There he was. Running around and giggling. Dark hair bounced and blew in the breeze. Hair like John's.

She smiled as she watched him but felt the skin around her smile slacken. Something about the hair changed. It was no longer as dark as John's. Now it bore distinctive auburn tones and caught he sunlight differently. Something about the way it moved tugged at the back of her memory but it was like something in the corner of the eye. Blink too quickly or turn toward it and the image vanished.

It persisted in her thoughts, darkening the clouds in her vision and tightening in her chest like an ever-pressing sensation of dread. It made Anna call out to the boy but when his face turned to her she gasped. The eyes. Those same eyes that leered at her, watched her, tracked her… They echoed in the eyes of the boy now approaching her. The facets of his face now morphed and gained the qualities and details she knew so well from trying to avoid.

And now he was no longer a boy. Now he was a man and standing in front of her before she had a chance to move. She had not even seen him coming.

His hands gripped her arms tightly. So tightly she could not get away. Like in the stairwell of her building with Gwen and her body froze as it did then. The image vanished but the fear only settled deeper into her stomach as she turned to try and escape his clutches.

But he was gone.

Then something shifted against Anna and she flinched. An arm wrapped around her and all she could smell was the stale choke of alcohol. The rough surface of the concrete at her face scratched and nicked before the air drove from her lungs as she hit the floor. The pain and blackness had her kicking out and trying to scream.

But just like then she could not find her footing. Could not escape it. Could not even scream.

And there was no one to hear.

"Anna! Anna!" Hands settled on her and she batted them away, escaping the clawing containment of the sheets to get out of the bed. Her feet hit the ground and she stumbled slightly, catching herself on the nightstand and pushing toward the wall to breathe through the threat of hyperventilation. Her eyes finally focused and she recognized John sitting in the middle of the bed with his hands raised in surrender, appearing as the only survivor in her battle with the bedclothes. "Anna? It's me, John. I won't touch you, I promise. Just… Are you alright? Do you need something? Can I get you something?"

She leaned back against the wall, holding to her pajamas as her chest rose and fell rapidly, and focused on John to bring the rest of the details of the room into relief. Putting a hand over her heart she recognized the thud and then reached for the edge of the bed to sit down on it. John did not reach for her again, only shifted so he could stay in her line of sight after he flipped the switch on the lamp beside the bed. Anna squinted at the light but used it to track John as he tried to not move behind her but stay in her eyeline.

"I'm fine."

"Are you?"

Anna forced herself to nod, loosening her clutch on her shirt and noting the deep wrinkles in it from the claw of her hand. "Just fine."

"You were calling out in your sleep and I was trying to wake you up." Anna could only nod and John leaned over to turn on the other bedside lamp to give them even more light. "Is it the baby?"

"No, he's…" Anna put a hand over her abdomen and noted the barest of sensations there. "He's fine."

"Are you alright?"

Anna swallowed, stopping herself from nodding and closed her eyes. "No, I don't think so."

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" John immediately raised his hands when Anna looked at him. "You don't have to. I just wanted to be here if you-"

"I was dreaming about Daniel." Anna did not look at John, although she opened her eyes. John moved to a chair across from the bed, giving her a distance she did not realize she wanted until her shoulders relaxed. They stiffened almost as soon as she realized it happened but John extended a hand.

"It's alright. I understand. You need your space and that's fine. Just… Take all the space you need."

"Thank you." Anna arranged herself more fully on the bed and took the edge of the blanket in her hands. It manipulated easily in her hold and the weight of it grounded her in reality. "I was dreaming about Daniel. About what he might look like when he's older and running around. About him just being happy."

"Okay." John shifted the chair closer to the bed and reached out a hand toward hers but Anna flinched for a moment. He immediately went to retract his hand but she covered it, pulling it into her lap and drawing him closer over the mattress and out of the chair.

"I don't want you that far away."

"I'll be as close or as far as you need me to be. This is all on your terms." John took a moment before he spoke again, the gentle run of his thumb over the skin of her palm soothing her. "But that part of your dream seems happy."

"It was." Anna's grip on his hand tightened. "It was so very happy John. He looked so beautiful in my dreams."

"He will be beautiful." John smiled at her, continuing the motions on her hand. "But that also doesn't sound like the end of the story."

"It's not." Anna swallowed, closing her eyes again. But the images flashed there and she opened them with a startled intake of breath. John stopped his motions on her hand.

"Was it-"

"No, please keep doing what you were doing." John started again and Anna focused on their hands to distract herself enough to tell the rest of the story. "But then he… He changed."

"What do you mean?"

"It was like…" Anna shook her head, "It's hard to explain but at first he looked like you. Even though that's impossible and he couldn't look like you but he did."

"I'd like that." John's voice was soft but Anna heard it. "I'd love for a child who looked like me. Just the good bits you know."

Anna put her other hand on his face, getting him to look at her. "All your bits are good John."

He kissed the inside of her palm. "That's not the end of the story either though, is it?"

She shook her head and dropped her hand to support herself on the bed. "He changed. His hair looked more auburn and caught the light differently."

"Was that bad?"

"It… It felt odd. Like I should remember it but then…" Anna shuddered, "Then everything about him changed. His demeanor, the way he looked at me, how he sounded. It… It felt wrong. It felt like he was something ugly. Not in appearance but his soul was dark. Like he meant me harm."

"Is that what woke you?"

"No." Anna closed her eyes, forcing a few deep breaths before she spoke again. "He came toward me and grabbed me. It was like the day you helped me move, when Alex grabbed me in the stairwell. It felt like that and I froze. I couldn't move, I couldn't get away and-"

"Anna," John's voice broke through, forcing her to calm as she looked at him. "It's alright. It was just a dream and you're here. You're safe and no one's going to harm you, I promise."

Her breathing slowed, the moment of rising tension dissipated with John's continued stroking of her hand. It was another minute of silence before she spoke again. "And then he was gone but then something else was there. All I could smell was alcohol, like at the restaurant when Green landed on me, and it was the smell from that night in Rome. It was like I was there again, smelling and going through it all over again."

"That's not unusual for trauma." John advised, "We've all got triggers we don't realize we have after things scar us."

"Triggers?"

John nodded, "When I was newly married my wife and I got into a car accident. It was so quick I didn't even think about it but then there I was, driving, and the brake lights in front of me go red. I panicked for a moment because I saw those same brake lights from the night we crashed." He paused, studying Anna's hand. "It took me months of driving to force myself to get over it."

"But you did."

"That was a car accident Anna. What you've endured is far different." John adjusted on the bed, freezing when Anna flinched, and waited until she nodded to move closer to her. "Your brain will run through it when similar things happen. Green holding you in the stairwell triggered a reaction. Him falling on you at the restaurant did the same thing. They're primal, involuntary responses that relate back to the earliest parts of our brain."

"I don't think it's just that." Anna scrunched her hand in the blanket before releasing it to bring her trembling hand to John's. "I think Alex was the one who did it… In Rome."

"You think Green attacked you?"

Anna nodded. "The feeling of him touching me, the smell of him drunk, the relative height when he fell on me to when… When it happened… It all fits."

John sat for a moment before meeting her eyes. "When I touched you, as you were waking up, did you think I was him?"

"I don't know. I know I thought something was still grabbing me and-" Anna stopped. "I'm not it matters."

She went to pull into herself but John kept his hand in hers. "Please don't."

"What?"

"You're going to say or think that you're broken or that you're somehow damaged because of what happened to you and you're not." John put his other hand over hers. "You're not spoiled and you never will be. Not to me. Never to me."

"Thank you." Anna bit at her lip, shaking her head. "What if it was him?"

"We could request a DNA test, to be sure."

"How would we do that?"

"I told you about the Sergeant in my office the day of the sonogram right?" Anna nodded and John continued. "If, as the interview suggests. Green's thinking about trying to press charges for assault or battery or what have you, then I could counter press. We could get his DNA."

"How?"

"The bottle, used in the attack, might have some of his DNA on it." John sighed, "And you got the paternity test done so if half of the DNa matches then we'll know it's him."

"Then what?"

"That's up to you."

"Up to me?"

"You decide what you want to do with that information." John reached a hand forward to rest on her abdomen. "Legally I'm the father of this child."

"And I've not rights to him."

"We'll take care of that paperwork the moment we've got all the ducks in a row for it." John soothed again, smiling at her. "But you need to know that no matter what the results say, this baby's not his. It never will be. He's got no claim to it."

"If he tries to fight for paternal rights, says I took the baby without his knowledge then we'll-"

"He'd have to deal with the consequences of how you got pregnant with his baby first." John twerked his shoulder, "I don't know about you but I'm sure a man fighting to keep himself out of prison for rape's not going to be too interested in the idea that he'll then also fight the battle for paternity."

"And if I do nothing?"

"I'll support whatever you decide Anna, it's your choice."

"I want…" Anna closed her eyes, as if to steel herself for the next words to leave her mouth. "I want to find out. I need to know."

"Okay." John reached his hand forward to her face and she did not flinch away as he held to her cheek, barely putting any weight into the hold at all. "What do you need me to do?"

Anna covered his hand with hers. "Just… Just continue being wonderful."

"I can do that." John closed the distance between them. "Is it alright if I kiss you? Because I don't want you to be scared."

"I'm not scared." She put her forehead to his. "I'm with you."

John tipped his head to bring their lips together but drew back a moment later. "I've a suggestion that… Well, you may not like it and you might actually disagree very strongly with it."

"What?" Anna frowned, moving away enough to get a good look at his face.

"We should get married."

Anna shook her head. "We can't."

"Hear me out?" Anna waited a moment and then nodded. "I think the best thing for us to do is to provide a good case, in the event that Green decides he'll fight the battle on two fronts, that we're the better options. Getting married will certainly provide a stable home environment and, since I already adopted Daniel, it shows we're raising him in the same home. Green can't claim the same."

"Will that work?"

"It's worth the try." John let out a breath. "I… I don't want to be on the sidelines if something happens with you. I want to be there, protecting you if necessary and supporting you always, in case any of this goes south."

"You'd do that?"

"Of course." John blinked and Anna noted the hint of tears in his eyes. "I love you, Anna, and I want to be beside you. Through thick and thin."

"Thicker and thicker lately." Anna snorted and they both looked down at her abdomen before laughing together.

"But if I'm not married to you then I've no right to help you. I've no right to be kept informed and I could be called on to testify against you, if that ever happened. I don't want that to be what happens. I don't want to watch you from a distance without being able to help you." John chewed the inside of his cheek. "And since your blood relatives don't exactly seem interested in being your next of kin, I want to be that for you. I want to be the person responsible for you the way I'm already the one responsible for Daniel."

Anna moved John's hand from her face to under her shirt so it could sit skin-to-skin on her abdomen. "So we're responsible for Daniel."

"Exactly."

"Then," Anna kept John's hand there. "I accept."

"You do?"

"I do." Anna gave a little laugh at the unhindered glee on John's face. "I want to marry you, John Bates. I want to protect our baby with you."

"I want to grow old with you. I want to raise our children with you. And I want to build a house with you that we'll live in for the rest of our lives." John went to kiss her again but stopped short, "Can-"

"You don't need to ask." Anna pulled him forward, her hands slipping from his grip to bring his lips to hers with a firm hold on his cheeks. "Love me John."

"With pleasure." John's hand under her shirt helped lift it over her head and he broke their kiss to put his lips on her breasts.

Anna moaned, holding him to her and accepting the gentle nudge of his body on hers to lower her to the mattress. The weight of her breasts changed, growing proportionally to her expanding belly, and the tingle of her more acute nerves sent her body writhing as John used the increase sensitivity to her advantage. The brush of his mouth on her, the flick of his tongue, and the massage of his hand sent so many signals firing so quickly to her brain that all Anna could do was arch and hold him closer to her.

One of her hands bunched in his pajama shirt and John broke from sucking red marks over her breasts to haul it over his head. The temporary reprieve allowed Anna time to breathe but when John's haired chest rested on her already perked nipples she let out a whimper. John paused but Anna's finger pulled at his shoulders and sides to bring him closer so they moved together. Nervous twitches in her body turned to runs of contentment as John's lips took a softer approach to her collar and neck and even over her jaw but one of his hands brought her to life with a quest beneath her pajama bottoms and toward her knickers.

They worked the tracksuit bottoms away to leave her in just her knickers and John took his lips from her jaw. A quick kiss to her lips was not the satisfaction she wanted but before Anna could prop herself up sufficiently on her forearms, John's fingers hooked under the elastic of her knickers and drew them down her legs. His hands glided back up her legs and spread them enough so he could place a kiss just above her clit and Anna clutched at the blankets under her before laying back on the mattress to try breathing normally.

But with John's tongue working over her, sweeping along her swelling folds or swirling around her already aroused clit, she just tried not to cry out loud enough to wake Mrs. Bates. His tongue pointed and entered her, teasing around the delicate nerves already aroused by his work at her breasts, and only drew back to run his tongue through the length of her before sucking at her clit while his fingers entered to finish the job his tongue started. It took no time at all for Anna to come around his fingers but John did not stop.

His tongue and fingers worked in tandem this time. It was as if a trained musician had worked through the piece once, to note the possible locations for trouble or to master the cadences of the intonation before they set to play it again. This time John's masterful work crooked his fingers inside her, stroking along the line that hand her arching her back and quivering around him, but he pulled back before she could release. Then he would set his tongue to work as if seeking to drink her dry and then retract right as she teetered toward the edge. Every motion and function of his fingers seemed determined to bring her closer and closer before shifting the finish line just a little further away. It tightened every muscle in her body so that when John finally helped her release, with no more than the merest quirk of his finger, Anna shattered completely around him.

As her conscious mind sought for logic and her own location in the universe, she noted John licking over her. He finished, as if making sure to leave no mess behind, and leaned back to shuck off his pajama bottoms. But just as he leaned over her he paused, teething his lip.

"What?" Anna managed, her breath barely returning to her lungs enough to inflate them. "What is it?"

"It might be more comfortable for you on your side." John nodded toward her abdomen. "Less stress on the baby and you."

"Which direction?"

John nodded and Anna went on her side as he curved around her back. "Is this alright? I don't want you to feel…"

"Trapped?" Anna looked back over her shoulder at him and pulled one of his arms around her to hold at her abdomen. "Just talk to me and I'll be fine. I just need to know you're the one there."

"I can do that." John kissed behind her ear and allowed the hand at her belly to shift around to her hip before steering her leg back over his. "What do you want me to tell you Anna?"

"Whatever you like."

"Do you want to know how stunning you are?" He let his teeth nip at her earlobe while his hand continued down her leg to hold it securely to his hip. "How when I see you in the morning, when I get up for the clinic, I always wake up ten minutes before I need to so I can watch you sleep?"

"Really?" Anna scooted as close to John as she could and keened when he ran his erection through her soaked center.

"Really. Or how I sometimes forget I'm eating dinner because I'm just enthralled listening to what you have to say or watching how you smile?" John kissed down the line of her jaw, shifting slightly to see her eyes as his hips allowed him to continue gliding between her folds. "You're… Enthralling, captivating, and more incredible than I could ever have imagined."

"John," Anna's hand settled on his chin, pulling him closer to kiss his lips as he entered her. Her gasp broke them apart and John waited until she spoke to continue. "Please don't stop."

"Never." He twisted against her and she pressed her forehead to his cheek, fingers holding tightly to the other side of his jaw to keep him close, and maneuvered to open herself as much as she could in her position to him.

Unlike his earlier taunting ministrations, this was gentle and delicate. Every thrust aimed to find those places that tempted her out of herself and toward more pleasure but did not press her. Each stroke and pull guided her along the path to find the pleasure she sought without shoving her forward or forcing it on her. And when his hand wrapped over hers to bring them to her clit as he drove into her again, Anna followed the invitation.

They found pleasure together when she cried out and John's release spun it further so the rippling cling of her walls around him perpetuated the sensations in her body. His breath blew hot against her neck as his forehead stuck to her shoulder when their sweat mingled there. But Anna just ran her fingers into his hair to further muss it before shifting them.

John was away from her in a flash, almost nervous in his attention to her, and Anna put out a hand. "I'm five months along, not injured."

"I don't-"

Anna laughed, holding his hands as she lay on her side in the other direction, now facing him. "You are the sweetest, more caring, and possibly most neurotic future father I'll ever meet."

"Plan on meeting many of those do you?"

"Maybe." Anna shrugged, "I'm sure they've got support groups for single mothers or something and there's always the chance I meet a single dad at a day care or something and we strike up a conversation that leads to him whisking me away to live in his farmhouse."

"Farmhouse?"

"I was riffing and I'm not great at it." Anna sighed, her eyelids fluttering. "But I couldn't find anyone better than you. Not ever."

"You mean you don't go to bed every night and dream of a better man?"

"That'd be a little impossible." Anna held John's gaze, "Because there aren't any. At least not to me."

"I'm not perfect."

"Good thing because neither am I." She found his hand, curling their fingers together in an confusing mesh of digits. "But we'll be good together. We'll be happy together and we'll try to be happy together, which makes all the difference really."

"We've got a lot of reasons to be happy." John kissed her fingers and then studied them. "I'll need to get you a ring."

"And have to resize it five times in the next year?"

"Well," John gave her the smallest of mischievous grins. "Carnival rings can be sized when you pry the metal apart. It makes them weaker but it'll fit until it falls off your finger."

"Not sure I like the idea of that greenish tinge."

"That's alright." John kept their fingers connected, "When it gets too hard to wash out we'll get rid of the rings."

"You remembered."

"Of course I did, I love you." John kissed her, "Do you want me to wait for you to fall asleep?"

"Please." Anna scooted closer to him, tucking into his side as he moved to his back. "Then I'll only have good dreams."

"I hope so." He kissed the top of her head. "Just dream about me."

Anna laughed into his shoulder.