Cover picture is by corpsepixie on tumblr, and one of my all-time favorite pieces of fanart! It is used with permission by the artist.

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A white cottage rested on a green hill dusted with snow. A few flowers were daring to bloom through the cold, and their stems swayed in the breeze. The sea lapped at a rocky shore just beyond.

A woman in blue appeared on the doorstep. She shut her eyes and savored the wind that threatened to dismantle her gold chignon. The door opened behind her, and a man's arms wrapped about her waist. She knotted their hands and leaned back against him, shutting her eyes with a contented smile and a gentle sigh.

"I have a surprise for you," she whispered.

He kissed her twice on her cheek and neck. "Is it a burnt soufflé again?"

She laughed. "No, no, much better than that... You're almost touching it."

He glanced down at where his hands rested on her abdomen. His blue eyes widened.

"Y-you're-"

"We're," she corrected.

"Expecting?"

She nodded. Their faces brightened as they turned to each other. Then, without warning, he scooped her up and spun her around.

"Don't make me dizzy!" she shrieked, giggling.

He set her down and peppered her with kisses. She wrapped her arms about him.

"I'm so excited," she whispered.

"I didn't know it might happen so soon," he said, continuing to kiss her. "We've only been married four months now."

She shrugged then kissed him back.

"I've suspected for a month now," she told him. "So I'd say he's due-"

"He?"

"Boy or girl, whichever it is, is due in the fall. I hope it's a boy, though. A little boy with beautiful blue eyes."

"Well," he declared, teasing one of her curls between his fingertips, "I want a girl."

"You may be the only man in the world who's ever said that."

He waved away her words, "My father wanted daughters. After my... brother, he got two."

His face fell in memory, but he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

"Raoul," Christine whispered, "do you want to talk about it now?"

"Not now, not after such wonderful news... but we both have our demons."

"We do. At least mine are in the past, far away in Paris."

He cupped her face in his hands. "I don't believe that."

She moved her hands to her womb. "Perhaps baby will help us with our new life here, help us forget."

"I hope so."

...

The summer dissolved the lingering snow. Christine spent her days being coddled and fussed over by Mamma Valerius and Raoul. They made sure she had a glass of milk a day, if she could stomach it, and gave her extra portions of everything, even when she protested. Of course, she was grateful, but she wasn't used to being fussed over.

Her freedom had also drastically changed due to her state. They kept telling her to rest. She was bursting with energy at one moment then passed out on the sofa the next, with each coming without warning.

Raoul was growing anxious. He spent hours worrying over everything that could possibly go wrong, so that he could prepare them both for it. It was driving Christine mad.

"We can keep a warm fire," Christine sighed as she ran her hand over the white cradle in the corner of their room. Raoul had been exceptionally anxious that day.

"Yes," he replied, "we'll take shifts. But will the smoke be bad for her lungs, do you think?"

She sighed irritably, "Smoke goes up the chimney. He will be fine."

"What if the house catches fire?"

"The house can always catch fire! If it does, however unlikely that occurrence, we'll simply pick him up and carry him outside! Goodness, Raoul, I love you, but don't you know that telling me everything that could go wrong is making me anxious? At least keep it to yourself... Babies are fragile, yes, but it's no use worrying. Whatever happens happens, and we will love and care for him with everything we have, yes?"

"I know." He averted his eyes.

She patted his cheek. "It's all right... We're both nervous is all."

"And excited."

She pulled his hands to her growing abdomen. "Yes. Excited."

He couldn't help fretting still. As the summer wore on, they worked on their plot of land to grow potatoes. She insisted on planting flowers, too, which Raoul took a fondness to. Often she would wake up from naps and peer out the window to find him nurturing the soil, then smile to herself, imagining a little figure beside him, helping water the earth and plant the seeds.

"How are we going to care for her?" he asked as they planted more flowers outside one day.

Christine brushed the soil from her hands onto her apron, then drew a hand across her forehead.

"We have quite enough," she replied, sitting back to admire the bright blossoms. "Mamma's money can keep us comfortable until you find work you like, and I want to farm a little more next year, so we can grow a lot of our own food... We're fine."

He rubbed the back of his neck, then sighed, "I want to go back to sea. I want to support us like that."

"I'm afraid of you doing that," she replied, patting the soil. "It's dangerous-"

"Just by the coast. I'll stay near here. I won't go whaling or anything like that."

"I understand... It's the perfect place for you, but that doesn't mean the thought doesn't frighten me, of you caught in a storm or-"

He kissed her cheek. "I know what I'm doing. I've done it for years and come back safe and sound."

"I know you have..."

She dug another hole for the flowers.

...

When the bright grass of summer began to brown, Christine felt her child for the first time kicking and squirming inside her. Everything was prepared in advance, and it could be two months or four before the baby arrived. They were ready, though, certainly Christine.

"I look like a seal," she lamented one morning.

"Seals are adorable," Raoul replied, kissing her forehead. "I just saw the loveliest one sunbathing on a rock outside."

"I feel like a seal," she moaned, extending her arms out where she lay on the sofa. "My feet are swollen up, too, and then I wake up at night because he beats me up on the inside."

"Have you tried lying down differently?"

"Don't ask me questions like that when you know very well that I have," she retorted irritably. "I know I used to say that he was dancing- especially when I sing- but heavens above, I think he must be irritated with me most days!"

"Is it painful?"

"Not exactly... Oh, I just want him here! It's maddening not to be able to hold him and see him."

"Her."

"Oh, you," she said, nudging him playfully.

He kneeled down and began kneading her swollen feet. She sighed in relief, then swallowed.

"Have a been a good wife lately?" she asked.

He glanced up at her. "What on earth do you mean?"

"Well... I'm always irritable, and I never feel like... making love anymore-"

"Shh, blame the baby."

She started crying softly. "I shouldn't get upset with you like I do-"

"You're just tired because the baby won't let you sleep," he explained, now quite gifted at dealing with her strange moods, "and your poor feet swell up, and your baby decides what you eat. Like yesterday, remember? The chocolate herring?"

"You have no idea how... good it actually tasted," she laughed through tears. Then she sobbed out, "I love you so much, Raoul."

"I love you, too... and I don't require anything but that, you know."

"You're the most wonderful husband in the whole world."

"That may not be wholly true-"

"Accept it. I'm irritable, now go on and say yes, that you are."

"All right, I am. And you are the most wonderful wife."

She smiled, then glanced out the window in thought. Her eyes welled up one last time.

"I don't wake up because of the baby," she whispered, her voice trembling.

"What do you mean?"

"I-I thought that... it was better that way."

"Than what wakes you up?"

She swallowed.

"My dear?" he asked, reaching to place his hand on hers.

"Every night, I..." Her voice trembled. "I'm trapped underground, in that... awful room, and the door is locked, and I'm waiting for him to come back and open it, yet I don't ever want him to open it, because I'm afraid... A-and it smells musty and the lights keep going on and off, over and over-"

"Why haven't you told me you've been having nightmares too?" he demanded, cupping her face in his hands. "Christine, I worry about you! So you being perfectly all right is a lie? Just so that you can coddle me when I think I'm in an African forest made of mirrors and wake up screaming?"

"I didn't want to trouble you," she replied weakly as he ran his thumb tenderly across her jaw. "I thought... if you thought I wasn't having moments where I remember, then... I could care for you better. I know what it's like to lose your closest family."

"We're not in this alone. I don't want to be coddled and pitied for the same thing you went through-"

"I wasn't tortured-"

"You were worse than tortured!" he insisted. "At least I was free in that torture chamber, free to live or die at my own hand, but you... I can't imagine. You didn't have any say at all."

"It wasn't so terrible-"

"Don't you dare say that. You nearly killed yourself, don't you say that it wasn't that terrible just to make me feel like I should be the one being comforted. We both need it."

She nodded, though her voice trembled. "But I want to be the strong one. It makes me like... like I'm-"

"In control?"

Her eyes trailed along the floorboards. He lifted her face to his.

"You're too kind for your own good," he said, "but I love you too much to make you bear such a burden."

He then brought her lips to his so passionately that Mamma Valerius blushed where she sat in the armchair near the fire. She averted her gaze down to her knitting and smiled.

Christine admitted her nightmares after that, and found that, as she began to confide them, they grew more and more frail. One day, she hoped, they would fade away entirely.

As she swelled with child, she began to stop insisting on going out, instead choosing to tidy up the nursery in the corner of the bedroom, or read books as she ate strange concoctions that her child insisted upon. She and Raoul were anxious- ready, yet anxious. He stayed home rather than searching for little jobs to work so that he could tend to her. Mamma Valerius couldn't do so, but she was good company.

"I never wanted children," she said one afternoon in the fall.

Christine and her were knitting before the fire. Raoul read a book beside them.

"My husband was distraught when he realized I was barren," Mamma continued, "but I was so relieved. I was afraid of giving birth, to be honest. All these women complained of the immense pain of it- but, of course, they always added that the joy afterward made everything else fade. It was like, they said, that there was only them and their babies. Most said they were glad their husbands weren't allowed in the birthing room so that they could retain some dignity-"

"Oh," Christine whimpered, clutching her abdomen.

Raoul came to her side. "All right, my dear?"

"It'll pass like the others, I think," she sighed. Then she whimpered again and moaned deeply. There were tears in the corners of her eyes.

"I'm going to get a midwife," he said, pretending to be calm when his mind was imagining a thousand horrible scenarios.

"I think so," Christine told him, clutching her middle. "Oh, be quick!"

The door slammed behind him. He had barely thrown on his jacket.

"Slow breathing," Mamma Valerius offered from her armchair. "Calm breaths, my dear."

Christine's whimpers and moans grew more frequent, and she lied down on the sofa, unmoving in her pains. Time ticked by. Mamma Valerius was too weak to stand on her own, so she could only comfort with words as Christine's contractions grew longer and faster with the passing hours.

"Where is Raoul?" she pleaded after what felt like an eternity.

"I don't know, dear," Mamma replied, knitting briskly to calm herself. "He'll be here... Slow breaths still."

"I think it's coming now. I think it is! I'm going to deliver alone!"

"Panicking won't help-"

"I want Raoul! I want my husband here! I just want him here, not even a midwife!"

She cried out in pain just as the door opened. In cake an elderly woman with spectacles and a mussed gray chignon. Her face was flushed. She was accompanied by a pale Raoul, who rushed to Christine's side, stammering apologies. The midwifepushed the spectacles up her nose as she opened up a black bag.

"Can you move?" she asked Christine without any formalities.

"No," Christine whimpered in reply. "I can't!"

"Then everyone out, into the kitchen until we're done- but you, husband, bring towels. Why she wasn't in bed..."

Raoul assisted Mamma Valerius into the kitchen with him, then began retrieving towels with trembling hahds. The midwife positioned Christine and undressed her. Christine was in too much pain to be embarrassed.

"You've had an easy time," the midwife said as she examined the baby's progress.

Christine whimpered, "It doesn't... mnh... feel like it."

"Well, you have. Baby's coming out almost all on his own."

"His?"

"Well, I don't know yet. They come out head first, when they're not stubborn... Now help him out. He's quite persistent. Little breaths."

"I'm so tired-"

"Tired? I just helped a woman birth twins for eight hours! Don't you want to see this child?"

"More than... a-anything-"

"Then push!"

Raoul came in at that very moment with towels. He nearly fainted, but the midwife shooed him out once he had set them down. Christine cried out to help with the pain, and the midwife coaxed her on, then, without warning, faded into silence.

Christine panted. "Something... wrong?"

The midwife's face had drained of all color. She stared at whatever lay between Christine's legs, stared with all the horror of one seeing a ghost. Christine's body propelled her to continue, unbidden, and a cry followed: the precious cry of a newborn.

The midwife did not move. She had become still as marble, and was the same hue.

Raoul pushed open the door from the kitchen upon hearing the wailing infant. His face was alight, but it fell upon seeing the midwife simply staring at his child, which was hidden by Christine's body.

"Is she all right?" he asked.

The midwife packed her bag without a word and rushed out the door. Raoul ran after her as Christine pulled herself up to see what she had borne.

Her blood froze. A ghost lay between her legs. A ghost with no nose, parchment skin, and a skeletal frame. She had given birth to what she had tried to forget.

She stared blankly at the naked infant, still bound by its cord, screaming its lungs out. Her limbs were paralyzed.

He was cold. Her instincts came in a sudden rush. Her child was crying and cold, so, still in shock, she wrapped him up in towels and pulled him to her chest.

"Heaven help me," she whispered.

Her child quieted on her chest. The afterbirth came, further increasing the overpowering odor of blood and sweat.

Raoul entered then, rubbing away the sweat on his forehead.

"Please tell me it's not what I think it is," he whispered. "It can't be."

She shook her head, though she didn't truly understand what he meant, nor how this had occurred. He came over to her, and she shielded the baby.

"Don't look," she pleaded. "I don't want you to see h-him..."

"Then he did rape you?" Raoul said, clenching his fists until they turned white. Tears burned his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"No, no," she pleaded. "I can't explain-"

"You're tired. You're tired, a-and you need to go to bed- you poor, poor thing-"

"I want a bath."

"Yes, anything... I'll put him upstairs for you-"

"No, no," she replied, turning away from him. "Would you bring down the bassinet?"

There was nothing else to do but what she said. Raoul ignored Mamma Valerius questions, and even told her to keep her mouth shut. He knew he wasn't himself. His wife had possibly been abused and never told him. To think that he had not killed Erik himself, in some way! He should have found a way to do it himself! And Christine had kissed that man, kissed him! He didn't deserve the dirt off her shoes.

But the child wasn't to blame. Raoul knew that much. It wasn't the child's fault, its birth.

He took the bassinet down to Christine and had her place the child inside. Then he prepared her a bath by the fire, filling it with bubbles in the hope that it might alleviate her distress.

But imagine, he thought in horror, living with her captor's child! One that resembled him completely! Had he hurt her while they were in the torture chamber? Had he, Raoul, been so close to her, yet helpless as she was? And she had never told him how terribly she had been hurt by that horrible monster of a man...

He helped her into her bath, his eyes soft with pity. Her knees were weak, so he supported her as she sunk down into the foamy water. He went to remove the soiled cushions from the sofa, and threw the whole of it outside.

Christine was pensive for a while. She stared down at the suds surrounding her and waited for them to pop. Then the wail of the infant beside herinterrupted her thoughts.

"What are we going to name him?" Christine whispered. "I was going to name him after my father, but... I-I don't know now..."

"We can decide later," Raoul replied, brushing back her hair with his thumb. "We can talk later about everything... I'm... so sorry."

She nodded weakly, glancing down at her knees above the water. The child continued wailing, and Christine requested to be helped out of the bath. Raoul assisted her entirely, even drying her off and sliding a nightgown over her head. She sat down in an armchair, her arms outstretched.

"Bring him to me," she whispered. "Please."

Raoul obliged, though he couldn't bear to look down at what he carried. To his surprise, Christine brightened as the bundle was placed in her arms.

"Hello, my little one," she said frailly. "I-I love you... He never heard that, but now you have..."

She kissed the baby's forehead and cried as he did at the foreign sensation.

"I love you..."