A/N I am so amazingly grateful for all of your positive reviews! I never expected the story to get this much, so thank you so, so much. Unfortunately Erik won't be coming back for a few chapters, just warning you. But we will see him again. Don't worry. On to the next chapter, hope you like it!

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was Tuesday again. A month after Alison had come back to college, after her entire world had flipped upside down. A month of solitude and fear and fighting off the depression and loneliness that always hung like a cloud over her head. It felt so hopeless sometimes, as if it was not worth going on one day more without him. But she fought anyway, knowing that she couldn't get into that state. Because once she did, she might never get out. And that was the last thing she wanted.

She was going to all of her classes, and making a minimum of effort to do well. All except one.

She refused to even try in her French class. She tuned her mind out, trying not to deal with hearing French spoken all around her. It brought back too many memories. So she didn't speak, and she didn't raise her hand in class anymore. She didn't even make an effort to pick up her homework.

The sudden change had not gone unmissed by her teacher, Madame Pommier. Before she had left, Alison had been one of the hardest-working students in her class and had been progressing with the language very nicely. Madame Pommier realized quickly that her absence had something to do with it. She had tried to broach the subject with Alison after class the second week she had been back.

"Angelique," she had begun, calling Alison by her name in class. She couldn't say anything else before Alison had whipped around and looked at her.

"Don't call me that again. Ever again! I don't want to hear that name anymore."

"Why?" she had asked in French, hoping to draw Alison back into the world of class and a language she had loved.

"Because…" Alison had begun to respond and stopped herself, forcing herself to stay in English. "Because I just don't. Why is that difficult? Why is it so hard for everyone to understand that things have happened to me and I don't want to talk about them! Why can't you let me be?"

"Because, as your teacher, I care about you," Madame Pommier had responded calmly, still speaking French. "You seem like you're going through something very difficult and maybe you need some help."

"I don't need help!" Alison had shouted. "And stop speaking French or I will walk out of here and not respond."

She had turned away, breath coming fast. Then she let out a deep sigh and faced her teacher again.

"I'm sorry, Madame," she had said quietly. "There are some things that I just can't explain and don't want to talk about."

"All right. We don't have to speak French if that's what you want. But you're starting to seem like you're having a hard time. Are you okay?"

"Yes." She had stayed silent for a moment, then turned away.

She had walked quickly towards the door and stopped. Without looking back, she had said, "I just told you a lie. It's the same lie I've been telling everyone since I got back and there's no way to tell the truth without them being concerned about me. But you've always been nice and so I guess I can tell you. No."

"No, what?"

"No, I'm not okay. I haven't been okay ever since I got back and I don't think there's ever going to be a way to be properly 'okay' in every sense of the word. And maybe that sounds like depression and maybe it is, but I just…don't want to be analyzed or criticized for everything that I've done."

"I won't criticize you," Madame Pommier had said quietly. "You don't have to talk about anything now. I just want you to know that if you need me, I'll always be there for you."

Alison had nodded and left without another word.

Madame had grown even more worried the more she watched Alison. She was a very perceptive woman and she was keeping a close eye on Alison, in and out of class. She began seeing Alison's discomforts: she seemed to be having frequent headaches and back pain. Alison seemed to be so much more tired than she had been. Her eyes gained a more and more defeated look with every class that went by. Madame was still waiting, hoping that Alison would finally come and talk to her.

And one day, a month after she had returned from her sojourn, she did.

She approached Madame after class, hesitantly and carefully.

"Madame," she began, "you said that if I wanted to talk to you, I could. Would now be a bad time?"

Madame Pommier rose fluidly from her desk. "No, of course not. Would you like to go to my office?"

Alison nodded and followed Madame out of the classroom to a smaller room nearby with a desk and two chairs. Madame Pommier sat at the desk and gestured at one of the chairs.

"Sit, please."

Alison complied.

"So start from the beginning. What happened?"

Alison sighed. "I'm not here to spill to you what happened. That I'm not going to tell you. And I'm sure that you're dying to know, aren't you? You and everyone else. But the things that happened to me in what everyone considers to be eighteen days are not–"

"What everyone considers to be?" Madame asked sharply.

"Yes," said Alison curtly. "It wasn't eighteen days for me. But I'm not going to tell you any more than that. Everyone is trying to get me to talk about it. Either to satisfy their own curiosity, or because 'talking it out will make you feel better about it'," she put on a mock baby voice, "and the thing is that it won't. In fact it'll make it all worse because if I talk about it, I'll relive it, and it'll be that much more painful. And you know the real problem with all of this? If I told anyone what happened to me, they'd think I would be lying to them. They wouldn't believe me because it sounds so crazy. They'd probably put me in a goddamn psychiatric hospital for delusions or something and I don't want that." Alison pressed the heels of her hands to her cheekbones, covering her eyes.

"Is it really so crazy that you won't even talk about it to me? I wouldn't think that you're crazy."

"Yes, maybe you wouldn't, but it's not about that. I'm here because I need to talk about how I feel, not what happened. If you're going to press me for what happened, I'll go."

Madame Pommier held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Okay. If that's not something you want to talk about, that's fine."

"Thank you."

She sighed, and then looked straight at Madame Pommier, and Madame was shocked to see the depth of feeling in Alison's eyes.

"You know the thing I hate most of all? When people keep asking me about Patrick. I don't know if you remember, but he was my ex-boyfriend," she said, putting special emphasis on the ex. "They keep asking me where he's gone, when he's coming back. And I can't tell them where he's gone because it would be a whole uproar and everything. A lot of people liked him, and he had lots of friends. If you ask me, I don't understand why. It obviously wasn't his sweet disposition," she said sarcastically.

"Wasn't it?" Madame asked. "He seemed like a nice boy to me. Always came to pick you up after class and he seemed very solicitous of you."

Alison made a face. "Then it just goes to show, doesn't it? How much people can change."

"That's not how you know him?"

Alison laughed, a short, bitter laugh. "Once, maybe. But now…no. In my memory, he is anything but a nice boy. But most people haven't seen the side of him that I have. At least, I hope not. I can't tell people what I know about what happened to him. I just lie and tell them I don't know. I'm not going to tell you what happened to him either, in case you were going to ask," she said sharply, noticing the curiosity in Madame's eyes.

"Not only do I now have to deal with that, there's the simple reality of everything I've lost by coming back here."

"Lost? What exactly have you lost?"

"Everything."

"Surely you're being a little–"

"No."

Madame was surprised. "Okay. Can you be a little more specific?"

"I've lost the life I had built for myself in the time that was so much longer than eighteen days. I lost the friends, the place, the work, and something so much more important. I lost love.

"Have you ever moved from one place to another knowing that you're never going to see the first place again? You're not even going to be able to visit, you will never see anyone from there ever again. Has that happened to you?"

"Not exactly like that, no," Madame admitted.

"Exactly. The wonders of modern technology prevent that from ever happening. So since you don't know what that's like, I'll tell you. It feels like dying. Moving to a new place hurts enough, as I'm sure you know, but you still have some contact with that world. I don't. I have no means of contacting any of the people from where I was because they are…let us say beyond the reach of cell phones and computers. I'm never going to see any of these people again and you have no clue how much that hurts." She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying desperately not to cry. She had done too much crying in the past month.

"And, on top of everything else, I feel absolutely awful."

"Are you getting headaches, feeling tired, things like that? That's what I've been noticing from you."

Alison nodded. "And my body is just starting to feel very strange, like it's…almost... I don't know how to describe it. And when I first got back, I would keep throwing up in the mornings. I'm not sick, and I thought it was just a product of everything that's happened. It's sort of stopped, but I still feel a little nauseous."

Madame Pommier frowned. "Throwing up in the mornings? Like…morning sickness?"

"I guess you could call it that," Alison said, not realizing what Madame Pommier was implying.

Madame bit her lip, then asked delicately, "Have you been sexually active in the past couple months?"

Alison looked at her, frowning. "I don't really see how that's relevant."

"It could be. I'm not asking for my own curiosity, I promise. But it might be important to you."

"I still don't understand why, but yes. Once. The other time doesn't count as sexually active." Erik's hands on her body, skimming down her curves, kissing her deeply and never seeming to stop. That was being sexually active. Not Patrick, grabbing her arms so hard they left bruises and shoving her to the floor.

"And…when was the last time you had your period?"

Alison frowned. "You know, I don't really remember. The last three months have been somewhat…hectic for me. I had my mind on other things." Then she realized. "But I don't think I've had it for the past three months: ever since…" No. That's not possible. It was just once. Something like that doesn't happen after one time, does it? "You think I'm…"

"I think it's a possibility. Neither of us can jump to conclusions, so it might be better to test it."

"May I go do that right now? I can't…I won't be able to wait."

"Of course, Alison. And if you need any help, as I said, you can come to me."

Alison nodded and quickly exited the room.

She ran all the way to the nearby CVS, bought a pregnancy test, then ran back to her dorm as fast as she could. She followed the instructions that came with it and waited in the communal bathroom, pacing back and forth.

If there really is a baby, it could be Erik's child. Can you image that? A little Erik. Maybe he would be a musical genius just like his father. Wouldn't that be lovely? But it'll probably be nothing, we're all probably just being paranoid.

Her mind was spinning in circles trying to work out all the possibilities, when suddenly the little display on the test changed.

She looked down at the little plus sign.

It felt so unreal, she had to say it out loud to be sure that it was true.

"I'm pregnant."

Please review!