Fic: Birth
Title: Birth
Author: pinkhairedauror
Format & Word Count: Ficlet, 557 words
Rating: R (maybe)
Prompt: 26, Beacon picture
Warnings: Birthing labour. May not warrant an R rating, but I'd rather it were on the safe side. Pain.
Summary: Teddy's birth is not an easy one at all...
Author's Note: OK... this is based mostly on what I've heard and read about labour, so if any of you have experienced it and think I've gotten it wrong, let me know! I hope I've got it mostly right though.
There's a switch in tenses. It's more or less on purpose.
It was difficult, and it hurt, and it went on for hours. Hours and hours. Of spasming, searing pain that made her body react in ways that she'd never known it to, tightening, refusing, hurting, sweating and shivering. Then a small pause of relief, of rest between contractions, and then all over again.
In one of those breaks, she cursed herself for not reading up for in this case. Much as she had been forbidden from morphing her body around the baby at all, she was certain that if she knew enough, she could change her hips in such a way as to make it a little easier at least OH GOD IT'S STARTING AGAIN and thoughts were whited out for a few minutes, concentrated on not screaming out and not doing anything that might make it harder...
She couldn't scream.
She could see the alarm in her mother's eyes, and in Molly's, and she knew that if she screamed one of them might panic and call for a Healer, and they might not come to deliver a beast's child, and it would be so so terrible and she couldn't put them, or herself, or him through that right now.
She also knew that he - Remus. Her husband! - was just outside the door. Pacing by now, she was sure. Listening to every sound, every word, his usually sharp senses more alert than ever.
She couldn't scare him out either MERLIN, IT HURTS...
There were encouraging words, but the breaks in the pain grew shorter and farther between, and she could only concentrate on not shouting out and not morphing, and she didn't understand the words. Her grip on the blanket under her was so hard that she may be tearing out, and she didn't really work up to registering more than the sound of voices. She should have learned to morph her hips wider. She should have...
Then it hurts a lot more, and there are almost no breaks anymore, and her back arches up because-despite-against-towards the pain and pressure, and her breath comes in gasps but she cannot even think of controlling it, and then it becomes harder, and she cries out once, and then there is relief... Anther contraction, but she already knows.
Her baby is born. The sound of the coughing with the first breath overlaps her mother showing up by her head and whispering that it's a boy, and Molly's going out of the room to get something, and the tall lean figure is right outside the door, just as she guessed he would be, seeming afraid to look in.
And then her - their - son cries out. A healthy, loud, complaining cry, at the air burning his lungs and not going away. Through her daze and exhaustion, somehow she notices Remus freeze, then turn towards that cry as though a beacon light has been perceived by him and he moves as though his legs carry him over outside his conscious volition, and as her arms wrap around the baby that Andromeda places on her stomach, he is there, by her other side, his breath on her face as he kisses her forehead, then his hand reaches for the baby but only rests on HER hand on him...
And the storm of pain is over. And they are all home.
Author: pinkhairedauror
Format & Word Count: Ficlet, 557 words
Rating: R (maybe)
Prompt: 26, Beacon picture
Warnings: Birthing labour. May not warrant an R rating, but I'd rather it were on the safe side. Pain.
Summary: Teddy's birth is not an easy one at all...
Author's Note: OK... this is based mostly on what I've heard and read about labour, so if any of you have experienced it and think I've gotten it wrong, let me know! I hope I've got it mostly right though.
There's a switch in tenses. It's more or less on purpose.
It was difficult, and it hurt, and it went on for hours. Hours and hours. Of spasming, searing pain that made her body react in ways that she'd never known it to, tightening, refusing, hurting, sweating and shivering. Then a small pause of relief, of rest between contractions, and then all over again.
In one of those breaks, she cursed herself for not reading up for in this case. Much as she had been forbidden from morphing her body around the baby at all, she was certain that if she knew enough, she could change her hips in such a way as to make it a little easier at least OH GOD IT'S STARTING AGAIN and thoughts were whited out for a few minutes, concentrated on not screaming out and not doing anything that might make it harder...
She couldn't scream.
She could see the alarm in her mother's eyes, and in Molly's, and she knew that if she screamed one of them might panic and call for a Healer, and they might not come to deliver a beast's child, and it would be so so terrible and she couldn't put them, or herself, or him through that right now.
She also knew that he - Remus. Her husband! - was just outside the door. Pacing by now, she was sure. Listening to every sound, every word, his usually sharp senses more alert than ever.
She couldn't scare him out either MERLIN, IT HURTS...
There were encouraging words, but the breaks in the pain grew shorter and farther between, and she could only concentrate on not shouting out and not morphing, and she didn't understand the words. Her grip on the blanket under her was so hard that she may be tearing out, and she didn't really work up to registering more than the sound of voices. She should have learned to morph her hips wider. She should have...
Then it hurts a lot more, and there are almost no breaks anymore, and her back arches up because-despite-against-towards the pain and pressure, and her breath comes in gasps but she cannot even think of controlling it, and then it becomes harder, and she cries out once, and then there is relief... Anther contraction, but she already knows.
Her baby is born. The sound of the coughing with the first breath overlaps her mother showing up by her head and whispering that it's a boy, and Molly's going out of the room to get something, and the tall lean figure is right outside the door, just as she guessed he would be, seeming afraid to look in.
And then her - their - son cries out. A healthy, loud, complaining cry, at the air burning his lungs and not going away. Through her daze and exhaustion, somehow she notices Remus freeze, then turn towards that cry as though a beacon light has been perceived by him and he moves as though his legs carry him over outside his conscious volition, and as her arms wrap around the baby that Andromeda places on her stomach, he is there, by her other side, his breath on her face as he kisses her forehead, then his hand reaches for the baby but only rests on HER hand on him...
And the storm of pain is over. And they are all home.