This story has around four parts, and three of them are written, so updates will be quite regular I hope. Enjoy :)

Her tiny digits webbed across the spread of her mother's chest, so china-like in appearance that the minuscule being took on the likeness of a sprawled doll. Unlike such a plaything, the small baby only had a cerise tuft of hair protruding from the centre of her head; she was nothing like the toys her mother had been handed at care homes - they could be meticulously decapitated, whereas she, her bundle of joy, was the epicentre of fragility. Eyes held firmly shut, the shallow stretch of lines that crossed her face were the result of deep concentration - the need to suss out the new world before it could be taken on. Her bottom lip receded behind the first and had doused her chin with saliva; it dripped down the beginnings of her neck and onto the folded piece of blanket. The slight breeze tickled the child's form, but the tiny hairs on her bare limbs remained redundant and forgotten, in mentality and purpose. There was almost no sound, yet the mother and baby resided in maternity: that vast and amorphous jungle of new-borns and doe-eyed family. Softly gripping her child, the mother tensed as the door slid open, sensing an unknown presence with the instinct of a feral cat. The white, emotionless figures hunched over the bundle encased in her arms, prodded, poked, and reattached their hands to clipboards. Blurred by the torrent of drugs, their faces were only defined by curvatures and crevices, yet she could see her child perfectly. They smashed their pens onto paper, and the click clatter of scribbles spilled into the silence. Legs folding into the floor of tiles, one man hovered by her bed in a hologram-like state, or the miasma of her mind had deemed his movements so. He prised the baby from her scrambled fingers and she bounced carelessly in his arms.

And, then, she was taken away.

Jac awoke with a start; she forced her eyes open with a pull of will and explored her chest with the appendage of her hands, anxious for the weight that was no longer there. They brushed against a wet trail of dribble that had trickled between her cleavage and she rubbed the watery prison of DNA between her fingertips, a kind of personal victory: her concrete evidence of the past 24 hours. She traced along the risen protuberance of scratches in amazement; the redness of such an unlevelled surface contrasted bitterly to the pallor of her skin. Her child must have wriggled in her cocoon, she decided after a while. Such a thought, or a distant memory, hurled her mechanisms into overdrive; her quickened breath and palpitated heart were the results of an explosion of adrenaline. Disquiet sensations came in quick succession, the shrapnel from the aftermath of the blast. Her grasp hooked around the drip that had become her extra limb and yanked it from the confines of her body, making her blood splatter wildly. Hands found hers and wrestled the wires from her clutches. The same hands pushed her down despite the tangle of arms and legs and frantic blows. She clawed at her attacker's scrubs, desperate for release. There was a crack as knuckle met unguarded skin and he staggered back, which is when she look upon him for the first time.

Jonny.

She should have recognised him in an instant, yet her mind was still hazed with sedative and her eyes blinded by a visor of tears. His form was blurry and unclear. The sob that caught in her throat twisted into a noise of strangulation, the consequence of suppressing the moment of weakness. Resolute to the extreme, Jac pushed back her feelings and did nothing, in fear that if she did she may crumple and fall. The nurse kept his eyes locked onto her, assessing her without a hint of emotion; his professional aura remained strong, even if she could see his fists tightly clenching and unclenching as he restrained himself from nearing. For a second, she wondered why he wasn't talking, nattering on about their beautiful daughter, babbling at one hundred miles per hour, but she brushed that aside as new father nerves.

"Where's Emmy?" She finally choked out. Jonny humoured her with a strained smile.

"They've taken her for tests, Jac. She wasn't breathing properly. She'll be back soon." Satisfied, the consultant nodded to herself and her heart halted its relay.

"You look like crap," she said simply when she glanced upon him for the second time. A darkened abyss of tormented nights and drunken shenanigans had furrowed under his eyes and it had spread like some demented disease towards his chin, procuring him a rugged beard that had been left unshaven for weeks. She must have not noticed the growth before, she must have been too preoccupied with pregnancy, as she couldn't recall when it had started.

"You don't look too good yourself," he dared to reply, before silently cursing himself for his idiocy. To his relief, her horns had receded and her expression remained unnervingly stoic. The truth was, he hated that more than if she had battered him with a torrent of abuse. Even then he could have caught a glimpse of just a scrap of emotion through her wave of anger. Now there was nothing. It was like her battery had expired, but, he hoped, it was only in need of charging.

"You're not the one who had to push a ten pound baby out of their abnormally sized va-"

Jonny cut her off with a frown, "Hey, hey, she was only a wee one, you know that." He new the drill, new his well-rehearsed routine.

"She's a kid. That's generally the size they come in. You can't order an extra large from Argos." He noted her words with a nod, it was becoming quite the habit nowadays. "But I would doubt that with Emmy if I didn't know any better."

He had been glad to find that her sarcasm still reigned dominant when he had visited first, though he knew and could understand why it needed to go. It was her means of defence, the key to the locked chest of doubts secured within her. And, eventually, all of her insecurities, her fears, her crushed aspirations, would scatter into the atmosphere as one nebulous catalyst for a war pitted deep inside her mind. But he had secretly sworn he would be there to pick up the pieces.

It wasn't companionable silence in which they sat in. For Jac though, she seemed content just waiting, always waiting, for her daughter, comfortable with his presence, however, for Jonny, he tensed up at the stillness of the air, knowing full well it wouldn't last long. Couldn't last long. There was always that unanswerable question, that elephant in the room; it would strike him every time he came, every 5:00 o'clock, like her mind was in constant replay. He could see it forming on her lips, and he inhaled, unable to breathe.

"Urgh please tell me Levy hasn't shown up with a bouquet and a tray of chocolate?" She exclaimed, throwing the treat a disgusted look. "Does he really think I'm still on the sugar when I've ballooned up five sizes? Five." Jonny let the exhalation deflate his chest, relief setting in. Sacha came next, he seemed to live in her subconscious. How could he forget?

"Five? Really? I don't believe it." He threw in some flirtation, he knew she liked that. "You don't look a size past twenty." And then he playfully toyed with her, knowing his counter would be met with the same old glare.

"Oh haha, how would you like not to father anymore children?" A flash of sadness claimed his features, but he fought back his composure. These conversations would last for mere minutes before the team discovered her lucidness, yet he always made the best out of them, for his sake as well as Jac's.

"As much as I would like the Dons to lift the league cup." He knew before he said it that his personal jibe would be was lost on her. Off her bemused eyebrow, he collected himself. "Football," he explained, recognizing that one word was enough to turn her face sour.

"If you think that you'll get to whisk my child away to a man-invested hoodlum-fest to relive your salad days, then you have another thing coming. They're full to the brim with happy-slappy thugs who seem to think that they can spew out any kind of language like a tourettes patient who's been dosed up on crack, and my daughter is not going to be exposed to that kind of lingo if it's the last thing I do."

Jonny saw that he had brought about the end; her garbled prattle would soon fade because she would have exhausted her word count for the day, or a couple of days if he was unlucky. His suspicions were confirmed when she scrunched her face up, her mind playing tricks on her. The hardened grasp on the bed strengthened and her knuckles turned a shocking white. She knew that something was wrong, but her muddled memories lead her up the garden path throughout her own head. She was helpless. Lurching forward, her stomach undulated nauseously at this new sensation of vulnerability. She wanted to cry out, shriek, scream at the daemons that haunted her, but how could she do so when their vague features left her more mystified than ever? Jonny crossed the room in an instant and held her body in his strong hold. What stunned him most was that he was not in the least shocked that she was physically trembling against him; he had become accustomed to it - it was the same old ritual day in and day out. He looked towards the door in advance, realising what came next...

TO BE CONTINUED