youngblood // p. hockstetter // 0.1

//thirty-five

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Tiana Samantha Martin was born on the 2nd of July 1973 in a small apartment owned by a less then successful lawyer in Lower Manhatten.

Her survival through the night without contracting anything was a miracle in itself, but it was also her resilience in the nine months prior to her birth that solidified her mother's hatred for the infant when she finally pushed her out.

Scarlett Louise Martin had been unfortunate enough to conceive seven different children in her life-long career as a prostitute, half of which didn't survive past infancy or their second trimester. Her first two daughters had met unfortunate ends, the first dying in her womb after a visit to New York's finest doctor, the second; Delilah drowned in the bath tub whilst under the care of a paid-off babysitter whom was still yet to be found by police. Scarlett walked past the woman she'd paid off every single day on her way to the brothel.

Isabella was given to the same orphanage Tiana would be given to the day after she was conceived in 1967. She died four months later in her sleep, a result of malnutrition in a cot infested with maggots and lice.

Jason had died in the fashion of his eldest sister in 1968, though being broke at the time meant that unlike Scarlett's first he didn't have the luxury of a doctor. He was scratched and prodded with the end of a stretched coat hanger until his mother was left a sweating heap on her bed and he a damp mess of crimson between her thighs and the bed sheets.

If only Scarlett had managed to murder her remaining children to come, she would never understand how much of a favour she'd be doing the universe as every child came out worst then the last. Perhaps it'd been the decay in her stomach which corrupted her children, the lingering residue of death which encompassed her womb as they formed and grew into the foul monsters they became.

First Connor, then Madeline, and finally Tiana.

Connor Alexander Martin was born on the 4th of September 1968, only nine months after the murder of his only brother. Abandoned by his first birthday, he grew with an abusive father and his homosexuality in quiet desperation long after he married his wife in 1989. By the time he was fourteen he'd already had sex with half a dozen different boys, older and younger, consensual and otherwise.

Unloved and drowning within the presence of his loveless, childless marriage, he privately frequented gay bars from as early as a month following the commencement of his honeymoon and killed his first and only victim on the night of his thirty first birthday in 1999. A fellow homosexual from the tax office he worked for, Malcolm Dageiry was found dead in his room by his brother, his hands bound and his neck black and blue with finger prints. Connor grew to his mid-thirties before he died from a severe, deliberate drug overdose during a New Year celebration in 2002 amongst a rather unattractive group of co-workers, several of whom died with him that night.

Madeline Teresa Johnson was born on the 19th of November 1970 and was the only child Scarlett had ever intended to keep. The result of an eighteen month relationship with one of her private clients, the engagement crumbled under the weight of a former marriage and Scarlett's diminishing mental health. Stolen by her father and never again seen by her mother, Madeline died in 1986 at her own hand with a 20-gauge shotgun but not before dragging two classmates and her French teacher down with her in Lewistown, Montana. If Scalett had survived long enough to see her daughter shoot up the highschool she would've noticed how eerily similar her two daughters where.

And finally, there was Tiana, the miracle of nature. Even after Scarlett hurled herself down the stairs and shoved a coat wire up her uterus several times between Tiana's conception and arrival, it didn't delay Tiana arriving eighteen excruciating hours later after her head and shoulders both got stuck. The lawyer in question was not home and wouldn't be for another four days, forever unaware of the birth which had occurred within his apartment.

Tiana was Scarlett Louise Martin's last child, and very nearly became the only child she kept as even in infancy, Tiana was a beautiful child. She hadn't screamed like her siblings before her when she lay atop the linens, damp with her mother's sweat and blood whilst her mother in question had lay in silence, quietly gasping for air as her hand found the pillow. Her golden hair a tangled halo around her, Scarlett threw her upper body forward and very nearly threw up the minimal bile in her stomach on her unnamed daughter, whom only squinted at her with un-coloured eyes. The muscle surrounding her spine ached and burnt terribly.

Her daughter made no sound as she scratched at her cheeks with rice sized nails, mere centimetres away from the matted locks she shared with her mother which now encircled her head. The young infant's face took her breathe away and Scarlett found herself releasing the pillow which had hovered near her daughter's mouth.

Slowly slipping her hands under her daughter's head of feathery yellow locks, she pulled her onto her bare chest and stared at the small birthmark dotted on her stomach. "Hello there...." She'd clenched her daughter as she pushed out the mess of her afterbirth onto the mattress, carefully cradling her terrifyingly squishy scalp in her rough hands until she pressed her daughter's mouth onto her aching breast. Softly clicking her tongue, she slipped a pillow under her arm and stared in silence as she suddenly felt an overwhelming hatred for the small bundle atop her chest.

Not once in in the past eight years had Scarlett ever considered a future for herself as a mother, and yet now this small bundle of flesh and un-developed bones was dragging the guilt of her past six children back to haunt her. For a moment she'd considered hurling the small child from her breast and throwing her across the room knowing the infant would be dead in moments and therefore more disposable. She could throw the body down a sewer by the end of the day. Scarlett flinched as her nipple burnt beneath her daughter's gnawing gums but felt her heart flutter ever so slightly when the smallest of squeaks jumped from Tiana's throat.

Even as an infant, Tiana's entire life had depended on how much she appealed to those in charge. Of all the siblings she'd never meet, she took more love from their mother then all of them combined before inevitably, she was left on the front steps of the Iron Curtain Orphanage wrapped in her mother's finest blankets. These blankets where sold by the end of the week after Mrs. Stratford brought Tiana in the following morning and placed her beside her morning coffee. Being barely six in the morning her husband still slept thunderously in their bed upstairs whilst her infant son sat angrily in his high chair, gnawing on a rubberized spoon. "Nnnnn-dah" He hurled the spoon at the floor and Mrs.Stratford nearly groaned when she saw Tiana's eyes flicker open, waiting for the screams which she believed would undoubtedly come, but never did. The infant stared at her new caretaker curiously, her watery eyes still dark and incomplete.

"Hush dear!"

"Nnnnnn-DA!" He yelled in an attempt to draw his mother's attention away from the foreign child adjacent from him.

After several minutes of quiet observation, Mrs.Stratford watched in slight amazement as Tiana decided to put herself back to sleep, closing her eyes and twisting her nose. Rather then remove the evidently angelic infant from her box of comfort and risk waking the other remaining children, she instead carried her into the nursery and placed her amongst the other children. The nursery was undoubtedly the smallest room within the two story building and nurtured four, now five infants all soundly asleep.

Mrs.Stratford sighed contently at her new addition, pulling the note from amongst the blankets and placing it at the peak of the cot. "Welcome to your new home Tiana" She sighed, stroking the babe's cheek before walking back to the door as she trailed her hand along the remaining cots contently, reading the names she'd become all to familiar with from their individual labels.

Robin.

Sebastian.

Milo.

She stopped beside the door, smiling at the beautifully tiny baby closely snuggled in the cot closest to the door. As though sensing her presence the babe whined slightly, it's eyes flickering slightly before she leant forward and stroked the little girl's fuzzy scalp with a single finger.

"Back to sleep now" She cooed, smiling as her eyes slid shut once again almost instantaneously. "Good girl Rose, good girl"

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