Stillborn

[wanderamaranth]

Summary: Incompatible, they say then, because stillborn sounds ever so much worse.

Rating: T, for heavy angst and mature themes.

Disclaimer: I do not claim any financial advantage to writing or promoting this fanwork.

Major angsting ahead. WARNING, WARNING! I think this is the result of reading many stories where pregnancy occurs between Alice and Tarrant, or at least is discussed. Here is another take on what giving birth or mating in Underland could intale.

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Incompatible they whisper. This is not said with maliciousness or spite, but a kind of knowing fear.

Incompatible some say in louder tones, and shake their heads, having suspected such would be the case all along.

Incompatible, the White Queen finally tells them, with a gentle voice barely containing a sob, and Tarrant knows that the only reason why she has delayed speaking the word aloud before is their status as war heroes, and as her friend.

Sometimes, it's explained, these things happen. In Underland, where any manner of creatures can meet, unusual pairings fall in love and mate, and sometimes a child will take in a mother's belly and flourish, grow, and be born as something new and wonderful. When this happens, the entire land celebrates.

Sometimes, however, they do not. No child is kindled, and the most that people ever say is a shrugging, knowing Incompatible, the word holding nothing heavier than any other label that might be used.

In the most horrible of cases, though, the case such as it is now, the child will grow and develop and all will hold the greatest hope in their hearts that this one, yes, this child will be born one of those new and wonderous creations that all of Underland hope for! And then when the child is birthed...

Incompatible, they say then, because stillborn sounds ever so much worse.

Mirana tells her Champion, in stilted and carefully chosen words, that sometimes, a mated pair will be labeled such. Two creatures that very clearly will never be able to produce viable offspring, such as Mally's brief liasion with one of the ubiquitous fish butlers. Yet in this case, she tells, as tears silently trail down her face, two beings that have every appearance of being compatible are lacking something on some important level—her explanation contains words such as zygotes and cells and many other things Alice does not understand, and are dismissed as unimportant.

To her, the only important thing is the dead child cradled in her arms.

She screams that night. Wails against him, derides their healer, curses the pity and care that their friends have attempted to heap on them.

The majority of the screams, though, are directed towards herself.

I should have known, she says. I should not have insisted that we keep trying, after the third miscarriage. I should have-

Tarrant silences her with strong arms around her and a kiss to her lips. No, he insists. You couldn't have known. He believes his words with every fiber of his being, for he too blames himself. If he'd not been blinded by Hope and Denial, then perhaps his wife would not shoulder this burden, would not carry this knowledge of greatest joy followed all-too-swiftly by deepest loss.

They bury her the next day, their seemingly perfect little girl. She was in figure everything a child should be—her tiny nose like a button on her face, chubby fingers tipped with delicate nails, delicately curling feet, the fuzz of peach-red hair atop her skull...yes, perfect in every way, except for the eyes that never opened and the lungs that never drew a free breath.

Incompatible, they hear said, as they lower the child that would have been named Helena into the ground.

That night, despite how her body aches, despite the pains of birth that still make her tremble, Alice attempts to prove them wrong. She presses herself against her husband, challenging him to battle her grief, to chase away her sorrow—and he accepts her challenge, but not in the manner she expects.

He worships her body—forever changed, now, with the softer rounding that some women get from carrying a child—with hands and teeth and tongue, soothing her strained muscles with strong caresses and tears in his eyes. His work-rough hands smooth over her back, her calves, the shoulders that have had to be strong for far too long, before relieving her full, aching breasts of the milk she'd refused to expel on her own. She shudders, shakes, and falls apart under his touch.

It is only then that she cries.