With a heavy sigh, Catherine rolled onto her other side and captured between her knees the single pillow they allowed her. She had always preferred sleeping on her back, a fortress of pillows against the headboard, but in the last month spooning was the only position she could tolerate. Anything else resulted in miserable backaches, shortness of breath, and thirty or so trips to the bathroom a night. She didn't need any help with that last one, although she did relish the exasperated looks on the guards' faces when they had to escort her down the hall and stand watch outside the door while she peed an inexplicable amount. They did feed and hydrate her well, yes, but sometimes she felt as if the waterfalls in the caverns Below had nothing over on her. How Vincent would chuckle, were she able to tell him so.

As the name drifted through her thoughts, she reached for the crystal that no longer hung round her neck. It was a habit she could not seem to break, even after five long months. "Vincent," she murmured to the dark, her hand sliding further down to rest upon her heart. Making a fist, she pressed into the itchy fabric of her nightshirt -- damn ugly thing; they could've at least picked something with color -- and flesh. She repeated the name, at first in a whisper, then louder with each repetition, until she was calling out as if he might be in the next room, and hear. A futile exercise, she knew. Their connection was lost, for some reason. . .

Tentatively her fingertips trailed lower, and she touched her swollen belly, wondering at its contents. Too late she had realized she knew very little about pregnancy. While so many of her fellow Radcliffe alumni were having children, she was far too busy taking notes at her father's firm to take any on prenatal development. Asking her captors was out of the question. She'd be damned if she would plead any more help from that automaton, Nazi nurse, whose stony demeanor warmed only when she had the pleasure of jabbing a syringe into Catherine's arm. Or the dimpled-chin guard who only spoke to her when they were safe from the eye of the surveillance cameras and he could grope her rear-end freely, his erection pressed against her thigh as he told her what a turn on pregnant women were. Figures a guy who liked asses would have one on his face.

She wanted so much to speak with Mary or one of the other women from the tunnels. Even Father. Someone who could tell her what to expect, what was ordinary, though this was surely an extraordinary child. The prospect of labor frightened her, but worse was the thought of going through it without Vincent or anyone who cared the least bit for her at her side.

The familiar sting of tears made Catherine blink hard, and she curled a protective arm around her abdomen. "You awake, Pip?" she asked the baby inside. "I think I feel you moving around in there."

She waited, palm resting on the spot that seemed to be the favored target of her child's overactive extremities. Response came in the form of several light, erratic kicks, and she fancied that the baby was already practicing Morse code. Pascal would be proud.

"I can't sleep either. How about I tell you a story?"

She nodded when there was no other movement. "Good, you're a captive audience, that will make your father happy. He loves to read aloud, you see. He read for me the first time we met. Remember, I told you your nickname comes from Great Expectations? Well, that's what your father read to me."

Here the baby shifted, and Catherine grimaced.

"It is rather long, but it's a very good book," she said, as if discouraging the fetus's apprehensions. "You'll appreciate Dickens in time. And don't worry, you won't really be named Pip. It's just a substitute until your father and I get a good look at you. Who knows, you might be more of an Estella."

"In relation to gender, not disposition, of course," she hastened to add. "Anyway, where was I?"

Whether it was pregnancy or the frequent drugging she still endured, Catherine's thought process had gotten muddied since her capture. She let her mind wander and spoke the first words it lit upon:

"There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colors gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot."

Worrying her bottom lip, she tried to recall the next line. "She. . . she. . ."

What was it?

"She knows not what the curse may be!" Catherine gave a triumphant snap of her fingers.

"She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott. . ."

Unaware she was crying until the taste of salt reached her lips, she sniffled, quickly licking away the tears. Crying seemed to come as naturally as breathing these days, but it did tire her so. She needed to conserve her strength; if not for her own sake, at least for the child's.

And Vincent.

Taking a shuddery breath, she continued. "That's Tennyson. Make note of him, he's one of your father's favorites. Mine, as well. I wish I could remember the entire poem, but there are several stanzas. I'll read it to you if-- once we're out of here. Your father has a collection of Tennyson's works that I gave him as a gift. Maybe we'll get him to read us both some, all right?"

God, how she missed the sound of his voice. Sometimes when that spineless lapdog of a physician was poking and prodding, treating her as nothing more than the "vessel" his master proclaimed her to be, the one thing that kept her sane was the memory of Vincent's voice. It echoed in her ears the way Vivaldi and Bach wafted through the tunnels when there was a symphony in the park. Dulcet, enveloping, and capable of warming her to the very core. Yet not quite within reach. If she could just emerge, escape this hell and find that melodious source, never, ever to be out of its earshot again. . .

"You'll like it down below, Pip," she said dreamily, lulled a little by the low, rumbling tone she played over and over in her mind. "You'll have so many friends to play with! Samantha and Eric, Jamie and Kipper. And Mouse, oh you'll love him. I can just see it now -- he'll probably build you more toys than you'll know what to do with."

Catherine giggled, imagining her son or daughter's utter glee at being presented with anything from a rocking horse to a rocket ship. Constructed mostly of hot parts, of course.

"And Father. Well, I suppose you'll call him 'Grandfather'," she went on, a sleepy smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, fingers tracing slow circles around her distended belly button. "You will be his pride and joy, my love. Oh, he'll pretend to be strict and stalwart, but if you look closely enough you'll see the fondness in his eyes. He can't hide the way they shine and crinkle up when he's especially delighted. I bet that's how he'll look at you the first time you beat him at chess."

She stifled a yawn, blinking heavily. "I'm sorry you won't get to meet my father. He was a wonderful man. You'll have his sense of humor, though. And hopefully a little of his business sense."

Drifting slightly, she breathed the next word: "Mother."

"I had her for such a short time," she confided after a lengthy pause, deep furrows creasing her brow. "There were so many times I needed her, but she wasn't there. Couldn't be. But it hurt all the same."

With more conviction than she felt, she added, "That's not going to happen to you. I won't let it."

(You are only the vessel. When she couldn't block it out with Vincent's voice, that was the refrain that rang in her ears.)

"Vincent," she said the name like a prayer, then clarified for her child, "That's your father. He'll come for us, Pip. He will. 'Though hell should bar the way.' "

Rubbing her abdomen soothingly as she pictured cradling her slumbering infant, Catherine found it impossible to keep her own eyes open. "There's so much I want to tell you about him, sweet one. Beyond his favorite literature and love of poetry. There's never been another like him, and I don't mean just his appearance. Which is beautiful, by the way, don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. . .

"One day soon you'll understand," she murmured, fading fast. "But for now, sleep."

***

Catherine dreamed she was afloat in a dory, the oars grasped by a cloaked figure whose hands were a perfectly rhymed couplet, whose face a parable, and whose voice a moonlight sonata.