Work Text:
It was late at night when Brand felt the kick. He was jolted out of his focused studies, causing him to swear loudly. He waited a moment before returning to his books. When there was stillness within him, he focused his attention back to his books. The moment his eyes rested on the page, however, it happened again.
“You must be the child that my siblings have been wishing upon me,” Brand muttered as he flipped to the next page.
The child was still then, but Brand was on edge, so focused on anticipating the next movement that would disrupt his studies that he couldn't even focus on his the words before him. Occasionally, the child within him would shift very subtly, and Brand would not have felt it if he hadn't been paying so much attention to what was happening within him. As such, even the slightest movement was beginning to piss Brand off.
But eventually, there was stillness once more. Brand, still guarded, returned his attention to his books with great hesitance. There was still no movement. Deciding that his offspring had decided on a comfortable position, Brand engrossed himself once more in his reading.
The next kick came sharp and swift.
Brand's retaliation did as well.
Snatching up a knife from his desk, Brand stabbed the blade into the source of the abdominal kicking. “How's that, you little bastard?” he snarled, indifferent to his own pain thanks to the knowledge that his progeny was getting the worst of it.
His breath was ragged as he sat at his desk, doubled over around the knife plunged within him, hilt still clutched in a white-knuckled grip. The child was moving within him. However, he could tell that they were death throes, so they elated rather than angered him.
When all was still once more, Brand removed the dagger from his gut, treated the wound to the best of his ability, and returned his focus to his books.
Hours later as the sun was threatening to spill through his closed curtains, Brand felt a sharp jab of pain and felt fluid rush to fill his lungs. His coughs were wet and left the pages of his books stained with red. He groped for his dagger but knocked it aside in his panic, although he wasn't even sure what he would do with the blade once he had it in his hand.
The second jolt of pain sent him collapsing to the floor, and he didn't rise again.
Fiona found Brand's still-warm corpse later that morning. An autopsy was performed immediately, quickly identifying a self-inflicted wound that clearly wasn't the cause of the unexpected death. Upon further investigation, a small, sharp, curved piece of bone was discovered lodged in his organs. The bone seemed to have done major internal damage, causing him to bleed to death from the inside.
It was only later that the tiny hand gripping the bone was noticed, and the autopsy turned into an emergency c-section.
One of the babies inside Brand was pronounced dead immediately. A hole in its abdomen caused by a knife was the obvious cause of death. One of its ribs was missing, torn from its wounded chest.
The other child was unharmed and surprisingly healthy in spite of its ten-week-premature delivery. It would live, so long as its fellow Amberites allowed it to.