WARNING: This fic down here may be a little dark and angsty, so a fair warning for people who are sensitive towards issues of miscarriage or losing a child.
A/N: When I chanced upon this dialogue prompt from themutantunderground ,the only thought for a prompt that I had that would fit the prompt was an angsty one. So I started to write xD and it turned out darker than expected. I know some of you may believe that a Dark Lauren is somewhat OOC from her character in her show, but I believe everyone has the propensity to actually be dark. It is the anger and the dark emotions in your chest that directs you on that path–only difference is: if you choose to listen to its calling and turn yourself into a monster that has the capacity to kill. I believe Lauren DOES have that darkness in her, its just that as the more grounded two of the Strucker siblings, when her brother is volatile and angry, she takes it as her responsibility to be the calmer one, as well as the more grounded one, but she does have the capacity to become evil too, or be vengeful. So this is my take on it :3 I originally thought it would be an angsty Eclaris, since its my otp, BUT WELL.
Side Note: Lauren's powers lie in the essence of matter manipulation, bordering on elemental manipulation, hence I took the idea that she could manipulate air molecules to her bidding to a higher level. For all we know, anger or grief does help in increasing mutant abilities or the feel of their own powers.
Dark!Lauren
Couple: Eclaris
Prompt: "Breathe, please breathe."
The atmosphere of the once cheerful headquarters is deathly silent, save for the cries of shrill hoarse pain that fills the air sporadically in the direction of Lorna and Marcos' room. All of them are gathered right outside the room that Lorna's in, having just managed to rescue her from the twisted facility that was experimenting on both Lorna and her unborn child, boosting and torturing Lorna's powers both mentally and physically. And it was obvious how much it had affected her, for the slim lanky leader of the Mutant Underground was reduced to almost an unhealthy image of skin and bones, mirroring Claire who had died from an overdose of the drug Doctor Campbell had consistently given her, and it was obvious her body, despite having fought to survive and hold her baby safe for a couple months more, was giving out.
The moment they had taken her off the support that was delaying the inevitable, her body had gone into an extreme reaction from the rough withdrawal of the drug and medicine, forcing her body into a state of prematured labour in an attempt to rid Lorna's body of any possible impedement to her body's survival and recovery, both external and internal.
Lauren's throat tightened.
That meant that Aurora was four to three months too early to come into the world.
The smell of metallic blood filled the air and made bile rise up Lauren's throat, and she watched her mother bustle in the room, hands slick with red red blood, her face tight with concentration.
"Hey." Andy grabs her hands tightly. She knows he's feeling just as much guilt as she is for leading Lorna into a trap, despite how unintentional it was.
"If we hadn't gone ahead with what we planned, Lorna might not have been captured." Lauren whispers softly, her blonde hair falling over her face slightly. "If we'd been stronger—"
"There's no use regretting now. Lorna's always been a fighter." John's voice was rough with emotion as he tried to comfort the two young teens, but the shake of his voice betrayed the amount of nerves he felt for the condition of his friend.
"Marcos." All of them are startled from their silent reverie as Caitlin retreats from the bloodied room, face pale and wane from working hours on end in saving both Lorna and her baby.
"Caitlin." Marcos is half torn with anxiety and grief. "Are they alright? Is Lorna alright?"
Their mother chafs her hands slightly in anxiety, her eyes trying not to meet Marcos' earnest ones desperately.
"Caitlin." John steps up, holding a supporting hand on his friend's back before giving Caitlin a low nod.
"Lorna's fine. I've managed to stop the bleeding, and whatever drugs they pumped her with, it's fading from her system." Caitlin swallows, her throat tightening as she meets her children's eyes and Reed's eyes with tentative honesty. "It's Aurora I'm not so sure about." The whisper delivered is fairly soft, but still equally devastating.
"Wait. W-wait, so it's a girl?" Marcos can't help but feel torn at the happiness and grief that mingles in his heart.
"She's small, but she's Perfect. Just weak." Caitlin whispers. "I don't think she's gonna make it past tonight. Whatever the drugs did to Lorna, it impacted Aurora the most. She's not breathing on her own, and her lungs are underdeveloped. She's not even getting enough oxygen into her lungs, and her heart can't keep up with the stress her body is putting it through. Her body is slowly breaking down."
"Isn't there anything that we can do?"
"Here? I don't have the facilities to give her the right life support nor the expert care she needs to be able to pull through the first few months of her life." Caitlin responds almost immediately. "I know she urgently needs surgery to help her breathe, but I–I've never studied that far in my nursing career. I'm not the best doctor to be able to help determine if—"
"Caitlin?" They're rudely interrupted by Lorna sudden frail but frantic and hysterical voice. "Caitlin, my baby–she's not breathing; she's not breathing!" Marcos starts almost violently, dashing in after a pale Caitlin back into the room that smelt of death and gloom, and Lauren slowly stepped beyond the threshold to peer in, reeling back at the strong scent of blood and just nothing but more blood.
Lorna was a matted mess of blood, sweat and tears, her chest heaving as she curled over a small figure, whose tiny chest Lauren could just barely make out it's slow rise and fall.
"Lorna, I need to see what's wrong with Aurora, you need to let her go."
"I can't! She's gonna leave me if I do." Marcos grabs his girlfriend by the arms, gritting his teeth as he fights her tooth and nail to hold her away from their struggling daughter.
Lauren's eyes are wide at the bluish baby that's as tiny as half of her mother's arm length, and the small mouth thats opening and close like a fish out of water. Even under that mess of blood and fluids of a newborn child, she could make out the slight cute upturn of Lorna's nose, the wild messy curls from Marcos, dark and slightly greenish under the light, and the pale skin marred with blue from the lack of oxygen.
The small baby that they had all looked forward to be meeting, that was so clearly Lorna and Marcos' coughed, then wheezed for breath, her lungs collapsing inwards than expanding outwards as she struggled to breathe a single breath.
"I don't–I don't have the equipment to keep her alive, Marcos, she's dying." Lauren has never seen her mother so distraught and frantic before, and her feet stay rooted to the ground as the small chest struggles desperately to rise, then falls with a sound whoosh, and became deathly still.
Lorna keens a low mourn in the near distance, and Lauren flinches as though she's gotten a electric shock at the pure agony that ripples through her mentor's voice.
"No no no no." Caitlin backs away slowly as Lorna gathers the remains of her newborn in her arms, tears spilling like a raging river over her hollow cheekbones and splashing onto her arms. "Breathe.Please, breathe. Aurora. Baby, please. Breathe." Marcos simply holds her as he stares at the half swaddled daughter he barely got to know, and slowly presses a comforting kiss to Lorna's temple, his agony blatant in his avoidance of looking at everywhere but his dead daughter.
Lauren steps out of the room, her chest hollow and empty, and the mantra of a distraught mother that just lost a child echoing through her head filling her with broken rage.
….
Doctor Campbell stares up from his chained cell at the young blonde mutant that was the less violent of the two, her brother like a dark shadows figure hovering close by her side.
"Hows the baby?" He thinks he sees a violent flash of anger and remorse flicker through the girl's face at his words. "I hope she made it. She'd have been really strong from all that boosting."
"You make me sick." The low violent echo of Lauren's voice even surprises her brother with it's vehemence. Lauren has always been close to Lorna, even way before she had been captured, both mentor and student reveling in each other's strength and appreciating what each could mutually do. In Lorna, Lauren had found a kindred friend that she could look up to, and now, there was nothing left of Lorna but tears and shattered pieces that could never really be put back together.
"None of them know that both of you are down here, don't they?" Campbell is smug in his speech, taunting in his words as he smirks at the uncontrollable anger Lauren shows. "I'm guessing they must be mourning the child's death. If only you had waited till the full term of the pregnancy before rescuing Lorna Dane, then perhaps, the chances of the baby surviving might have simply…risen."
"Don't you feel any guilt? Not even a single piece of guilt for ripping a child of her life before it even begun?"
"I created experimentations of mutants to give humans the boost the needed in order to triumph as the superior species amongst their more…superpowered friends." The doctor said lowly. "It's both profitable and lucrative for science. A new knowledge to add to our histories, starting with the beating down of those that are far ahead of us. Which are, people like you."
Lauren feels her brother's anger roiling beneath her veins as he trembles beside her, and the ground shakes just so minutely as he struggles to rein in his temperamental temper.
"I'm gonna kill you for this." She delivers her sentence with a smile, the aching urge to do something to avenge the loss of the child upstairs taking over her usually less violent temperament. "Painfully. And slowly. I'm gonna forget everything about peacemaking and make the last three minutes of your life the longest that you've ever experienced." She feels her brother's horrified eyes on her. Andy has always been the volatile one, the more destructive of the two, while she was the calmer and more sensible counterpart. They worked liked a clockwork, but Lauren knew that deep down she had the capacity to be violent when she wanted.
It was just a matter of choosing not to.
And with Aurora's death, that was the final straw.
"Lauren." Her brother's low warning falls on deaf ears as she steps forward powerfully, her fingers twitching half in anticipation and eagerness for the vengeance she promised.
"Are you sure you're the one that has the right to strip me of my life? I thought, perhaps the mother might be more inclined to take revenge with her own hands." Till the end, the atrocious doctor still has the indecency to laugh in her face, and it sends Lauren's blood boiling.
"No, I don't. But I'm doing this so that you can't harm anyone ever again. Take it as something from all of us." Lauren tilts her head ever so slightly, a picture of perfect innocence as she smiles, eyes creasing and lips twisting upwards in a angelic curve.
The doctor simply laughs softly at her self righteous exclamation.
"I guess monsters do give birth to monsters." He grins toothily up at the siblings. "That can never change."
"Oh yes. But it's always the quietest monsters you have to watch out for, Doctor." Lauren's anger amplifies her matter manipulation abilities, and the air around her hums with her sensitivity towards the molecules that she's always been able to feel so attuned to. "Because the quiet monsters don't lash out like the others. They bottle up their anger and wreck destruction when they've lost enough." She twists her fingers violently, feeling the air molecules respond to her call as it twists and rips the air out of Doctor Campbell's lungs and body, forming a vacuum unseen to human eyes. She watches with quiet vengeance as his cheeks hollow, and his lungs collapse into themselves, the flesh of his cheeks twisting off violently as she rips the last of the remaining air in his lungs away through his mouth, depriving him of well needed oxygen.
"I thought this would be a fitting end, since Aurora's lungs collapsed the same way just moments after she was born. She couldn't breathe, you know." Lauren continued, watching as the doctor gurgled on his own blood, his lungs turning inside out as she deprived him from life giving oxygen and air, the tell tale signs of his lungs hemorrhaging beginning in the gurgles of liquid blood that bubbles in sound from his chest. "That medicine you injected directly into her bloodstream even before she was born was slowly killing her."
She could feel Andy's horror at her actions as he shifted behind her, and Lauren exhaled, releasing her grip on the air molecules swiftly as soon as she deemed Campbell too far gone to be medically rescued.
"Good day, doctor." She turns to her stiff brother. "Andy, Let's go." In spite of Andy's horror at her actions, they leave Campbell in the cellar, drowning in his lungs of blood, and even as his body, with signs of death by Lauren's distinctive air matter manipulation, is found hours after John remembers they've held captives in their basement, no one, not even their parents say a single word.
This is definitely AU, because neither Lorna nor Lauren have interacted that much. Also, prepare yourselves for yet another angst filled prompt next. It only gets darker from here and I hope I did the breakdown as well as the angst much justice.
