Summary: I was watching Unsolved Mysteries when I got this idea. Vergil and Dante's birth, but something goes terribly wrong... Eva has flashbacks of her and Sparda's first child together when she hears the news. Reason why she 'apparently' (as far as Vergil is concerned anyway) loved Dante more than him (she didn't, but he doesn't think so, no matter how many times I tell him she loved him as much as Dante!)
Disclaimer: Don't own Eva, Sparda, Dante, or Vergil. Wish I did, but since it would cost me my arm, leg, immortal soul, and firstborn child I think it is better that I don't. Oh, and just for your information, 'bagging' is when the doctors use an air-bag to fill the lungs of a person whilst performing CPR in the ER. Kinda handy having a mom that works is Labor and Delivery, yes?
Devil's Heart
An agonized cry tore out of the woman's mouth, and she ground the bones in her husband's hand together with strength beyond that which she normally possessed. Sparda grimaced a bit at the pain, but otherwise he ignored it. His discomfort mattered little when the long-anticipated moment was nearly upon them.
"Breathe, Eva, breathe. You're doing very well. I can see the head." The midwife's eyes crinkled in a smile, the encouraging facial expression hidden beneath her surgical mask. "Wait just a moment, and... Push!"
Her face redder than fire, sweat drenching her silky golden mane, Eva bore down once more on the crowning infant. Sparda watched, fascinated, as more and more of the emerging child's head was shoved into the world outside his mother's body (he knew they were twin boys. His devil-borne senses could tell from the moment of conception exactly what his beloved wife and mate was carrying). The midwife turned the baby just as his tiny face appeared.
"Infant heart-beat normal. Second heart-beat, normal," one of the nurses reported, checking the monitors to make sure all was still going well.
"Just a little more, Eva. Then the first twin shall be born."
"You son-of-a-bitch!" she gasped out. "You did this to me!"
Normally he would have taken offense to language such as that which was spewing from his mate's lips in a ceaseless torrent, causing the midwife and nurses to chuckle softly behind their masks. But Sparda had been among humans for twenty centuries by now. He knew that it was quite normal for women to curse the men they loved, the fathers of that which was causing them unspeakable agony, with language that would make a sailor blush. And it only got worse as the moment of birth approached. Where on Earth had Eva learned some of those words?
She screamed another imprecation at him as she tensed every muscle in her body, another contraction slamming into her as she was encouraged to push once more.
The outraged cries of an infant silenced Eva's curses as effectively as a gag. Her pain swiftly forgotten, she eagerly sat up to watch the midwife hand the first splotchy, screaming infant to one of the nurses for cleaning.
"Prepare yourself, Eva. We're still not done with you. There's a twin to deliver now," the midwife admonished, resuming her position at the end of the bed between the stirrups holding her patient's feet and legs up and apart.
"Would you like to cut the cord, Samuel?" The nurse offered Sparda a pair of medical scissors and he took them hesitantly, cutting the umbilical cord between the clamps quickly. He knew there were no nerve endings in the lifeline that connected mother and child, but he still had an irrational fear of hurting his son when he snipped it.
If his son suffered from the cutting of his cord, Sparda certainly couldn't tell. The newborn was still protesting his eviction from the warmth that had sheltered him with loud, piercing screams.
"Get ready, Eva. There's another contraction coming." The second boy was crowning; his birth was imminent. "Now push!"
Holding onto the railing on either side of her body, Eva strained to get the second baby out of her body. Glancing at the machines that monitored the heart-beats of his wife and unborn son, Sparda noticed something odd.
The baby's heart-rate was dropping quickly, from a normal 160 beats per minute to 40.
The nurse noticed it too. "Dr. Clark, the infant heart-rate is dropping!"
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Heart-rate... dropping?
No! It can't be happening again! It can't!
When Eva heard the nurse tell the midwife that something was wrong with her baby's heart-rate, she immediately felt the stirrings of panic. This had happened the first time she had had a baby, three years ago. Her and Sparda's first child, a daughter they had called 'Beatrice' after the woman in The Divine Comedy, had been stillborn. The first indication of Beatrice's pre-natal distress had been a slowing heart-rate.
Don't do this to me, God or whoever! You can't take another baby away from me! You can't! You can't!!!
She knew that she still had a baby - she could hear him screaming in the plastic bassinet, awaiting the moment when he could be placed in his mother's arms - but she wanted both of them. Both of her babies. They had to live.
As soon as she stopped pushing, the heart-rate went back to normal. Exactly what had happened with Beatrice.
"We've got to get this baby out of you," the midwife murmured worridly. "Eva, another contraction is coming. Push hard!"
An involuntary cry escaped her lips as she pushed with all of her remaining strength, her terror lending her muscles new adrenaline. Please, baby! You've got to live!!!
She felt the second newborn leaving her body, felt the placenta follow immediately thereafter. Fear allowed her to overcome her exhaustion enough to heave herself up into a sitting position, removing her feet from the stirrups so she could roll onto her side and watch. The midwife shoved Sparda out of the way as she hurried the newest addition to the family over to the second bassinet, followed closely by the nurses. Rubbing at his tiny body to try and get his circulation going, she looked at one of the nurses. "He's not breathing, and I don't have a pulse. Call code."
Code Blue...
Not again!
"Noooooo!!!" she screamed. Sparda, standing by her side, took her hand and knelt beside the bed. She could tell by the strength of his grip that he was as terrified as she was at the prospect of losing a second child, even though they still had one baby alive and healthy, now laying quietly in his bassinet.
More nurses and doctors rushed into the room, armed with air-bags, stethoscopes, and other assorted weapons to combat whatever was trying to keep Sparda and Eva's third child from life. Eva watched through blurry, tear-filled eyes as CPR was attempted again and again, with the heart-rate monitor flat-lining whenever bagging and heart-compressions were stopped. One of the doctors even tried using an infant-sized dosage of raw adrenaline to kick-start the baby's heart into action.
After about ten minutes, an eternity to the tortured parents, the doctors finally gave up.
"He's gone."
"Nooooo..." Eva raised her hands to her face and began weeping, great wracking sobs that shook her slender frame and the bulky bed as if she were a leaf. "Not again... Not again..."
"How?" Sparda asked the midwife, his voice reflecting shock. "How?"
"I don't know. Perhaps an autopsy could give us some answers, but I don't know." She gave him a sympathetic look. "I know this has happened to you before, Samuel. I'm so sorry... But you do have one child, who still needs you." She gestured to the firstborn twin, kicking his feet while wrapped in his blue blanket. "I'm sorry. We did the best we could."
"Can we hold him?"
"Of course you can. Hospital policy for... things like this. We will take photographs as well, for memory's sake." The midwife gently cleaned and wrapped the stillborn infant, Eva's sobs still echoing around the private room. "Would you like to hold him first? To give her a moment to calm down?"
"Yes, I would. Give her the other one first. He would comfort her greatly." Sparda slipped a hand into one of his pockets, fingering a small pointed object...
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"Eva?" The blonde woman looked up, tears streaking her face in shiny trails, to see the midwife holding her living son, offering him to her. "Would you like to hold him? I'll bet he wants his mommy."
Wordlessly, she took the child and held him close to her breast, touching his face with a careful finger. Her shoulders still shook with silent sobs, grieving for the infant's younger twin.
Sparda took the dead one, positioning his body so Eva couldn't see it. He closed his eyes, seeking...
Yes. Still there.
"Samuel?"
The connection broken, Sparda opened his eyes to see the midwife bending over the rolling bedside table-tray, three sheets of paper spread atop it. "What are their names? I cannot complete the certificates until they have names."
Two birth certificates, and a death certificate. If I can do this, the third will not be needed...
"We agreed that the firstborn was to be named Vergil. His twin is... was... Dante."
"Vergil and Dante. They certainly have a nice ring to them." The midwife scribbled the names down on the certificates and looked up at him. "I take it you both have read The Divine Comedy?"
"Yes. That is one of our favorite classics."
"Nice to see that someone still enjoys the masters of the past." Carrying the certificates, the midwife slipped from the room. "I'll return with the camera soon."
Sparda grunted the appropriate reply and dug into his coat pocket, pulling out a large green star with a tormented-looking face on it. This he pressed to the tiny cadaver's forehead. Please... Come back to us... We do not want you to leave, Dante, son...
Please come back. You are needed here, with us. Come back... Come back...
The star disappeared, and he saw the blanket rise slightly, then fall.
He pressed a hand to the newborn's left breast, hardly daring to hope that his Seeking had been answered.
A heart-beat.
Dante... Are you there?
A flicker of consciousness, seeking out comfort from the devil that had sired it, that had brought it back.
Sparda's heart rejoiced. His son was alive!
But he had to act as if he was uncertain. He couldn't let anyone know (aside from Eva, of course) that he wasn't human. Must keep the mask in place.
He went for the door and poked his head outside. "Nurse!" he called.
"Yes, sir?" It was the nurse that had noticed the dropping heart-rate.
"Can you check this baby again? He's getting warmer, and I swear I feel a pulse."
"Spa... Samuel? What is it?" Eva called from the bed.
The nurse gave him a quizzical look, but obediently took out her stethoscope and placed it against Dante's chest to listen. Her eyes widened, and she pushed aside the blanket where it covered his feet, softly tickling the sole of his left foot.
He moved it, a reflexive action. Something a dead infant could not do.
"Wait here. I'll go get Dr. Clark." She rushed away to the nurses' station, and soon returned with the midwife, who had the promised camera in hand.
"Emily, there is no way..." she was protesting.
"Please, just check. I swear, I heard a heart-beat!"
Begrudgingly, the midwife took out her own stethoscope and put it to the baby's chest. "Oh my God... He's alive."
"But how?" Sparda asked, pretending human ignorance. "You said he was dead!"
"Samuel, what's going on?" His wife, his mate, was still clueless.
"Eva... I don't know how to say this, but..." The midwife paused, searching for a way to explain the unexplainable.
"But what?"
"Your son, Dante... He's alive!"
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Alive? How?
"Give him to me!" Shifting Vergil to her other arm, Eva reached a hand out to her husband and the midwife, who were standing in the doorway with Dante in Sparda's arms. "Let me see him!"
"Of course." Sparda brought her second son over to the bed, settled him in her free arm with exquisite care before taking Vergil away, leaving her with a free hand. She traced it around his tiny face, felt the warmth of his body-heat and the furious beat of his heart. "I don't know who to thank for this miracle," she whispered softly. "But whoever it was has my eternal gratitude."
"Twin sons. Both of them alive and healthy, but what a close call." Sparda softly kissed Vergil's forehead. "And this is only the beginning."
"Eighteen years for us to enjoy them before they go out on their own." She hugged Dante to her, making him squirm a little. "I can't wait until we get them home."
Unnoticed by either parent, the midwife slipped from the room. She would return soon, to take the babies to the nursery and allow Eva to get some much-needed rest. But first, she wanted to shred the death certificate. There was no need for it anymore.
"Twin sons. Twin miracles." Sparda settled on the bed beside her legs and leaned in to lay a loving kiss on her right temple, Vergil held secure in his arms. "Thank you for my sons, my lady, my mate."
"Don't forget to thank yourself. You did half the work, after all." Eva smiled lovingly at him and settled back against the raised bed, holding Dante close to her heart. They are perfect, and they look exactly like Sparda. But this one... She lowered her gaze to look at Dante, still snuggling close to her warmth, her familiar heart-beat. He's the miracle. I don't know how he avoided the same fate as Beatrice, but I will always be thankful he did. No matter what he does, I can't forget how close I came to losing him.
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The camera gleamed on the table-tray where the midwife had left it, and a soft click! emanated from it. The picture slid out a moment later, the image of Eva, Sparda, and their twin miracles captured forever in the square of shiny plastic.
An image Sparda had telekinetically taken on a whim. An image Eva would treasure always.
An image Vergil would later find, and question. Resentment towards his twin would arise from that treasured photograph, belief that their mother favored the son she had come so close to losing.
An image Dante would keep long after the desecration of all that he held dear. An image kept on the reverse of his mother's photograph on his desk, hidden so only he could see it.
A moment of life and love, frozen in time.
Evidence of the devil's heart.