Restless Heart Syndrome

Chapter 7 The Webs We Weave

"I want to show that the dividing lines between sanity and mental illness have been drawn in the wrong place."

~Anthony Storr

Restless Heart Syndrome Chapter 7 

Alec's eyes widen as he gasps, his the orbs becoming larger in surprise and terror as he grasps the granite counter, his legs quickly becoming unsteady and useless as he sinks to the tiled floor of the kitchen. His breath comes in shudders, a panicked frenzy that stinks of foul fear. His muscles spasm again, and his hand goes to the protesting bump on his abdomen. The ghost of a burn is there as the sensation stops, the uncanny feeling of a light hit on the insides welding itself into Alec's memories, a sharp tack in the blur that the last few weeks have been.

It takes Alec a moment to convince himself that he's not dying, that nothing else is happening. He's not going to start bleeding on the insides. He doesn't even hurt anymore, it's just a phantom now. He's fine. It's nothing, not even something he needs to tell Magnus about. He's okay, it was just a shock or something. The repercussions of not working out anymore. Of not being able to work out anymore, not really, from the insides of Magnus's flat and the insides of his own demented body. The inability to do anything. His complete and utter uselessness. The fact that cooking is all he's really living for anymore, it's a depressing thought, especially when his comrades are on the streets, risking their lives every day. When he's stuck, locked in time and this apartment, when his family is potentially dying around the casing of brick he's confined to.

Nothing like this has ever happened to him, neither the utter sense of true uselessness or the paroxysms that he was suddenly afflicted with. He's always felt deficient, but the emptiness was much fuller than this. He's felt muscle pains, attacks on the sanity of nature's worksmanship picking away at his muscles, but never has something from within him resembled a blow so much. Nothing natural. No matter. This might bring about new ideas, new trains of thought, but still, it changes nothing. His clockwork is still winding, it still has that rhythmic ticking. You can still hear the clock of his body, the pendulum swinging back and forth in a nearly sadistic marker of time. The metronome doesn't stop just because a new beat has been introduced, or because a beat was skipped. There are changes, of course, but change is inevitable. Change made Alec who he is today, though some of those changes might be regrettable. Regrettable.

In that moment, melted onto the kitchen floor, Alec lies flat on his back with his limbs spread out and laughs. "Regrettable."

Because really, it is.

-----

"She's having the pups!" The grainy, but desperate voice shouts through the intercom, and in a split second Magnus is up from the dinner table and out the door, going to help the ringer personally. Alec's confused for a second, then a wild-eyed looking woman barges in with the warlock and a man whose arm is wrapped around her, keeping her up. He stomach is bulged, and her brow covered with sweat.

"Alec, get a spare room ready!" Magnus demands, and Alec runs (albeit a bit slowly) to the nearest unoccupied room, throwing open the door and stripping the bed of its everything but the sheets and its pillows. "Towels and hot water," Magnus calls as he settles the woman in, and Alec puts on the kettle as he rushes about looking for as many towels as he can, stripping the bathroom and the closet before dumping them back with the warlock.

The woman is spread out on the bed, naked, her legs pulled apart and arms clutching the bed as she takes deep breaths. Her expression erupts with pain as she cries out, then it's gone, and her breathing is heavy and laboured. She's in labor, he realizes. The bulge in her belly is a baby, or 'pups.' Multiples. It kind of makes him want to faint, but the wail of the boiling of the kettle brings him back to reality. He gets to it, and brings the pot back to Magnus, uncertain about what he should do with it.