Category: Resident Evil Village

Rating: M

Couples: -

Warnings: AU, mention of torture, Blood

Chapter: 15

Copyright: Characters & places © By Capcom, Plot & OC´s © by me

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She knew they were judging her for her choices. She could feel the anxious hum in the air that signified her daughter's disapproval of the small form in their mother's hands. But how could she have explained her thought-process to them? The baby-shaped mold had nearly killed her several times over, had in fact actively been trying to kill her at one point...

But now that it had been born and no longer needed to get its' sustenance from her? Well...

Alcina gently caressed the small shape, a small smile forming on her face as she watched it squirm. Unlike normal babies, her youngest daughter did not cry or really make any kind of sound, perhaps because she was only approximating the shape of a human baby and was not actually one.

Reaching towards her bedside table, she lifted the large bowl of fruit closer, which was of immediate interest to the small form.

"Shush, calmly now." The Dimitrescu matriarch carefully unwrapped the squirming little thing, lifting the bare form from its' secure cocoon of blankets. "My, you are a squirmy one, aren't you? Yes, you are."

Even now, feeding her youngest looked downright disgusting, but what could she do? Almost as soon as her hands were above the bowl, the baby lost its' shape, oozing down between her mother's fingers towards the bowl in clear delight.

Immediately the smell of rotting fruit rose from the bowl, the mold sustaining itself like... well, like mold, only much faster. What usually would take days or weeks now happened in a minute at most, the pale-brown mold overtaking everything organic it had decided to feed upon.

"Greedy." The comparatively very human woman chuckled, relieved that at least this mold didn't leave stains. "I wonder if you could get tummy-aches from eating too much?"

Of course, the mold could not answer her, even if it would have wanted to. Instead, it remained a formless mass in the bowl, which she figured was a form of post-food nap.

"Alcina?" The rest were no longer with her all the time, which suited the old matriarch just fine, but she could hardly bar them from the room entirely and visits were still a regularity.

"Yes?" A shudder ran down her back when Mother Miranda slipped into the room, face unreadable behind her mask. So it had finally come to this confrontation she had been dreading ever since noticing the priestess at her bedside. "Mother Miranda, I..." How could she ever apologize for how utterly pathetic she had proven herself to be? A raised hand cut off her words before she could continue.

"How are you feeling?" Black feathers rustled as the other closed in like a bird of prey on a hapless rabbit.

"I... I am recovering well, thank you for your concern." She knew she should be looking up, to not add meekness to her list of sins, but she did not want to see the disappointment in the eyes of her mother. So utterly pathetic... Instead, her eyes were fastened on the mold in her lap, which seemed to have decided to return to baby-form, slowly oozing back into the shape it had chosen for itself. Like every time, she could tell it had gotten just a bit bigger.

"Alcina." Claws carded through her hair, loose curls cascading down from her head. She tensed when the claws passed over the defenseless skin of her neck before settling under her chin. Despite - even now - being strong enough to resist, she obediently moved her head up when the fingers under her chin pushed, coming face to face with her creator.

"I am sorry." The words poured from her. "I am sorry for needing to be rescued! But they were testing me and I... I didn't want to risk your research! I had to focus on resisting them!" It had pushed her transformation and regeneration skills to their limit - and perhaps even beyond - to keep her skin thick enough that barely any of their scans penetrated. "They were trying to find out if I could transform!" Oh, it had ached to not transform into her Beast-form and tear them all to shreds, but she had heard enough from their talk to know that that would have been exactly what they wanted. And then... then they had implanted her youngest daughter into her and any chance of escape had been utterly crushed. "I..."

"Shush." Mother Miranda's thumb-claw pricked her upper lip and she obediently stopped talking, tears building in her eyes. "Fiica mea, I do not care about all that... at all."

"You..." Again the claw pricked and again she fell silent, hands tigthening around the bowl with her souvenir of that horrid place.

"All I care about is that you are safe." The other woman had to kneel on the bed to be face-to-face, both hands cupping the Elder Dimitrescu's face, gently wiping away the few tears she had not managed to keep at bay. "Draga mea, I would not even care if they had found out about my research, if that could have spared you some of the suffering you had to endure. If there's anyone I am disappointed in, it is myself."

"Mother..."

"I must apologize to you, Alcina, draga mea..." Alcina barely even noticed that her mother had cast aside the intricate mask, because her entire focus had been reduced to the feeling of lips on her forehead. "I must apologize for making you a target through my research, for letting you be taken... for taking so long to save you... For so utterly failing you in so many ways."

"Mother... no..." She wanted to refute the older woman's statement, but found that her throat had closed up as arms and wings did their best to encase her. It broke her, the refined Lady Dimitrescu breaking down into ugly sobs, clinging to the form of her mother.