Epilogue: Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway…
A fire docilely burned in the fireplace, a chilled tumbler of whiskey dangled loosely in her hand, and a record of a woman huskily singing slow jazz songs crackled from the corner of the room. Alana was sunk heavily into the plush armchair in front of the warm glow; the aching in her body had finally ebbed with a generous dose of Vicoden and she felt a little far away.
When the doctor had returned downstairs to Margot, she'd found the other woman had summoned a lawyer and the Vergers officially closed ranks. The lawyer, an older woman with an imperious expression, had arrived with the expediency that a lot of money can buy, looking an odd combination of fresh in her crisp, gray suit and tired around the eyes having been called straight from her bed. The late hour didn't stop the lawyer from informing Crawford under no circumstances would her clients be submitted to anymore questioning, citing they needed to rest after such a traumatic ordeal. If the woman had been expecting a battle, she didn't get one from him. Jack distractedly agreed with her with a foot out the door, though asserted that he would be in touch, and then hurried off to Wolftrap, Virginia no doubt.
The other officers and crime scene technicians swarmed around regardless of them, like a blubbing river rushing around stones. They were met with no resistance as they stepped away from it all. Margot helped Alana up to their rooms, at times nearly lifting her up some of the stairs to assist her in getting there. And she only stayed in the bedroom long enough to stoke the fire to life and see to Alana getting medication before dashing off to speak more with the lawyer who had been left to oversee the investigation. The brunette considered protesting at being left, tucked away in their quarters like a fragile thing; she resented it even. But she was too worn around the edges to make the effort. She let Margot slip out of the room with a lingering kiss and a promise to be back soon. Alana moved slowly in her absence as she changed into black silk pajamas, wrapped her self in a matching robe, and started the record before settling down with the whiskey she poured to chase down the pills. Finally she could rest and her thoughts began to drift.
Alana first noticed the constricted feeling that usually sat in her chest was gone. There was no prickly sensation of being watched or gnawing worry in her stomach or existential dread either that had become apart of these quiet moments alone. The next minute and all the ones that followed were no longer borrowed time since she'd settled her debt with Hannibal. Her mind was her own, not consumed by where the cannibal might be lurking, by what Mason could be nefariously muttering behind a closed door, and what her next gambit should be in their three-way death match. In an unknown instant tonight, between cutting some rope and drowning a monster, everything vanished leaving her feeling calm and invincible. She sipped her whiskey and wondered when Margot would be back.
She had to wait a good while longer, the time getting later and later or earlier depending on how you looked at it. Alana was turning the record over a second time when Margot emerged through the sliding side door already changed into her pajamas and robe. In one hand she held a green, frost-covered bottle of champagne and in the other two champagne flutes. She held both items aloft, "Everyone is gone for now. I thought we'd celebrate."
"Margot, we don't have to do this tonight." Alana said with a gentle wariness. Margot had been through hell, old wounds torn open and new ones freshly carved out. She thought once the last remaining Verger came into their rooms she'd collapse once again into the despair and Alana would hold her until she was ready to come out of it. But Margot stood upright and with a confident ease before her.
The heiress ignored her statement as she untwisted the wire from the around the cork, "The lawyer says there is enough red tape to cut through that the church can't immediately seize the estate. It gives us plenty of time to conceive, for you to conceive. I don't trust anyone else to carry the baby. I know it could be difficult-"
Alana cut her off, moving back into the heat of hearth to stand in front of Margot. "Of course I want to have our baby but we don't have to talk about this now. It's okay to take the time to grieve."
"And I will. But not tonight." She shook her head. "Mason has stolen enough from me, he can't have this moment as well."
They had a half-hearted stand off, Alana studying Margot and Margot calmly gazing back at her, until she nodded in agreement. A smile twitched on the auburn-haired woman's lips as she popped the cork free, a fizzy stream of bubbles splattering onto the carpet. She poured the champagne and passed Alana one of the glasses. Casting the bottle aside to an end table, Margot raised her own glass in a wry toast, "To the victor go the spoils."
"To seeing our monsters vanquished." Alana said in turn, recalling the impromptu toast they'd share the first night they met. Margot grinned now, devilishly with abandoned, and so did Alana as the rims of their glasses chimed together. She only had a few sips of the tart, crisp drink before setting it aside, taking Margot's glass away too. She stepped closer to her fiancé, pressing into her as she rested one hand on Margot's shoulder and interlaced their fingers together with her other. Margot wrapped her free arm around her waist as they began to sway to the slow, swanky beat of the music, the deep voice of the woman on the record sang about drinking black coffee and smoking cigarettes while she waited for her lover to come home.
"You should be resting." Margot protested lightly as they had their first dance. Alana remembered more from the first night they met, the brief instant when Margot had held her up when she'd almost fallen and how familiar yet different it was to this moment now. And how now they would have their whole lives to hold each other up; the thought was exhilarating peaceful and serenely breathtaking.
"No more stolen moments." Alana hummed, her lips brushing at the nape of Margot's neck lazily and the arm around her waist tightened. They danced silently and contentedly for a while, silhouetted in flames and relishing in the heat of the fire and each other.
Margot asked suddenly with a far away thoughtfulness, "Can you live with it? The darkness we created in ourselves?"
Alana breathed in deeply, taking a moment to think about the proposed question. In between the indestructibility and freedom and victorious feelings was the darkness that Margot spoke of but it didn't fracture and break her, nor did it repel her from Margot. Instead it served as bond that went deeper than she could fathom, like the swathe of black that the stars needed to shine in the night. Her thoughts brought a favorite quote to mind. "Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway… I can live with anything as long as it's with you. I love you, Margot."
"And I love you." Margot said with quiet fervor, her lips rushing to find Alana's, to join with her other half. They kissed with unhurried passion, taking their time to taste their adoration and faint traces of champagne, the music around them swelling as the night blurred into morning. And they greeted the dawning of their new era entangled and in love.
In the days following Mason's death there was always something to do; meetings with the board about the future of the Verger Company, consultations with lawyers, doctor appointments, hastily signed marriage certificates at city hall, funeral arrangements to be made twice over.
Mason Verger's funeral was a grandiose, tawdry affair in a magnificent cathedral with hundreds of people in attendance with crocodile tears in their eyes and offering their insincerely deep condolences. Margot tolerated the charade, barely acknowledging the processions around her and hiding her dry-eyed indifference behind dark sunglasses with Alana stoically supporting her at her side. Then there was the true funeral with only two in attendance on a cold but sunny hill on the grounds of the Verger estate. The grounds keeper had to bring in special equipment to cut into the frozen earth that droned and shattered the quiet morning while Margot and Alana watched. Margot held to mahogany chest to her breast where the body on their infant had been placed, wrapped in linens intricately embroidered with a pastoral scene with lambs and flowers that had been in the family for years, along with some other heirlooms a ring with the Verger crest, a stuffed rabbit that had been Margot's when she was a baby, and a note Alana wrote that she tucked in next to him that even Margot hadn't read.
There were no hymns sung or sermons given about a life tragically taken too soon; no lines of mourners to wail in grief or overflowing bouquets of carnations and chrysanthemums around the grave. Instead the wind whistled softly through the tree branches, silent, hot tears ran down cool cheeks, and a bundle of forget-me-nots were dropped into the small, deep hole onto the makeshift casket. Kneeling over opening in the earth Alana and Margot took turns sprinkling dirt over the resting place as their final goodbye and steadily walking off the hill as dusk began to fall.
The issue that the women had not anticipated dealing with was Hannibal Lecter. They assumed Hannibal would disappear into the night, but they quickly learned in a bizarre move he'd turned himself in at Will Graham's homestead with the vague assertion that he wanted Will to always be able to find him. Alana thought she would have some time before the Chesapeake Ripper called in a favor, but he meant to collect immediately it would seem. He wouldn't speak to any law enforcement official or psychologist except for her so she met with him. Together they carefully and surreptitiously laid the groundwork that would be his defense in court. Both of them keeping their promise; Hannibal claiming responsibility for Mason's death and Alana corroborating his insanity to help him avoid the death penalty.
Then Alana suddenly became pregnant quicker than they planned for and Margot put an abrupt end to their in-person visits, though they still kept in contact over the phone and with Hannibal's favorite means of correspondence letters. They had the embryo tested as soon as they could to ensure it had no genetic conditions and what the gender would be. When they received the news it was perfectly health and to be a boy, Margot absconded them to France, scheduling a private jet that afternoon to take them and Applesauce to a country chateau not far from the city of Paris to have the best doctors oversee her pregnancy. On the plane ride across the Atlantic, Margot slid a large diamond ring on her finger and curled herself around Alana with a small smile and look of awe in her eyes. She splayed her hand across the doctor's abdomen for the duration of the trip, already unable to keep her hands off of her still flat stomach.
The next nine months were tense and wonderful, joy tinged with sadness, bittersweet and simply sweet. Alana half expected the pregnancy to just happen to her, a necessary, foreign process to be inflicted to insure their victory, but she was relieved to feel the muted stirring in her chest of connection and love for the baby growing inside her. It wasn't overwhelming but enough. And with Margot doting over and adoring her pregnant wife everything would be perfect at times as spring turned into summer in the French countryside. But sometimes when Margot gazed at her swelling belly her eyes would become distant and somber, remembering the baby they left behind or that she herself would never be able to carry a child though they never discussed it. Then at times Alana would snap if she found Margot's attention overbearing on a certain day. She was generally apologetic after she had time to cool off though. In truth they both worried about the pregnancy, about losing the baby, about the strain it put on Alana's tenuously healing body.
Despite the mostly unspoken concerns everything progressed as it should and mostly their days were filled with a blur of peaceful times. They ate sun-kissed strawberries and cream on the veranda or walked to a pond where they could soak their feet in the cool water from the dock and Applesauce could chase the plump, white ducks. Alana tried different bread recipes while Margot sat at the kitchen table with a book, her eyes often wandering from the page to watch Alana. They reclined together on a chaise to watch the pink and orange sunset, and lying there long after the room darkened to argue playfully over baby names.
They talked about many names with great meaning, Maximilian, Magnus, Malik, though settled on a simpler name. Morgan. It meant of the sea. When it was time for him to arrive he may as well have come from the sea itself, emerging from the churning, mysterious depths of the ocean on a bed of white sea foam like a mythical child gifted to them by the gods themselves. Of course the labor had not been as easy as that but Alana managed it with her forehead pressed against Margot's and their hands clasped together tight. Then like in the release of a crashing wave their son came into the world, his cries strong as a coastal gull and christened with his mothers' sea salt tears when he was laid against Alana's bare chest. And after all the mess of birth had been washed away and flurrying motions of the doctors left the room with warm congratulations to the new parents, Margot climbed into the hospital bed with Alana, Morgan swaddled in a cream blanket and sleeping soundly in her arms. Margot stared down at the baby as if she were afraid to look away from him, murmuring thank you to Alana or whoever was listening. Alana rested her head against her wife's shoulder and let the exhaustion and contentment pull her under.
Upon initial inspection, Morgan inherited the lion's share of his looks from Alana, a shock of silky dark hair, pale skin, and crystalline blue eyes all favored his birth mother. He was not without any Verger influence though, somehow seeming to have Margot's pouting lips and the slope of her nose if one ignored that they were traits the Verger siblings had once shared. He was everything a newborn baby should be with bright, inquisitive eyes, a strong grip, and a tendency to wake up his mothers several times throughout the night. They loved him all the more fiercely for it, watching him grow and learning to interact with the world around him.
The small family stayed in France until just before Morgan turned one and then it was decided it was time to return to his ancestral home. They arrived at Muskrat Farms in time to see the trees in full, purple bloom and to smell the lilac floating on the breeze. They guardedly stepped into their home with the immense halls and intricate refinery with abated breath, worried that a stain would still mar the place. As they hovered in the grand entryway, reluctant to go in further, Morgan started to wiggle in Alana's arms demanding to be put down. He'd begun the tenuous, teetering endeavor of learning to walk and always wanted the opportunity to practice. He held onto Alana's fingers and tugged her into mansion with no hesitation. When Alana glanced back at Margot she was smiling at them like she had the secrets to the universe. Alana ticked her head indicating for her to follow and she readily did. In the end it was only a house, their place to reclaim and repaint with new memories.
In part their return that been required as there had been some unrest in the board members and rumors of a takeover. Margot easily took over the role as CEO and president of the company, eliminating any threat of a coup and asserting her unquestionable leadership with the help of Alana who proved that her knowledge of psychology was beneficial to overseeing a room full of egomaniacs as most people in their positions of power were.
The women went on like that for a few blissful years, working together and raising their son and being irrevocably in love. Then when Morgan was about to turn four and he was becoming more of a child, a robust, adventurous little boy who could illicit fond smiles from his mothers with his keen imagination, things changed. Hannibal had evaded the death penalty and had taken up residence at the Baltimore Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane still under the care of Frederick Chilton, with the cannibal being his prized patient. Unfortunately under his watch there had been one too many incidents with the capricious killer and the hospital had determined to replace him. They reached out to Dr. Bloom, asking her to takeover the monumental task of containing and taming the man she'd once known so well. She'd scoffed and prepared to decline their ludicrous offer but an envelope arrived with beautifully precise cursive that she recognized immediately. Inside was a letter from Hannibal politely hoping that she and her family had been doing well and that he looked forward to seeing her soon.
The implication was clear; Hannibal wanted her to accept the position, expected her to accept the position. Even behind bars he manipulated and schemed, like a puppet master pulling on strings he arranged people to his advantage. Alana and Margot argued about the letter, their words turning into sharp barbs in a way that they usually didn't speak to one another. Margot told her to refuse, demanded she refuse, which only served to rile Alana's resentment. After a fight that left them both raw, it came down to protecting their family. To maintain the life they created Alana knew this sacrifice needed to be made and Margot eventually had to secede to her point. Their clash of words ended in a clash of love, the heat of their anger giving way to relieved passion.
Neither woman could foresee what would be coming in the following months but wrapped in each other and a silk sheet they felt that cool invincibility returning, taking solace in knowing they would face the future together.