Pleasantly Strange - Chapter 7
Time didn't seem to pass at all, yet somehow, it was slowly crawling along. Her growing belly was proof of that.
It was frustrating beyond words. Confined in this small place, where nothing ever happened, no information was ever given. She didn't know anything, could still not remember who she was or what had been in the time before she arrived in this prison. Sometimes she wondered if she had always been there, or if she had died and gone to hell.
Her captors hadn't hurt her. They - especially the nasty woman, Circe - would come by every so often to perform bloodtests and checking on her, but other than that they left her alone. She was never brought out of the pit, unlike Nervous, who they would take away now and then and he would be gone for a few hours. Sometimes she could hear him scream, but usually not. He'd come back even more quiet, twitchy and unhappy than before, every time.
But no such thing happened to her. In fact, they didn't seem interested in her at all. Only in what was inside of her. Her baby.
"How are we doing today, dearie?"
Circe's sickly sweet voice echoed in the room. Even though she had heard the ladder being put in place, heard the footsteps as Circe climbed down, she hadn't looked up from her book, and she didn't now either.
"Oh, we're in that mood, are we?" Circe said, shaking her head, then reached down and snatched her prisoner's book out of her hands.
"Parenting, eh? Did Nervous give you this?" Circe's unpleasant laugh was like fingernails on a blackboard.
Gritting her teeth, she turned and sat at the edge of her bed, still refusing to meet Circe's eyes. "What do you want?"
"I only want to make sure you're okay, dearie. It's getting close to the due date now." Circe made a movement to touch her stomach. Immediately, she jumped off the bed and put her hand out as if to shield herself.
"Stay away from me!"
"We've been through this, sweetheart. I have to check on the baby," Circe said. "Doesn't your book say anything about the importance of regular checkups? If there's an emergency-"
"Checkups by a real doctor, not by you, you horrible bitch! Don't you even try to pretend you want the best for me or my baby! Just stay the hell away!"
She didn't know who she was, or who the father of the baby was, but her base instincts still worked fine. The closer she came to birth, the more angry she felt and the more she felt the urge to protect herself and her unborn offspring.
Circe seemed genuinely surprised by this outburst, and even Nervous was hovering nearby now, as if waiting for something to happen. There was a moment of awkward silence.
Then Circe sighed. "Well, if you're going to be difficult about it, I guess I'll just have to come back later. When Loki's home." One more nasty grin, then Circe climbed back up and took the ladder with her.
Nervous sat on his bed, and unabashedly he pulled his shirt off, then swung his legs up and leaned back. "You shouldn't have done that."
Still furious, she looked at him sharply. "Yeah? What do you propose, should I just continue to let them do as they like?"
"Yes. Because they're going to anyway, you'll just make it harder on yourself by resisting. Loki will hold you down and Circe will do whatever examinations she needs to do." Nervous stared blankly at the wall ahead of him. "Believe me, I know."
"I..." She trailed off. She knew Nervous was right. She knew there was nothing to do. They were going to take her baby.
"Let's get something to eat," Nervous proposed. It amazed her that he could be so indifferent. It was in these moments she understood she must have had a very different life before this. For Nervous, this had been his whole life - he knew no other, and that was sometimes so terribly obvious. Perhaps this would be the rest of her life as well - given that they didn't dispose of her once the baby was born.
"Okay."
She made the food, it gave her something to do with her hands. Cereal, again. Sometimes Loki would cook better meals just for her, because it wasn't good for a pregnant woman (or for anyone, really) to solely live off of the food she and Nervous normally had available for them. Still, their diet consisted mostly of cereal, sandwiches and liquid instant meals.
She poured milk on the cereal and was about to put the milk carton away when she happened to catch a glimpse of the picture on its side.
It was a picture she instantly recognised. It was a picture of her.
'Bella Goth', it said. 'Disappeared without a trace from her home in Pleasantview over two years ago. Wife of famous scientist Mortimer Goth, mother to Cassandra Lothario and Alexander Goth. Any information about her whereabouts can be reported to-'
"Hey, are you okay?" Nervous perked up as she staggered backwards, but she didn't hear him. The milk carton fell to the floor, spilling its contents.
Images flashed before her eyes.
Blurred memories... vague recollections of a former life, of a happy life. But one memory stood out among the rest.
As clear as if it had happened yesterday.
Bella gasped as she felt Nervous' arms around her, bringing her back to reality. He had caught her just in time to save her from falling on the hard, milk-stained stone floor. She looked around wildly, and her voice came through a raspy breath. "I have to get out of here."
"It shouldn't be long now," Circe said, excitement evident in her voice. Loki liked it when she was like this. Passionate, inspired. "She's doing well. Getting hostile, though."
"Well, you can't really blame her for that," Loki replied, smirking. "Charming as you are, my love... I think she's probably on to you by now."
"On to us, you mean," Circe corrected him. "We're together about this."
Loki reached out and put an arm around her shoulder. "I do love doing things together with you."
"How subtle."
"Subtlety never got a man an heir."
"Romance isn't your strong point either." Circe quite suddenly grabbed Loki's head with both hands, and looked into his eyes. "Lucky for you that I can't stand romance." She kissed him. Loki's hands began unbuttoning her jacket.
Time seemed to fly by so quickly.
Days of constant nausea and dizziness soon passed, and his stomach began to show visible evidence of what had happened to him. Vidcund would be lying if he said he wasn't worried. But he was grateful to have Pascal right there with him, to guide and reassure him. Although they had so often disagreed in the past, Vidcund now found comfort in his older brother, for the first time.
Before they knew it, it was Kallisto's birthday. The whole family was there.
A family in which the green now outnumbered the full-blooded sims. Kallisto fit right in.
Pascal was a doting father.
Calm and patient, like he was with everything else in life.
Vidcund often wondered if he could do an equally good job. Somehow, he doubted it.
He had no problems caring for his plants. He could spend hours tending to them, carefully and precisely, and they thrived.
But he had never been a people person. He got along so well with his plants because they were deliciously quiet. They didn't make any demands, just silently accepted the care he gave them. Sims were nothing like that - especially not babies. Babies were demanding. Very much so.
It came so naturally to his sister. Jenny and PT9 had their twins shortly before Vidcund was due. Four children, and Jenny was on top of the world.
They probably would have had more if they weren't both getting a little too old for it. Little Jack and June were ensured a good future, just like their older siblings.
Jill would be a teenager soon. It was hard to believe. Vidcund didn't have an especially close relationship with his niece and nephew, though he did of course care for them. He'd just always prefered to watch more from a distance. Lazlo was the playful uncle, Pascal was the one they came to for advice. Vidcund fell somewhere in the middle.
It was still strange to watch them both grow up.
Johnny would soon be ready for college as well. Undoubtedly he would shack up with his girlfriend.
Vidcund hoped this wouldn't lead to any trouble. He was still not comfortable with Ophelia Nigmos' family, but it also bothered him that both Johnny and Jill had such close ties to the Grunt family.
General Buzz Grunt had an intense hatred for aliens and their presence in his town. He had long since declared a personal war with PT9, though PT9 stayed out of the general's way to the best of his ability. The only thing the general hated more than aliens was weakness, something he had felt the need to prove to all the other boys while he was in school. Vidcund and his brothers all had personal experience with that. Every time Vidcund heard the general's helicopter fly by, he felt that old sting of bitterness, and that was why it worried him that anyone in his family would be friends with the general's sons.
The eldest was Tank, who unfortunately aspired to be just like his father. They looked so much alike that Vidcund had sometimes mistaken Tank for Buzz when he saw him at the local shops.
Middle child was Ripp, Johnny's best friend and rumoured to have kissed almost every teen girl in the town.
The youngest was Buck, who - according to Jenny - was a very gentle child, much to Vidcund's surprise. He could only wonder how the general felt about having a son who was one of those kids he would have beaten up when he was a child himself.
Perhaps he could ignore it as long as he could focus all his attention on his eldest. Tank had recently departed for college.
There he was studying political science, apparently preparing to one day rise in the military ranks himself.
Vidcund didn't know the first thing about being a parent, but he knew never wanted to be a father like that, who expected his child to be a clone of himself and reject their attempts at being themselves.
To be fair, though, Buzz Grunt hadn't had it easy either, after his wife left him and he had to raise all three boys alone. But at least he had had a wife. Vidcund was about to become a father without having ever been married, or without ever even reaching as far as the infamous "second base" with any woman.
It seemed a little unfair.
Lazlo didn't seem to have any problems with this. Granted, his first relationship had relatively recently fallen apart...
...although after the storm had died down they agreed to remain friends.
And next thing Vidcund knew, a new, pretty young blonde had become a frequent visitor at their house.
It then appeared that Jenny's children weren't the only ones with dubious connections. Of all the women in the world, Lazlo, of course, had to choose Loki Beaker's sister.
Never mind that Loki was not only their most serious competitor in the science field (and doing better than any of them too!), but also Vidcund and Pascal's personal nemesis. Loki never passed on a chance to humiliate them. Besides, Vidcund had never quite forgiven him for stealing his first love away.
There was no talking Lazlo out of it, though.
He had found his match, he said.
And he seemed pretty serious about it, too.
The birth didn't go quite as Vidcund had expected, as far as one can expect anything about such a thing.
They had planned for Pascal to be there to help him, and Lazlo too, but instead it happened while the two of them were both at work, and Vidcund was at home alone, babysitting Kallisto.
His screams were only heard by his little niece, who woke up from her midday nap and started crying, but there was no way Vidcund could hear her over his own roars of pain. He was certain he would explode, that his brothers would come home to find him with a giant hole in his body, the baby in a pool of blood on the floor... He could picture the whole morbid scene vividly inside his head, and it did nothing to decrease his fear.
Then survival instinct kicked in and he forced himself to remember Pascal's birth, remember that despite it being highly unpleasant and seemingly physically impossible... it all went well anyway. The aliens knew what they were doing. That became his chant. The aliens knew what they were doing.
And they did.
Vidcund soon had a little green baby boy all of his own.
He decided to name him Victor. His son had none of his features, he looked entirely alien. An unusual name was hardly necessary.
With the birth behind him as mostly only a traumatic memory, Vidcund realised that this was when the real work began.
Bella was not prepared for the labour. Circe had said it would be at least another week, but stress and fear had probably made it start sooner.
With that, vague and unrealistic plans of escape went down the drain. She had not let Circe and Loki know that she had started to regain her memory, but the more she remembered the more desperately she wanted to get out of there.
Now, however, it was too late.
And the one time that Bella would actually have been grateful for Circe's medical attention, she wasn't present.
Nervous watched wide-eyed as his fellow prisoner howled in pain.
"Oh god, Nervous, you have to help me!"
"I-I don't know what to do!"
"You.. I... argh!" Bella lost her balance and leaned on the wall, slowly sinking to the floor. Nervous looked around quickly, and grabbed the blanket off of his bed, placing it on the floor in front of Bella.
Then he walked off and sat on his bed, hugging his legs against him so his knees touched his chin.
"Ner-vous!" Bella shrieked, breathing heavily.
"I can't! I can't watch! I can't!"
She was on her own.
Thankfully Bella had given birth twice before, and she knew what to do without having to think about it. Once it got going, it was over quickly.
"It's green!"
Nervous' observation was quite correct. Bella held her little newborn daughter close.
"Indeed she is," she whispered.
Green skin. Like her father... But the dark blue eyes came from Bella's family.
"We've got to hide her!" Nervous said quickly. "I-I, we could keep her under my bed! In the bathroom! Or-"
He fell abruptly silent as they heard the familiar sound of metal scraping against the floor, as Loki lowered the ladder into the pit.
Bella felt a sinking feeling in her stomach.
"Move aside, Nervous," Loki commanded. Nervous resolutely blocked Loki's path for a few more seconds, then, shaking, he stepped aside.
Bella stood still and stiff as if frozen, clutching her daughter to her chest.
"Well done," Loki said. "I'll be taking her now."
He reached out for the baby. Bella didn't move. When he tugged on the child she only resisted for a second, and then she let go.
"Please don't hurt her."
"We'll take good care of her," Loki said, studying the baby in his arms. "Don't worry."
"...Her name is Elizabeth," Bella said.
Loki nodded once, then headed back for the ladder, taking Elizabeth with her. Nervous and Bella didn't move, didn't say a word.
Resisting would only make it harder.
Loki fed the baby a bottle he had prepared earlier, then brought her to her crib. It was not a typical nursery, however, not in the least.
"Sleep tight, my dear," he said quietly. "The Curiouses won't have their secrets to themselves much longer..."