A Demon's Promise

Part 5: The Reality, Faced Alone

Pregnant?

How the hell could you possibly be pregnant?

You hadn't had sex since...well, long before you started having your dreams of Levi.

Levi...

I will see your belly swell with my child. I'll make sure of it. I'll come again and again until it does.

All those dreams, the toe curling pleasure, his hands running across your belly, how he always came inside you, filled you until you oozed, how many times he talked about how he was going to breed you.

Your breaths were coming sharp and fast, and you were on the edge of having a full breakdown, hysterical sobs starting to break through as you struggled with what was real and possible with what you'd thought was illusion and impossible.

No. You didn't care what the doctor said, it wasn't possible. You weren't pregnant. It was impossible. If it was real, then it meant those dreams were real, because it was the only thing you could think of for how, even if it was impossible. It was the only 'place' and the only 'person' you'd had sex with. And if they were real, you were afraid of what that meant for you, what that meant for your sense of reality.

You weren't pregnant.

You left without taking the paper with the doctor's name and contact information with you, trying to run from the conversation in the exam room.

*****************************

That night was the first night Levi didn't come to you in your dreams. Nor the next night, or the night after that. It was like...he'd never been there to begin with. And you didn't know why these dreams had suddenly stopped.

Not even a whisper, or a flash of a face in your peripherals you thought was him. He just...vanished from your mind entirely.

Except for the overwhelming thoughts of what happened, what if you were pregnant, what if it was somehow his?

You tried to ignore the thoughts. Tried to ignore the news the doctor had falsely given you. Tried to hold your world together with scotch tape as you went back to work claiming your mysterious illness was fixed and you were cleared to work again. Sleeping without those dreams was weird, and a part of you strangely missed those heated nights that had pushed you beyond what you had thought physically capable.

But that piece was small compared to the part of you that was afraid, and desperately trying to ignore the weight that pressed in on you when you let your mind wander for a split second. The what ifs were cloying, suffocating, and you felt like you were drowning in slow motion with no one around to see.

Now that the doctor had pointed it out, and you had adequate rest, the symptoms got harder to brush off and ignore. Your morning sickness and nausea continued. Your breasts were sore, and your fatigue continued–though not at the level it had been at when Levi still came to you in dreams. You would find yourself lying on the couch or on your bed after a long day at work, a hand splayed over your stomach and mindlessly rubbing across the smooth surface as the what ifs came back so strongly you thought you would be physically ill, the worry and fear too much to bear.

But you stubbornly refused. You tried to ignore it all.

Until one day it seemed something refused to let you ignore it any longer.

Two weeks after you'd seen the doctor, you came home exhausted after a double shift, dropping everything at the door after locking it behind you, and slowly stripping down on your way to the bathroom, staggering steps steadied by a hand on the wall as you tried to ignore the throbbing in your feet. All you could think of was the soothing bubble bath you were about to draw up for yourself, imagining how it would relax your muscles, soothe the pains plaguing your body...