this way. A full grown conversion like this was… intense. And as Kurai had warned her, it would be difficult…

She awoke more than one night, screaming and howling. Sometimes, the hormonal mood swings made her hard to approach. Sometimes he had to, and to hold her back… Lest she harm herself, or worse… Her baby…

Eventually the sun was too much, and the cabin couldn’t contain the agony she felt… She had fled to a cave by instinct when scared… Now she returned to the one she was born in, on the cliffs near their home. She wouldn’t be bothered there... More importantly, no one would hear her howling as the cave echoed the cries out across the sea...

Kurai had to focus forward. He continued traveling often to obtain the things she needed. Once he sailed from region to region, island to island, purely for the joy of exploration. Now he pushed his boat even against the wind, as fast as it would go. When it was no longer fast enough, he spread the leathery wings that he usually kept folded. He now abandoned the boat’s anonymity, though he knew more than one would look up at the sky and spot a streak of light, rushing as fast as it could… but he no longer cared about being secret. He wanted nothing more than to ensure that this process worked… To save his beloved…

He touched down on the dock he’d built, hidden in an alcove of treacherous rock. Even skilled human sailors couldn’t get through the jagged shards that jutted from the crashing sea…

With a bag under one arm, he entered the cave and looked around.

Red now lined the walls and jagged slashes were gouged here and there into the rock. In the dark depths of the cave, he could hear snarling, and then sobbing…

He turned the corner and saw Laby. His face fell. She was in the corner, settled upon a bit more of a proper nest of cushions and comforting blankets. But they were now soaked with crimson ichor and her head was pressed firmly against the wall…

Her belly was… immense. What might have been full term had passed a long few months ago. Now she looked like she was carrying twins. Triplets. A litter.

But Kurai had confirmed… One child. One very large child…

“They still feed off of all the evil that is pouring through your soul, Laby… They are… Healthy… At least…”

She turned, baring her fangs as more blood dribbled from between them. Her soft, fuzzy plumage was utterly disheveled and her expression was one of hateful fury…
But those eyes… Those wonderful pink and blue portals to her inner self still sparkled with a singular, loving desire…

Her family. It was the only thing that kept her alive at this point. She had lost so much blood and more than once he had found she had dragged a fish Pokemon into her den and…

Cravings. Nothing more. She radiated such a bad aura that any Pokemon stupid enough to get near her now deserved their fate…

Kurai was not a Pokemon, and neither was she anymore. Not fully.

She had endured so long in total agony. Her muscles burned and her veins were filled with acid. Her stomach barely could hold anything that wasn’t raw and still steaming with body heat. Her sunken eyes streamed tears almost constantly…

He embraced her without a second thought to any of it. To him, she was still Laby…

“How do you feel? Anything changed?”

“No…”

She spoke curtly. Her psychic abilities were acting like a bad radio signal right now; flowing in and out as her power fluctuated. But mostly she communicated by screaming… All she had to say nowadays was cries of pain…

Kurai let her go, and she floated back down to a heavy sit. Kurai set the bag near her, and watched it be torn to shreds. More blood soaked the wall, and the demon was forced to step back as his mate tore into what he brought her, sobbing the while…


Would she lose the ability to cry too? He walked to the corner and stared into the shadow, trying not to think of it…

“...Kurai…”

Her weak voice. He spun immediately. She had finished her meal, and blood still streamed down her chin. He moved over quickly…

She was, in that moment, so weak and vulnerable. He sat with her in the nest and embraced her once more. He rocked with her as her insides were pummeled and her organs beaten. She sniffled hard and couldn’t help but sob…

What if it didn’t work…? What if she went through all of this pain… Only for the final moments to be too much for her…?

What if she failed…?

Kurai could hear her thoughts, as loudly as if she was broadcasting them. And he was glad she couldn’t hear his, and that his expression could be so blank…

He didn’t want to show how scared he was to lose her…

He awoke with a start as Laby screamed. His heart was in his chest as he realized it wasn’t simply one of her agonized screams as her insides shifted and changed. This was more intense… More terrible…

She arched against him, her claws going to her middle and dragging deep gashes down it, thoughtlessly. Kurai stopped her before too much damage could be done. To cut into her body like that now would bleed her dry…

“Laby…?!”

She didn’t have the ability to say anything, but she didn’t need to. A sharp splatter of bloody water formed a jagged puddle just outside of her nest, below her spasming entrance…

“Laby… Laby! No… Now?!”

It was too soon. There hadn’t been enough moons between now and the ritual! He wasn’t sure she was a demon yet, and…

His hand trailed over her belly, iron hard with the contractions it was forcing. She screeched again, thrashing as hard as his tight grip would allow. He was forced to hold on tight, lest she hurt herself in her panic…

“Calm… Calm! As much as you can, Laby… It is time… You need to…”

Push…?

How could she do this… Her belly… Her baby was so immense that it was difficult to expect that she would be able to get it out even if she was in her prime…

And now… After months and months of her body being destroyed from the inside out… She looked up at him weakly… Desperate…
“...I ca… I can’t cut it out, Laby… I can’t… It would kill you for sure…”

She swallowed and tears streamed down her face once more… It seemed all she did was cry nowadays… Cry and bleed…

Now she had to face the final test of it…

Kurai adjusted her until she was more comfortably situated. And then he settled himself for the long haul. After all, despite her water breaking, that baby wasn’t moving…

He knew that a child this size in a body this small would force a long labour… Very long…

...too long…

“Push!” he cried. So many hours later her entrance had dilated enough that she had to risk tearing. The damage done to it would more than outweigh the relief she would feel if it was born quickly. Alas, curling into her middle and flaring her wings, all she managed to do was gush more bloody fluids into the rapidly growing pool below them…

“PUSH!” he demanded… A day had gone by, and she was exhausted. He infused as much of his own power and energy into her as he dared to keep her moving. Too much and he could overload her, and kill her on the spot. Too little… And it wouldn’t matter anyway. She pushed and groaned tremulously, unable to scream anymore. Her throat was raw and bloody itself, and occasionally she had to spit against the wall next to her, splattering it with blackening fluid…

“Push… Laby, please, PUSH…” he nearly begged. How many days now? Two… Four, maybe a week. Neither of them could remember. She certainly couldn’t keep track, her body going from a vibrant and healthy rose red to a terrifyingly pale pink… All of her red, drained into the vast and odious pool that had formed on the cave floor before them... She sat most times with her eyes closed, until her pregnancy squeezed her body and strained her spine, taking away her choice to rest…

“...Laby… Laby…”

He whispered desperately into her limp ear, both tufts of matted and bloodstained feathers drooping heavily. She barely breathed, and he could only tell because of the unhealthy rattling gurgle that came each time her chest barely rose, and fell. Her body was once almost too warm for what gestated inside her… And now? It was as cold as the stone walls around… Frighteningly cold… Her stomach, so big that her pushes had shoved it down her frame until it was sitting uncomfortably on her ‘hips’, was half deflated. All the fluids had gushed from it, and now…

Now there was only one thing left inside. The Latias’s ruined entrance was bulging sharply… Trickling more blood as she laid there… She was passed out. He couldn’t let her… She would bleed to death… The child wouldn’t be born…

“No… NO! LABY! I LOVE YOU! PLEASE WAKE UP!!!”

The words… ‘I love you’. It burned to say. It was like fire spouting from his throat. But he would have screamed them again and again, if she would only lift her head and…

She breathed in sharply. Kurai panicked a bit and squeezed her claws…

“Push… Please, push!!!”

She did so. She had forgotten how to do anything else. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut as she curled hard, digging her claws into his palm and forcing his blood to drip and mix with the unholy pool that had already formed…

She opened her mouth in a silent scream, her vocal chords long ago torn to shreds. Her entrance bulged… Her body strained… There was a soft, wet noise…

Sssskrrrrttch… SPLUT...

The child’s head fell from its mother. Kurai was shocked silent for a few brief moments at the sheer size of the little hybrid, covered in red so much that it almost blended in. But as soon as it squirmed and its expression wrinkled in upset, he gasped a breath of his own…

His child was alive… It was almost born…

Her body shuddered, spasmed. Kurai stared confusedly… What was she doing? Her pushes had become so routine… With each day that passed, she fell into a rhythm, hard as it was. But now? Now she twitched… She exhaled sharply… A breath escaping her that seemed almost too long...

Another sharp push, and Kurai perked. More progress; her hole somehow hadn’t torn, and the baby’s head was now fully out. In fact, one of its shoulders was too…!

“You’re doing great Laby… You’re almost done… You’re almost done!”

Silence. Nothing but the crashing waves, and the dripping of fluid adding to the pool…

“...Laby?”

No response. He shook her gently. His eyes blurred again…

“Laby… Laby…!? LABY!!! NO! LABY!?!?”

She didn’t move… He turned her head, and…

Her beautiful eyes, flecked with stars, were dull, even if her expression was serene and content. As he stared at her, he felt her muscles slowly relaxing. Her limbs went limp… Her body relaxed...

She no longer drew breath…

Kurai panicked. He pushed on her chest. He filled her with evil energy. He tossed his head back and roared loudly enough that the cave shook and stones fell from the ceiling…

None of it would bring her back.

He might have made poor choices if the child wasn’t there. Half out and covered with birthing fluids and red, he heard it whimpering after the roar. After a moment of hesitation… He was forced to reach down grip its shoulders gently, and slide it the rest of the way out. He turned his head away, unwilling to look as it happened…

But the child was in his arms. He held them to his chest and calmed them as they slowly relaxed in the presence of one of their parents. As they slept serenely, he sat in the nest for a very long time…

Nothing. No one. He had failed to save his mate.

His thoughts assailed him with angst. They whispered such dire courses of action that would bring him back to the dark realms below, and in ways he would never return from them. It would have been preferable to living without the one he loved…
...but he couldn’t. He knew that wherever the Latias was, she would never forgive him for abandoning their baby.

In time, he mustered the courage and the strength to return to their home. The little cabin would be a strange place to raise a child.

Especially alone.

As the winter’s winds chilled his heart through its numbness… As snow cascaded down around his home… He spent the first night pushing a spade into the earth, under their favourite tree. He dug as far as he could… And then settled Laby into it. Her body was firmly wrapped in linen, and he had made sure that they were pure and white. She didn’t deserve to be entombed in bloody cloth…

In a moment of weakness… He thought of pushing the soil atop himself too…

But the soft cry of his hungry child from the cabin nearby was enough to snap him out of it. He put his hand once more on the simple stone he’d used to mark her grave. In time, he wanted to carve a grand monument that would assure that decades from now, her glorious form would be remembered by all who came to this place…

For now… He turned and walked back to his house.

It was no longer a home after all. It was empty of what it needed for that…

The hours before nightfall were painful. Every waking moment was filled with pitiful longing. He fed his newborn and then set her down, and for hours he sat in front of the hearth and simply stared into the flickering flames there…

What was he to do without her? He would do anything to have her back…

He closed his eyes and imagined her… Wrapped in his arms once again…

“Please…” he whispered, his head tilting back… “Please…”

And then…

He felt the soft down of a newborn chick settle into his arms…

He jerked his head down with a start. His breath caught in his throat…

There in his arms was a tiny Latias. She was so freshly hatched that he could still scent the yolk on her barely dried feathers. Her skin was more crimson, like the blood she had bled in her efforts to give birth to her little one… As she grinned with happiness, he could see tiny fangs in her mouth...

Her smile he knew… Her adoring eyes, swirling with familiar colours and now glinting stars, reminded him of the night sky so many months ago…

He said not a word. He put his arms around her and squeezed as hard as he dared. He let out a choked noise like a sob, and felt her nuzzle eagerly into his chest…

He stood after that, going to where his… No… THEIR child laid in her pram. He scooped her up, and she fussed and whined for a moment before falling back asleep, serene and content, moreso than she had been with a single parent…

Kurai sat in front of the fire again. He felt like he would never open his arms again, lest he risk losing her again…

And Laby…?

She couldn’t stop staring up at him…

Where many saw the demon he was, she only saw an angel… Or at the least, a creature kind enough to have sat with her through endless months of torment… Through every sob of anguish, every painful symptom and agonizing moment… Through the strain and the hunger, the stretching of her swelling midsection and her little one’s every powerful kick, so intense that each night, she would have been terrified of closing her eyes to never open them again...

Were it not for him, being there when she awoke… Each and every time…

It was all enough that he was there for her all those months… And after it all...

She remembered every awful moment of that birth… Every bit of pain, every lost drop of her life… She recalled the effort it took, and…

And she finally pulled her gaze away to stared at her beautiful child… Hair a golden, glinting yellow… She reached out with her tiny hand and brushed the sleeping thing’s locks from their face…

Like a sun… A star…

She set her head back against Kurai, listening to his heart beat softly in his chest, and watched the snow falling outside…

In the cave below… She had been born.

In the cave below… She had given birth…

In the cave below… Her demon self had been reborn...

In the cabin above… She would live forever, with her beloved...", "pools_count": 1, "title": "The Bloody Crucible (GORE/DRAMA)", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "text/rtf", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "2", "rating_name": "Adult", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "4", "name": "Sexual Themes", "description": "Erotic imagery, sexual activity or arousal", "rating_id": "2" }, { "content_tag_id": "5", "name": "Strong Violence", "description": "Strong violence, blood, serious injury or death", "rating_id": "2" } ], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "0", "views": "40" }