"Please..."
"Hush, hush! Nothing's going to happen to you."
"Thierry, please just untie me. Please, darling, please untie me."
"I can't do that, you might squirm."
"Tell me what I've done wrong! Tell me why you're doing this!"
"I just want to see, Sheila. Do keep it down, please."

His hand moved swiftly, picking up the scalpel he'd swiped from the local hospital and turning back around to face the woman tied down to his bed. She was spread eagle, with only her hands and feet secured. There was no need to tie the rest of her down because she was such a small woman – well, normally anyway. When she wasn't eight and half months pregnant, anyway.

"Thierry..." she moaned, her voice cracking a little. He glanced up at her face, barely taking note that there were tears stinging her eyes. There was a look of disbelief in those pretty blue eyes, as if she thought he was joking. Perhaps "hoping that he was joking" was more correct at this point, but he most certainly was not! She had come to him with such stunning information. Him, a father. A father. Oh, it filled Thierry with such joy that he couldn't even put it into words. All he wanted to do was see his child, was that so much to ask?

"Now, now," he said, plopping down heavily on the edge of the bed. He reached over and placed a hand against her cheek, rubbing his thumb over it softly and offering what could have been a comforting smile. "You won't die!" he assured her, and she relaxed a little, but he still didn't untie her. He stood up again and returned to the little plate of equipment he'd taken from the same hospital he'd taken the scalpel from.

"Aren't you going to untie me?" she asked warily, her eyes locked on the tools. He laughed a little, as if she was intentionally attempting to make a joke.

"Of course not!" he replied cheerily, and she tugged against her bonds again.

"Thierry, please! I thought you loved me! You can't just–!"
"Oh, yes, I know. I just want to see it!"
"Thierry, no!"
"I don't want to gag you, Sheila, but I will."
"Thierry, PLEASE just stop!"

But he didn't seem to hear her as he brought the scalpel down onto the lower half of her belly, forcing her to tense visibly. He pressed down, and immediately blood began to spill, and she let out a cry of pain. He hushed her again and again as he continued to bring the scalpel from one end of her body to the other, and Sheila let out a shrill scream. Thierry was hardly affected, although he did move to grab a piece of cloth and stuff it into her mouth with a soft sigh.

"I told you I didn't want to gag you, but you're so noisy that what other choice do I have?" Thierry said in a scolding manner, acting as though he couldn't see the tears trailing down her face. She was trying to writhe and fight against her bonds, but the half-demon had done well in tying them tightly; there was no way she was escaping, and he let a satisfied smile cross his face as he continued to work. Despite the amount of blood that was pouring out and the fact that Thierry technically had no idea how to perform a caesarean section, it wasn't terribly long before he managed to pull out the baby that had been inside of her was now being held in his hands. He quickly cleaned its mouth out after realising that it was sputtering more than... well, screaming its lungs out, which is was quite good at. It also appeared to be a boy.

Under any other circumstance, Thierry would have said something terribly witty, maybe even funny. He would've joked or laughed or done something other than merely gawk at the tiny thing squirming in his bloody hands – but all he could do was stare in wonderment, with no thought process going through his mind at all and the only sound coming from the tiny child. No, not just any tiny child – his tiny child. Thierry's mind suddenly exploded with thought, and he let out a loud laugh, though it was full of awe more than anything.

"Look! Look at what I made!" he cried loudly, looking over at Sheila. Though her eyes were open and staring in his direction, Thierry's smile faded quickly as the realisation that she had died sunk in. How could she have gone and died like that? It was awful of her to just die when her baby was being born, but it didn't really matter anymore. It was his baby, anyway, and while he could've done without the screaming, he certainly couldn't have been happier with the arrangement. He cut the cord that attached it – his son – to the mother and set it down on the bed for a moment to take off his shirt and wrap it up. It would take a while, but it eventually quieted down much to Thierry's relief. He sunk down to the ground, seemingly forgetting about Sheila's body altogether at this point, and held the child closely as he continued to stare in wonder.

"Thierry, darling?" Charre's voice called from downstairs. His attention didn't derive from the tiny face of the baby, who seemed content to simply stare right back at him. His fingers trailed up to the baby's cheeks, rubbing it gently and causing it to stir under his touch before he brought it down to its lips. It was so small, so full of possibilities that Thierry didn't even realise that Charre was coming up the stairs until..

His eyes snapped open suddenly at the sound of a door slamming shut, and he sat up rather quickly. Where on earth...? Oh, right. He was still at Jamie's shabby little home, and said owner of the shabby little home seemed to have left unceremoniously.

Thierry fell back against the couch with a yawn when he realised this, turning his gaze to the wall on the other size of the room. What was up with that dream, he wondered? Then again it had been close to that time of year – it always happened like this. Every year, that same old dream would come and he would find himself questioning its authenticity. The idea that he could actually like another human being was proposterous. Other than Charre, Thierry had never been able to find it within himself to even come close to such feelings for someone else.

He stretched against the firm cushions of the couch, turning over onto his back so that he could stare up at the ceiling. As interesting as his dream was, he was quick to discard it from his thoughts before he began to think too deeply. Charre hadn't said anything about it, and he couldn't imagine it was real in the first place. Maybe his subconscious was trying to speak to him? Ohhh, he did hate that. "Deep dreams" weren't things he was terribly fond of, and he especially hated it when people got philosophical about pink monkeys driving down the street in a yellow carriage pulled by rhinos and tried to pass it off as a meaningful vision of some kind. Humans were so easy to entertain.

Still... perhaps such a reality would have been nice, if only for those few serene minutes his dream self had held the dream baby.