Tegan sleeps, fitfully at best. She is nearing the last month of her pregnancy, but her physical discomfort is nothing compared to the nightmare she is enduring.

You didn't tell the truth, Tegan.

The voice is taunting, familiar.

Hated.

You didn't tell Ace what really happened between us.

"Nothing happened!" she protests in her dream. Only a mumble emerges from her sleeping lips as her head twists from side to side, fists clenching and unclenching in the tangle she's made of her sheets.

Oh, something happened, Tegan; one merely has to look at you to tell that.

"Fine then. Rape happened," she snaps, her dream voice sounding shrilly through her mind. She is correct; rape happened, but as the voice continues to remind her, it didn't happen exactly the way she told Ace.

The way she's been trying to convince herself it happened.

"It was just once, you forced yourself on me just once," she says stubbornly. She sounds nervous and unconvincing, even to herself.

Oh no, that's not how it happened and you know it. You can't hide the truth from yourself forever, Tegan Jovanka. You and I both know what really occurred between us. Wouldn't it be terrible if one day he found out? What would he think of you then?

The sound of the Master's mocking laughter rings through her dreams, and she wakes herself with a shout and a physical start that apparently startles the baby awake as well. He kicks, hard, and her hand moves automatically in a soothing motion as she rubs her swollen abdomen.

The baby isn't the only one she's awakened. The door to her room opens, and a familiar face peeks in on her. "Tegan? Are you all right?"

"Just a nightmare, Nyssa, sorry to wake you," Tegan manages as she pulls herself shakily to her feet. "Just another nightmare."

She's lying and they both know it, but Nyssa won't push and Tegan won't give. Vivid prenatal nightmares are typical of human pregnancies, as they both know, but they also both know Tegan's dreams have been anything but typical.

Tegan brushes past Nyssa, mumbling something about a cup of tea, and feels the weight of her friend's helpless gaze on the back of her neck. She resists an urge to rub at that spot, resists an even stronger urge to break into a run, forces herself to keep to a normal pace as she turns the corner and is out of Nyssa's sight.

In the kitchen, she flicks on a light and breathes a sigh of relief, her back to the door. A cup of tea won't solve her problems, not even close, but the busy-work of getting it ready will keep her mind occupied, at least for a little while.

Long enough, she hopes, to forget the words the Master's nightmare-self whispers in her dreams.

Words she still won't acknowledge the truth of.

oOo

"I'm worried about Tegan." It was morning; Tegan had fallen back asleep, but Nyssa and her husband, Tyrel, were in the kitchen, preparing for the day's work.

"Of course you are; we both are." Tyrel turned to look at his wife, the rest of his soothing words dying in his throat. Nyssa wasn't just worried about her friend; to judge by her expression, she was frightened for her. "Nyssa, what is it?" he asked, crossing the room and taking her in his arms.

She rested her head against his chest. "The nightmares. I think there's more to them than just the pregnancy."

He leaned down and kissed the top her head. She barely reached to his collarbone, his petite, curly-haired wife, but he always teased her that she was the tallest person he knew. It was all in the way she held herself. "Do you think it's telepathic, an attack of some sort?"

She pulled away from him, just enough to offer a startled glance. "No, I just meant I think there's something bothering Tegan, something she won't talk about." Her gaze grew thoughtful. "Although I suppose we can't rule anything out; no one knows what happened to the Master after his TARDIS located a 'suitable host' for him."

"Psychic attacks aren't exactly my area of expertise," Tyrel said, somewhat at a loss as to how to proceed; he hadn't expected his wife to take his words so seriously. He should have known better; Nyssa had spent several years traveling through space and time with the Time Lord known as the Doctor, not to mention her own borderline empathic abilities; who knew what she'd witnessed during that time? Well, he did, but only to a certain degree; there were things he knew she wasn't telling him, and he respected her privacy enough not to push. She'd told him the worst of it; seeing the destruction of her home world and literal hijacking of her father's body, both atrocities committed by the renegade Time Lord called the Master, both the most painful events of her life.

Now, however, the Master had added to that list. Tyrel knew Nyssa was struggling with the fact of her friend's rape and impregnation by the Master almost as much as Tegan must be. The baby was, biologically at least, half-Trakenite. Nyssa's baby brother was about to be born; surely that was reason enough for Tegan to have nightmares. He said as much to his wife, who nodded reluctant agreement but didn't truly believe him; he could see it in her eyes. "She says she's fine, she says she doesn't want to talk to the counselor any more, so I'm not sure what else we can do for her except be there when she needs us," he urged her, pulling her into a tight embrace.

"I suppose you're right," Nyssa sighed, willing herself to believe her husband's words. Tegan was a rape victim, Tegan's pregnancy had been artificially advanced by the Master's manipulation of her personal time-stream, and both were enough to send anyone screaming over the edge. If anything, the fact that Tegan was handling it as well as she was should be a cause for quiet celebration.

"I'm sure things will be better once the baby's born, once she gets to hold her son in her arms," Tyrel said.

Nyssa kissed him, then gently disentangled herself from his embrace. "And I'm sure you're right. So off to work for both of us."

oOo

Tegan is dreaming again, a good dream this time, or so it appears. She is still pregnant in the dream, but the father is not the Master, someone she has always hated, but is instead the Doctor.

Someone she never stopped loving.

The child is a boy, named for the Doctor's assumed identity on Earth. John Jovanka-Smith. He has blonde hair and the bluest eyes she's ever seen, even bluer than those of his father. He is beautiful and healthy, and they are together, and she is happier than she's ever felt.

Until she wakes up.

This time there is no one in the living quarters to hear her, as Nyssa and Tyrel have already left for work, but there is no screaming, either. Only sobs as Tegan realizes it was nothing but a dream.

So she pulls herself from bed with dragging feet, wiping tears away with the back of her hand, sniffling, and brings herself back to the nightmare of reality.

Still sniffling, she shuffles into the bathroom and sheds her nightclothes, stepping into the shower and putting the water as hot as she can stand. The bathroom was built just for her, because she never could get used to sonics, never really felt clean unless soap and water were involved. It is one of the many things she loves Nyssa for, and Tyrel, now that she's got to know him over the last three months.

She stays there for a long time, not moving, not washing herself, just feeling the heat on her skin, until finally she forces herself to reach for the soap, to wash her body and hair, to turn off the water and wait passively for the dryer to activate. In less than a minute she is completely dry, and she steps onto the cool floor and pads into her bedroom without bothering to don the robe hanging on the back of the door. She pulls on her clothes, runs a brush through her hair, sits in front of the mirror on her vanity, then pauses in the act of reaching for her makeup.

"Why am I bothering?" she asks her reflection. It doesn't answer, of course, although it truly would not have startled her for more than an instant if it had; she's seen stranger things in her life.

Because you always do, she silently answers herself, and allows the familiar ritual to soothe her, at least for now. Lips, cheeks, eyes. Still a ghost behind the makeup, but the attempt at imitating life must be made.

She starts to rise from her seat, then gasps as a spasm of pain crosses her abdomen. She feels a dampness between her legs, and realizes the baby has opted to make his debut two weeks early.