Disclaimer: I don't own SH4 or 2 or the characters. Or a motorcycle. Or a fondue pot. Or a steamboat. Or...

Author's Note: I don't think I've ever seen anyone write about this particular incident. Which is kinda odd, if you think about it. This is something I've been working on for a while when I've needed a break from Impaired. Credit for the title goes to Literary Alchemist, my charming beta. :D He's nifty.

Ex Nihilo

A five-year-old boy sat in the lobby of South Ashfield Heights. He was quiet as he rolled his toy truck across the linoleum floor, the soft noise of rolling plastic wheels drowned out by his own thoughts. The people in the truck were on a great adventure, he decided. They were traveling through dangerous, rocky terrain. They were in it alone, with no one to help them if they got lost, were attacked by an animal, or swerved off a cliff. But in the end, he knew, everything would turn out okay.

The truck came to a stop when he heard people coming down the stairs that crept up the walls of the lobby. He looked up and saw a young woman with a man older than she, both wearing long coats. The man had her by the arm and they each carried a suitcase. He dragged her down the staircase with his eyes on the front doors. She winced in pain, nearly stumbling down the stairs once or twice. The boy noticed a streak of red down her bare calf.

"Please," she whispered desperately to the man as they descended from the last stair. "We could make it work! If--"

The man let go of her arm and whirled around. "Shut up!" he hissed, voice harsh and gravelly. He spotted the boy and fixed him with a glare.

The woman didn't say another word, though she wrapped her free arm around her stomach. She didn't look at the boy, or even the man. She just kept her gaze on the floor, long blonde hair like blinders, keeping her focus on the man's shoes as he tromped toward the doors and she followed. She whimpered once and tried to hang onto his arm, to hold herself up, but he violently shook her off and pushed open the doors. He slipped outside, and the woman struggled with the door and suitcase as she tried her best to keep up with him.

The boy got to his feet as the doors closed with a heavy slam, and he walked over to the three-paned window to the right of the doors. He peered out into the late evening, and watched them. The man was now in a near run, but the woman was having trouble keeping up, one arm weighed down by her suitcase and the other wrapped around her stomach. She finally fell, and when the man noticed he stomped back over to her, mouth forming words that the boy couldn't hear. She reached up to him, and he leaned over her, his hand drawing back--

"James, dear!"

The boy looked up and saw the very large resident of Room 204 waving to him from the second floor landing.

"I've just baked some cookies, would you like some?" she said sweetly.

James smiled back. "Yeah!" he exclaimed. He bounded up the staircase, the escaping couple forgotten.

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Frank Sunderland banged his fist on the door of Room 302. It was muffled, but he could hear a baby's cry inside. The disturbance had caused the residents of 301 and 303 to come complaining. The baby had been wailing for nearly an hour, they said, and they couldn't get anyone to answer the door.

"Hello!" Frank shouted. "This is the superintendent!" He paused, but there was still only the crying from inside the room. "There have been complaints," Frank said through the door. "I need to speak with you." Still no one. Frank sighed and fumbled through his keys, hoping he didn't walk in on anything.

He'd started renting out 302 just in the past month to what he considered to be an odd couple. The woman was young; he wouldn't have placed her anywhere past twenty, though she was probably younger than that. She was quiet; she didn't make eye contact, often hiding her face under her long blonde hair. And she was pregnant, very far along from what Frank could tell. The man, however, had to have been at least ten years older than her. He was tall, about a foot taller than the girl, and as he looked down on her, his eyes were always stern, annoyed, glaring at her bowed head before trailing down to her bountiful stomach with a final sneer.

Frank didn't like the man at all. Just from his demeanor, the superintendent was ready to tell him no, he didn't have a room available, that he'd forgotten to take down that sign outside. He'd already rented out 207 to a young punk, Richard Braintree, who'd managed to get arrested in his first week of tenancy. He didn't want any more trouble. But then he looked back at the young (very young) woman. She had raised her eyes for an instant-- just an instant-- before exiling her gaze back to the floor. And immediately Frank knew that denying them would be like abandoning her, and he could never abandon a lady. He would always tell his son as the boy grew older, "Women have more than their fair share of problems. The least you can do is be there."

Frank slid the correct key into the door and unlocked it. Upon opening up the apartment, the first sign that something was very wrong was the bundle on the floor. It was undeniably the baby, as the sound was coming from the blanket. Stupefied, Frank looked around the apartment, only to find it otherwise empty of people. He stooped down and picked up the child. The blanket fell open, and he not only saw that it was a boy and he was naked, but that he was covered in some blood and a waxy white substance, and a stub of umbilical cord was still poking from his belly button. He was a newborn in the purest sense of the term.

Frank wrapped the blanket back around the baby boy and checked the back rooms, but they were unoccupied, as he'd unfortunately expected them to be. In the bedroom, the sheets were a mess with half-dried blood and other fluids, not to mention a purplish sac that made his stomach queasy. He looked down at the baby again. Had that girl given birth just hours ago?

The baby was still screaming. Frank realized that he had better get an ambulance right away, and clutching the bundle to his chest, he hurried out of the room. When he got downstairs to his own room, 105, he headed straight for the telephone.

As Frank cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, he heard the door open. He turned around and there was his son, James. The boy had a toy truck in one hand while he stretched up his opposite arm and pulled the door closed. He held a cookie in his mouth.

James removed the cookie. "Pop," he said, turning to his father, "Mrs. Swanson gave me some--" He stopped and stared at his father. Or rather, at the crying blanket in the crook of his arm.

Frank sighed and looked down at the newborn. The tiny boy had stopped bawling and now only whimpered, but the man couldn't help but think that he was too pale, too blue.

"That's a baby," James said in bewilderment.

Frank looked around quickly, then grabbed a plunger he'd absentmindedly left in the kitchen earlier and handed it to him. "Go to 202. Mrs. Brandt's toilet is clogged."

James took the plunger, but looked up at his father. "But I dunno how to unclog a toilet."

He couldn't deal with the boy's questions right then. "It's either that, or you get to go collect Mr. Braintree's rent."

James disappeared in a matter of seconds.

Frank found the number of Saint Jerome's Hospital on a list he had posted by the phone. He dialed and hurriedly explained the situation to the woman who answered. She was sending an ambulance right at that moment, she told him, sounding as horrified as he felt. The disgusted tremor in her voice actually made Frank feel better, like this wasn't an everyday situation, like all semblance of normality had not been lost the moment he opened the door to find a newborn alone and screaming on his back.

The door opened again and there was James, cautiously creeping back into the room. "She's not there," he told his father, though his eyes were on the baby.

"Hush, boy," Frank grumbled, trying to listen to the nurse's questions.

James stayed quiet, but he was still terribly curious. He idled around his father's legs, restlessly stepping from here to there, craning his neck. Frank kept turning away from him. James soon got tired of being ignored. "Where's his mom?" James asked brushing his fingers along the blanket and snagging a digit in a fold. The blanket fell open, and something dropped to the floor.

"James!" Frank snapped. "Go to the front door and let the ambulance people in when they get here!"

The young Sunderland immediately ducked his head and left the room again.

"He seems to be breathing just fine," Frank answered the nurse, holding the phone between his ear and shoulder as he stooped down to pick up what had fallen from the blanket. He wrinkled his nose when he realized it was a piece of the umbilical cord and dropped it on his desk. "He's shrieking quite a bit."

Even as he continued to talk on the phone, his eyes kept wandering back to the wrinkled tube of flesh, sticky with amniotic fluid that slowly slid down onto the newspaper it had landed on. The severed connection between mother and child, the conduit that sustained the second with the life of the first.

"Pop!" James shouted as he burst into the room. Two paramedics entered behind him. "They're here."

Frank relinquished the newborn to the uniformed woman, and suddenly everything was a flurry of activity. Ten minutes later, he found himself outside the Heights with his son. As the ambulance rolled out of the parking lot and sped off down the street, Frank told himself that was it. It was out of his hands now. But for some reason, he thought of the umbilical cord, lying on his desk. A police cruiser pulled into the parking lot.

"What happened, Pop?" James asked, tugging on Frank's jeans.

"The hospital is gonna take care of everything," Frank answered. He looked down at his son. Frank smiled weakly at the boy's mussed, straw-yellow hair and his gray-blue eyes, both just like his mother's. And then he thought of stepping into 302 and of the bundle on the floor, and he felt sick. "Pop has to talk to the officer for a bit, alright, Jimmy?" He patted his son on the head. "Why don't you go get some more cookies from Mrs. Swanson?"

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"Mom! Mom!"

His hair tangled around his shoulders. It was dingy, dirty, like his face. His face, streaked with tears. He stumbled from floor to floor, calling for her, pleading, all the way to the third floor. He lurched into the wing, around the corner, nearly fell. Frantic steps past the first door, hand grabbing the knob of the second. He shook it, pulled, but despite his strength it would not open.

"Mom! Let me in!"

Frank reached forward, tried to tell him that room was empty, but his voice was lost. The man fell to his knees, shoulders shaking violently with his sobs.

"Mom!"

"Pop?"

Strange noise from within the room. Metal grinding against metal, a pained grating roar. And with that a low soft groan, as if from turning gears, beckoning.

The man pressed his palms to the door, rested his forehead against the painted wood, hair falling over his face, but his soft voice coming through all the same.

"Mom."

"Pop!"

Frank's eyes shot open, and he grabbed fistfuls of his sheets.

"You alright, Pop?" the voice said.

He sat up and looked over at the door. Light streamed in from the hallway. James' silhouette stood there in a wrinkled tux, bowtie undone and hanging around his neck. "You were moaning," he said.

"I'm fine, boy," the elder man finally muttered, running a hand over his face. He couldn't shake the image of the crying man. It was like he'd seen him before, but he knew he hadn't. "What are you doin' home?"

"School got kicked out of the hotel."

Frank peered into the light of the hall over his son's shoulder and saw Mary standing behind him, pink satin of her dress over her shoulders. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, saying quietly, "Hey, Mr. Sunderland," apparently not wanting to draw him too far from sleep.

But Frank was awake now, and returned his gaze to his son. James seemed nothing like the stricken man in the dream, but all the same, Frank never wanted him to experience that kind of pain.

"C'mere, boy," Frank said, swinging his legs over to the side of the bed.

James frowned, but walked over to the bed, leaving Mary in the doorway. His eyes widened with surprise, but he didn't make a sound, when his father grabbed his jacket and pulled him down for a hug. "P-Pop! Come… Come on…" He laughed nervously.

Frank withdrew and flashed James an encouraging smile. He patted him on the shoulder. "You kids've had a busy night. Get to bed, eh?"

James got a big smile on his face. "Alright."

"She can have your bed. You're on the couch," Frank said sternly.

James' grin faltered and he brushed his fingers through his hair nervously. "Yeah, I know," he muttered, eyes falling to the floor.

Frank heard Mary giggle and saw her blush in the light of the hallway. "Come on, James. It's late," she whispered. "Good night, Mr. Sunderland."

"Good night, Pop," James said, putting a hand on his father's arm. He turned away and went back into the hall, closing the door behind him.

Frank sat there in the dark for a few minutes. Then he reached over and turned on the lamp by his bedside. The lamp sat on a small side table, and he slid open its drawer. He reached in and pulled out a square wooden box, stained burgundy. It was small, only about five inches in both width and length, but Frank felt a heavy weight as he held it, the weight of the world. He slid off the lid and stared at the shriveled tube of flesh lying on musty tissues, crisp where the cord's fluid had dried years ago. It all should have been dried out by now, it should have crumbled in the box, but Frank had no explanation for why it hadn't. Except that it was important. But important for what?

The only explanations he had were metaphorical. This umbilical cord, this link from mother to child, still persevered, as if to say that although the parents abandoned their baby boy that night, it did not mean that those sacred connections were worthless. Love still existed.

But philosophical pondering did not sustain actual flesh.

Frank replaced the lid and put the box back. He tried to put it out of his mind as he closed the drawer, the thought of the crying man haunting him. The man searching for his mother. There was a boy who used to come to the Heights years ago, when James was starting junior high. The strange boy was always alone, and one of the few things anyone heard him say was that he was looking for his mother. Frank had always had a feeling that the boy and the abandoned baby were one and the same, so perhaps… No, that was silly. That boy, that baby, would be a teenager now, younger than Mary. Not quite as old as the man from his dream.

But still…

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