“You try and - fucking breathe - when someone - is sledgehammering - your spine-” Melpomene hissed at him, but despite that she did try, gasping in shallow breaths in an attempt to survive the pain. It felt like a vain one - she could not survive this! She could not, she could not! He was going to kill her he was going to kill her he was- he was-
Apollo shifted himself closer; watching Melpomene struggle to recover from a contraction was a nightmare. The muscles around her stomach slowly softened up again as the cramping passed, but under his hand Apollo could still feel her jolting with pain, and all the effort was making her skin burn, and the grey long shirt she’d been wearing to bed was sticking to her skin with sweat. But he was not going to watch her die tonight, no fucking way was Ares and this baby killing her, he wouldn’t let them. “We’re going to start moving now,” he told her, taking one of her hands and firmly closing it up in his fingers, his palm up, and strong, so she could use it to push herself up. “Are you ready to stand?”
“Is too late-” the voice coming out of her didn’t sound like Melpomene’s voice either. Breathy and heavy with pain and undeniably scared. Melpomene was usually so good at disguising her fear as something else, but somewhere along the way she’d lost her mask. “Too late - I think - I think I’m bleeding-”
She let go of Apollo’s hand, and let her fingers search over the bare skin of her legs. It could have just been her waters, streaking her thighs, but she had such a bad feeling. A bad feeling confirmed by the streak of red across her wet fingers. “Ah,” she said, and forgot, entirely, how to breathe as real panic set in.
“My car is just outside,” Apollo said, rising quickly, pulling a blanket from her bed so he could wrap her up in it. “It will not be too late. We’re going to hospital, now.