AN: Okay, so...this is a very heavy chapter (And the next chapter will be heavy as well). There's a lot going on, some sensitive topics, triggery topics, and I approached them the best that I could. Next chapter is just as long/longer, and just as heavy, just...from Levi's POV.
Warnings: (All right, this is a big list...) Pregnancy, Unplanned/Unwanted Pregnancy, Depression, Fear, Stress, Loneliness, Abandonment, Mental Breakdowns, HEAVY ANGST, No Comfort, Mentions of Past Sexual Acts, (SPOILER, But I don't dare to NOT tag this) Near-Abortion (Let me add to this warning, that I personally believe it's an option that should be available to those who want it, this isn't meant to be anti-abortion, its just what this particular character decided. I wasn't intending this part to be any kind of political commentary, the character just decided that it wasn't for her and that she didn't almost do it because it was what she wanted, but out of fear), (SPOILER but I don't dare to NOT tag this) Child Death/Unborn Child Death, Grief, Loss.
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*Reader's POV*
"I'm...I'm sorry?"
"You're pregnant. We did a test with the blood we took to test out some of our theories about what you've been sick with, and it came back positive. And blood tests in the lab are f are far more accurate than any over the counter test, so–"
"No, no, no, no. No! No, that's impossible, I haven't had sex outside my dreams in months, not even a quick hookup, it's literally impossible," you said frantically, getting to your feet and starting to pace. No, there was no way you were pregnant, it was impossible!
They were just dreams!
"You are. If your sexsomnia theory does have substance to it, then you might have slept with someone without realizing it. Whatever the case may be, it doesn't change the fact that you are."
"I'm not pregnant!" You yelled at him, feeling panic start to kick in.
You couldn't be. Not only was it impossible, you couldn't afford to be–you were a single working woman who barely got by as it was, you couldn't work a kid into the mix!
The doctor seemed to be taking your meltdown in stride, especially considering you came in here to talk about your trouble sleeping and were instead being told you had a baby growing inside you. He rolled over to the counter and scrawled something down on a paper, handing it over to you as he spoke.
"Well, if you need confirmation, I suggest Dr. Salazar. She's very good at what she does, she can give you visual confirmation, tell you how far along, answer any of your questions, including safe options to...opt out, if you choose to, given the...circumstances. She's worked with a lot of single mothers and unexpected pregnancies."
"Why did you even test for pregnancy, you asked me about sexual activity and everything the first time I came in," you croaked, feeling somehow detached from your body as you spoke through it.
"A hunch, actually. Maybe one that came around from your recent symptoms. Some of them sounded like pregnancy symptoms," he told you patiently. "Besides that, the tests came back negative, like I said. Whatever these dreams of yours were, or are, I'm afraid I can't help you. I don't have any more ideas."
"You're not the first doctor to tell me that," you said shakily, burying your face in your hands.
"Take all the time you need to process the news. Just be sure to check out with the nurse when you leave," he said softly before getting up from his chair and leaving you alone in the room.
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...
You opened the bathroom door, shut it with a sigh and leaned against the door for a few moments before straightening, looking at the sink counter to grab your aches and pains salts, and glanced up at the mirror with a sudden scream, the plastic bottle slipping from your grip.
The paper the doctor had tried to give you, that you'd left behind at the office with the name and number for Dr. Salazar, was taped to the center of your bathroom mirror.
Racing out of your bathroom on shaking legs with your heart pounding in your ears, you threw on the shirt you'd left abandoned in the hall and checked every door, every window, looking for some kind of sign of forced entry. There was nothing, not so much as chipped paint on the wood. Just a pristine house and that note from two weeks ago taped inexplicably to your mirror.
That was the moment you started to cave, in more ways than one. You leaned against the nearest wall and sank to the floor, crying out your fear and confusion for a solid hour, hour and a half before something prompted you to get off the floor, crawl up the stairs with your cell phone in hand, and dial the number on the paper as you sat on the freezing tile floor with your back pressed against the wall, staring up at the paper like it was a death threat.
"This is Doctor Salazar's office, may I ask who's calling?"
"This is...Um...Y/N L/N...I-I got a referral from Doctor Hallaway about two weeks ago. I was wondering if I could schedule an appointment," you said in a shaking voice, uncaring of what the voice on the other side thought. You couldn't take this anymore. You needed to know if the pregnancy was real. You needed something tangible outside of Hallaway's tests that would show you the unavoidable truth.
*********************************
(One Week Later)
"You are pregnant. It's undeniable. I ran more than one test like you asked, but if you would like, I believe you may be far enough along by now that an ultrasound might be able to give you the concrete evidence you need. It could even get you some answers that might help with the acceptance process. I'm ready to do an ultrasound if you want one, but if you don't, that's fine, too. You can go ahead and leave if that's what you want and come back whenever you're ready."
Dr. Anita Salazar was an honestly amazing doctor from what you'd seen so far. From the moment you'd entered the same room as her, she had spoken softly, reassuring, and had taken you at face value, believing as much of what you told her as she could as reality and making sure you were comfortable every step of the way, that the whole process was going through on your terms.
It was the first time you felt in control since Levi appeared in your dreams.
At least, until she delivered the news. Again. And once more, your mind started to rail, lips puckering like you were holding back vomit so convincingly she held out the trash can for you with worry on her face. You were shaking your head avidly, feeling like you would either throw up or cry.
"No, it's not possible, I..." You let out another sob, a hand running through your hair as tears threatened to take over.
Dr. Salazar put a comforting hand on your knee. "I know it all seems impossible, but it's real. I checked. And running from it isn't going to do you or the baby any good at this point–it's only going to hurt you both. If you need something physical you can see to at least accept the reality of your pregnancy, we can do the ultrasound, and then we can start talking next steps from there."
"Okay..." you whispered out, not looking at her as you suddenly found yourself paralyzed with fear at the thought you were about to be faced with undeniable proof.
Dr. Salazar patted your knee gently, then got up to leave the room and get the ultrasound machine, also allowing you a few moments to compose yourself. With great effort, you managed to rub the tears from your eyes with shaking hands, taking a few deep breaths and looking around with a panicky gaze at the now empty room.
Once, you might have said you wanted kids, eventually, once you settled down with someone. Now, you were terrified, and the empty space beside you was burning you, making that sense of being all alone grow sharper in your heart and making this whole experience that much more terrifying.
Dr. Salazar came inside with the ultrasound machine in tow, wheeling it over to the exam table you were on as well as the rolling stool, sitting down and starting to apply the gel to the sensor part of the machine. "I'm going to ask you to lift your shirt, and I'm going to put a little bit of gel on your belly–it'll be cold, but you'll adjust," she promised you, waiting until you'd lifted your shirt to do just that. "Now...let's see what we can see here..."
The sensor started to gently move around your belly, and despite how afraid you were right now, how alone and violated you felt as you lay there, you couldn't tear your eyes from the screen. You didn't understand what you were seeing in black and white, but Dr. Salazar did, and when the sensor suddenly stopped moving on your belly, you held your breath.
"There we are–you see that? I believe...that is a heartbeat. They can be a bit tricky to spot early on, but that would be where you're...oh."
"Oh, what's oh?" you asked in a shaking voice, frustrated that just as she was about to point to the screen to show you the physical proof she paused.
"There's...let me just make sure...oh my..."
The wand kept moving across your belly, and none of the images on the screen made sense to you, but she was sure talking like something big was happening, yet she was leaving you out of the loop and you were ready to scream at her between the stress you already had and the stress she was further inducing.
"Yep, I'm seeing that right. I'm counting three heartbeats."
"Three?" you echoed weakly.
"Mhm. Right here..." she moved the wand a little more each time she pointed out the spot on the screen where she was seeing these little heartbeats, letting you see each individual one. "Here...and right here. You're having triplets."
A strangled noise made it out of your throat, and you dropped your head back onto the table, feeling dizzy, like you might pass out. You went from avidly denying that you were even pregnant, to now you were being told you were going to have triplets.
No, that wasn't even the most earth shattering part of this.
You were pregnant.
And the only person you'd had sex with had been in your dreams.
Which meant somehow...despite every logical part of your brain screaming no...Levi had succeeded in what he told you he would do, that you hadn't believed because it had all just been dreams. But somehow...somehow...he'd impregnated you.
Your dream mystery guy had bred you like he'd promised he would, in what you had thought had only been a kinky part of your brain manifesting some subconscious desire to be a mother. He'd somehow put three babies inside you.
If you'd known that was what he was doing...
Fuck, had that been his goal all along? This, right here?
You were going to be sick...Your vision was turning black around the edges, like you were about to faint. At least you were already lying down.
But no, it was still impossible for you to get pregnant through dreams.
So...what about those dreams that had seemed so real, dreams you couldn't even remember falling asleep for, or you doubted you'd even woken up? What about the bathtub, when your earbuds had been on the stool next to you, or the couch, when he fucked you with that show running in the background with every detail still making it through to you, continuing uninterrupted when you 'woke up?' Or what about the biggest one of all–that quick fuck in the bathroom where you supposedly collapsed asleep in the middle of the room even though there had been no flaw, no hitch, no actual break in reality until he'd looked at you and convinced you otherwise, the one that had felt so much more real than you'd known what to do with? What if some of them...weren't dreams?
You didn't know what idea was more terrifying, and it only made you feel even more faint.
"...Ms. L/N, are you still with me?"
"I...can you tell how far along I am?" you answered in a weak voice, head still swimming and threatening to pull you under, even as you struggled to get a bit more of an answer.
"Well, judging by the length of the fetus's, I would wager you're about six, maybe seven weeks along?"
Before those realistic dreams, then. In fact, it sounded closer to when you'd decided to focus on him that one night.
Of course, the next night he had tied you down and bred you quite literally all night as if to re-establish your relationship was just sex as a reaction to the more intimate feeling you'd started to bring to the whole exchange.
Or rather, that he was just trying to impregnate you, as you now knew.
Tears were slipping out of your eyes, feeling violated and used even though you'd given him permission to fuck you practically every night, you'd let him do this to you, but at the same time, you hadn't truly known, you hadn't understood what it was going to amount to because you hadn't known it would be possible. You were alone, which this reveal made hurt so much more because that meant that as soon as you were pregnant, he disappeared, abandoned you here, left you to face all of this alone, and you had no way of reaching out to him because he'd come to you in your dreams. You were afraid, because you thought of what this implied, this unnatural impregnation, mind going wild with so many thoughts and theories, remembering the exact moment you'd wondered if he was even human.
Shit, you really were going to be sick.
And underneath it all, as if to add to the confusion and tumult inside you...there was the smallest spark of wonder and awe, the smallest inkling that wanted you to touch your belly and marvel that you had three babies growing inside you. Yes, maybe half of them was...but the other half was you. They were yours, too.
But at the moment, that feeling, those thoughts, were crushed beneath the weight of the fear and panic and violation, tears slipping past your eyes as you tried to muffle any noise by covering your mouth with your hand.
Dr. Salazar seemed to notice your predicament, and she very quietly put away the machine when she was done, wiping up the leftover gel on your belly by herself and gently tugging your shirt down, giving you a few minutes to cry it out before she spoke in a very somber and gentle tone.
"I think you should go to a therapist that specializes in pregnancies and birthing concerns. I know a few I can refer you to that have helped expecting mothers in various, difficult situations. At the very least, it might help you work through what you're dealing with, and help you come to a decision about the pregnancy. Because right now, you're in pain, and you're scared, just as much as you're going through the realization of motherhood that you might have meant to be joyous. I think it would help if you had someone to talk to about what's happening. Sort through what you're going through, and then schedule another meeting with me when you've come to a decision about what you want to do going forward."
Some part of you was grateful she had the tact not to offer a congratulations, that she'd thought to look at you and see how you were reacting before deciding how to proceed. When you didn't respond to her suggestion, she simply wrote down the information she was offering on a notepad and left the paper on your purse, which was sitting on a chair by the door. After that, she left to give you your privacy.
A moment meant to be beautiful and heartwarming, crushed by the horror of the earth shattering reality it caused to crash into your world and obliterate everything you knew into dust.
*****************************
This time you actively looked into the names you were given. There were three, all of them female, all in the general area. You hadn't contacted anyone yet, though–you were stuck in an in between, still struggling to accept your reality, though part of you knew it might help if you went to see someone about it. Maybe you were still trying to deny the reality.
Triplets.
And a father who impregnated you on purpose through dreams and then just vanished as soon as you were given the news.
You let the paper sit untouched by your computer for three days before, once again, after you got home from work, you went over to the computer, intending to google some information and questions about what to do next. As you sat down in front of the computer, you glanced over at the paper with the three names.
One of them was circled.
This time, it didn't freak you out so much. You just furrowed your brows, trying to remember if you'd circled the one that looked the most promising to you the last time you looked at it all.
Picking up the notepad, you turned the paper around in your fingers, feeling those darker thoughts swimming in your head, the complete loss and fear you'd been trying to keep at bay pressing in undaunted, your breath catching.
You needed help. You really did, before something terrible happened–just what that was, you weren't sure. You weren't even sure if the terrible thing would be an outside source or something resulting from your own mental state. And help was being offered freely to you. So you could keep falling down the bottomless hole you suddenly found yourself in, or you could reach out and hope there really was someone there to catch you.
Fingers shaking and a lump in your throat, you dialed the number under the circled name, and made yet another appointment.
*************************************
The first appointment you made was mostly to update your therapist, Dr. Wanda Weiss, on the situation you were in and what parts about your pregnancy you were struggling with. You didn't give her explicit details, and part of you was still afraid that you were going to get called crazy and locked up if you kept insisting there was no father to your children, or that the only possible father was a man you'd met in your dreams. You instead simply told her about how you'd been going to a doctor to try and solve what was happening because of overly sexual and intensely consistent dreams that was starting to impact your day to day life. How you hadn't been sexually active, but a couple months into these dreams, you were told that you were pregnant, and you have no explanation besides an impossible one that your mystery dream man is the father, which was physically impossible. Not only were you pregnant, you were pregnant with triplets. Three babies.
And you did at least give her enough information that she would be aware of the terror and the violation that you were also experiencing with the thought of your mystery man being the father, outside of it being impossible, by informing her that a breeding kink was a common theme, every night, he was trying to get you pregnant–not that you'd thought anything of it because they were dreams, before you actually ended up pregnant.
After unloading the situation onto her, which took two sessions, when you found out that you were having difficulty getting it out in the open during the first session, she sat you down to work through what you needed to do next.
Because, as everyone kept saying, whether you were able to accept the reality of it or not, it was your reality, and as long as these babies were growing inside you, you needed to take care of them.
So, Dr. Weiss patiently walked you through a plan of what you were supposed to be doing to take care of yourself, including scheduling another appointment with Dr. Salazar so she could help you with the medical part of the process. Dr. Weiss was here to make sure you were still taking care of yourself.
And part of that process was facing your reality, and working on coming to a decision about what you were going to do about your situation.
By the time you had the third session, where you discussed these things, you had physical evidence on your body, not just the grainy black and white images on an ultrasound you couldn't understand outside of what someone told you. Considering you were pregnant with three, you started showing a little early, and you officially had a baby bump.
"Has the fact that you're showing changed how you view anything?" Dr. Weiss asked after you'd informed her you could feel the bump this morning. Your hand slid subconsciously over your abdomen as she spoke, nodding nervously.
"If anything, it just makes everything scarier. Cause it's..."
"Real. You've reached the point you can't deny it, now," Dr. Weiss finished for you, her tone patient and quiet. "Do you think you're ready to talk about your options now, then?"
You nodded shakily. "I, um...I don't think I've gotten to the point to process that much, but...yeah, I think I can at least be walked through them."
Dr. Weiss nodded, sitting forward in her seat across from you with one palm splayed out in front of her, the fingers of her other hand tracing along her palm and other fingers as she spoke in careful, measured tones, making sure you understood everything she was saying.
"Well, we can narrow it down to three options on how you can proceed. There's the obvious, that you've already mentioned when you were talking about your fears of not being ready or in a stable enough point of your life for this–going through with the pregnancy, keeping the babies, becoming a mother. There's adoption, if you feel you want to go through the pregnancy, but you're not ready to go through with becoming a mother after they're born, especially considering the fact that there's three. And then there's abortion, to stop the pregnancy before it progresses any further. Normally, I'd approach the last option more sensitively, because it can be a heavy decision for expectant mothers, and some people it is against their beliefs, but...given the situation you've described to me, the distress that you're in, the pain you're suffering...I think it's an option that deserves just as much consideration as the others. You don't have to go through with this pregnancy. It might not have been your choice to become pregnant, but it can be your choice whether to continue with the pregnancy or stop it."
You swallowed thickly at the options she gave you. You were not ready for children–nothing about your life was stable, or had enough time or room for three children. At this point, motherhood wasn't in the picture for you. Adoption might be a legitimate option–maybe further down the line, when you were ready for kids, you could reconnect, if you wanted to? Though, you weren't so sure that would be fair to them. It would be like deciding you didn't want to deal with the hard stuff, but you wanted to be there for the good stuff...right? At least, that's how you were worried it might seem.
Not to mention, like she'd said, the way this pregnancy was going, there was a legitimate third option. The distress, the suffering, the fear, the uncertainty, going through it all alone, the fact that it hadn't truly been your choice from the start...the fact that your life suddenly didn't seem your own, like it had somehow been taken from you, was terrifying.
But could you do it?
Maybe if the pregnancy was simply two lines on a stick, if you hadn't known there was three of them, if you hadn't been shown their little heartbeats on a monitor, if you couldn't feel the bump on your belly...
But you were terrified. You were suffocating over here, and you were isolated. You could make it all stop with just a little prescription, opt out of this nightmare before it developed any further.
There were tears in your eyes as you asked her, very softly...
"How would I go about getting an abortion pill?"
***************************************
Dr. Weiss had stressed that you needed to be sure that this was what you wanted before you went through with anything. Honestly, when you asked her for information on your third option, all you could think about was how scared you were, of all the dark parts of this entire situation that still lurked in your mind, parts you dared not think about because you didn't think you could handle them without mentally breaking.
And that fear was driving you forward. Through the Planned Parenthood clinic, through the appointment, the tests, the serious discussion about what this meant and how there wouldn't be any taking it back, that you needed to be sure. It drove you all the way to where you were now, standing in your locked apartment–your locked bathroom–staring at your tired face in the mirror, at the haunted look in your eyes, your disheveled appearance.
The bottle with the pills was directly in front of you, sitting center between your hands as your gaze shifted to staring intently at it, knowing this was a moment of truth for you. Were you really going to do this? Now that it was just you and the silence of your bathroom, now that you had the tool to end the pregnancy here and now, were you going to follow through on the action your fear had led you through so far?
Your trembling hands opened the bottle with more difficulty than you wanted to admit, palms rubbed red from the times your hands slipped on the safety top before you shook out far too many, some spilling down the sink drain as you cursed in a hoarse voice, trying to put the excess still in your hand back into the bottle.
Your eyes were burning with tears, though you didn't know if it was relief that the fear was almost over, or something else. Staring at the pills in your palm, you tried to get yourself to bring them to your lips. But you kept staring at the two little pills, the two that looked like three with how your vision was going blurry as you hiccupped through a sob.
Again, maybe this would have been easier if there was only one, as horrible as the thought made you feel. Maybe if you had been thinking of them as fetuses, or anything other than babies, as you'd been thinking of them all this time. Babies browning inside you, babies you'd seen the heartbeat of. You knew there was an entire debate over when a fetus became a baby but something inside you kept whispering that you were going to take three potential lives with those little pills.
Was this what you really wanted?
Or were you just acting on fear from the situation, not on a true desire of if you wanted these babies or not?
Maybe that's what it boiled down to, before you should have even considered your options of going forward with the pregnancy. Did you want to have these babies? Whether or not you kept them came into play later, that was more of a logical decision, but right now...was there a part of you that wanted them?
The same part that had felt a flutter of joy when you'd been told there was three growing inside you? The same part that seemed to be holding your hand at bay, keeping you from swallowing the pills in your palm?
Your hand clenched around the tiny pills, and you felt one of them crack and powder get all over your palm as a gut wrenching sob made it past the teeth you ground together. Your fingers opened to let the pills fall down the drain, as well as to reveal nail marks in your palm from how hard you'd clenched your fist.
You started to sob, sucking in sharp breaths as you clutched at the edge of the sink and ignored the pills that spilled everywhere, trying to reorient yourself and cling to any of the emotions that were swirling inside you for some sense of stability or direction.
Your breaths came in heaves, shoulders shaking, fingers clenching at the counter until you lashed out, hand smashing into the glass in front of you and shards showering all over the place and blood to drip across the sink as you let out a scream from deep in your soul, letting out all the pent up emotions in that one sound.
It wasn't fear you were feeling, not anymore.
It was anger.
***************************************
After being unable to go through with the abortion, realizing the hard way that you wanted to go through this pregnancy, for reasons you didn't understand yet, you met with Dr. Salazar to start taking care of yourself and your babies properly, before they were hurt by further denial or confusion. You continued visiting Dr. Weiss as well, since your little episode that had resulted in stitches in your hand had told you there was still quite a bit you needed to work out about yourself and your feelings about the entire situation.
For example, who were you angry at? Yourself? Probably, you could think of several things to be mad at yourself for. Levi? Hell yes, whoever the fuck he really was. Everyone else in your life? That was a whole other beast.
Considering you were going to see this pregnancy at least through to the due date, you had to start telling people you were pregnant before you started really showing, and so you weren't forced into any circumstances you shouldn't be in. You told your boss so that you wouldn't have to do any lifting that Dr. Salazar said was a no-no for you, and so you didn't touch any chemicals or foods that you weren't allowed near. It also meant he was aware that you were going to be taking a maternity leave soon.
Hopefully.
You really hoped they weren't one of those bosses that was going to look for an excuse to fire you so they wouldn't have to give you maternity leave.
As you went public with your pregnancy, you changed your story. At the very least, you worried that some people might call it slutty that you didn't know who the father was considering nobody was going to believe you really had been abstinent all this time. Instead, when people asked about the father, you simply said that you didn't have a way to contact him and tell him you were pregnant.
Which was true. He really had up and vanished with no way for you to know how to reach him, if he even cared that you were pregnant, or if it was some sick game of his to get someone pregnant and then disappear with no interest beyond conception. There were fucked up people in the world–it was a possibility.
One thing you hadn't been expecting, though, was the amount of people who started telling you to give the babies up once you went public with your pregnancy. From family to close friends to coworkers and strangers that had apparently heard the gossip and had the audacity to think just because they knew someone who knew you they had the right to lecture you on what to do, people would talk about how you didn't have a life style to support them, that you weren't ready to be a mother, let alone to triplets. Some insensitive individuals said you were unfit to be a mother, some straight up told you to get an abortion if the pregnancy was such a hassle or distressing or worrisome for you.
You weren't going to tell them you'd already tried. It was your business. And fuck them for acting like it would be such an easy thing when you'd found out first hand that it was no small thing for you.
Even your parents, after a frantic phone call, didn't think you should keep the babies. They didn't say abortion, but they certainly threw around the term adoption at least a few times.
No one told you to keep the babies.
Not one person.
Every voice in your ear told you to either ditch them now, which you knew wasn't an option, especially now that you'd committed, or to give them away as soon as they were born.
Dr. Salazar and Dr. Weiss didn't count. They didn't tell you what to do with your babies. They let you make the decisions and supported your path because that's what they were here for. You had no one in your personal life telling you to keep the babies.
Maybe it was a sign. Maybe you really were in over your head. Maybe you should talk to an adoption agency about taking the children after they were born...could you request that they wouldn't be split up? Could you request that you could make sure they went to a good home? You'd heard the horror stories, and you hesitated to throw your children into that fucked up system.
God...what am I doing? You asked yourself the question standing on the corner of the street, hunkering into yourself like you could hear every voice in your ear, feel the weight of it all pressing upon your back even as your hand gently touched the growing baby bump as a strange sort of way to ground yourself.
"Why me?" you murmured, uncaring if anyone looked at you funny before you raised your eyes, staring blankly across the street towards a little tea shop with clear wall to ceiling windows and quaint decorations inside.
Raven hair...steely blue eyes...you could have sworn they were trained on you as well, that he was watching you from the other side of the glass.
Your breath caught, feeling suspended in nothingness for several heartbeats before you thought to at least look both ways before trying to cross the street, taking two steps before your attention turned back to the tea shop you'd glimpsed him in.
Nothing. There was no one there.
He was gone.
Had he ever been there to begin with?
Or was it just your mind playing tricks on you?
Were you that desperate to feel so alone? Desperate to think maybe someone out there might want you to keep the babies, and surely that someone would be the father?
You had no way of knowing. For all you knew, his goal had simply been to knock you up. Considering his absence, you doubted he gave a damn what you did after getting pregnant.
If he cared, he'd be here for at least some of it. You could have at least told him to his face you were pregnant.
Instead, you got absolutely nothing. Besides the glimpse of a face beyond a window you doubted had ever been there at all.
*******************************************
After glimpsing Levi out on the street, and currently feeling crushed by the weight of your situation and the voices of everyone telling you to give up the babies one way or another, you ended up driven into, of all places, a church.
Maybe you weren't exactly religious, maybe you didn't quite believe, and knowing all the usual stances of churches about pregnancies out of wedlock or abortions, maybe it wasn't the best place to go. But you wanted to go someplace you felt like maybe, just maybe, you might be heard.
And not necessarily from someone earthly and human.
With recent events, you were starting to to open yourself up to new possibilities.
You slipped into the back of the church, which was pretty much empty, considering it was outside normal service hours. Trying not to be noticed, you took a seat inside one of the back pews, sitting on the very edge of the bench and bringing your hands up onto the back of the pew in front of you, wrists resting against the polished surface as you looked around nervously.
All right...now what? You didn't see anyone you could copy. The best you could do was imitate what you'd seen in movies.
Interlacing your fingers, you took a deep breath and closed your eyes, bowing your head. Were you supposed to speak aloud or silently in your head? You'd prefer silently in your head, considering the many things you had to say. Were you supposed to recite something specific? You doubted what you needed to say was in any written out, predetermined prayer. And how were you supposed to start and end it? What were the rules to this thing?
You were overthinking. Maybe you just needed to calm yourself down...and just...start talking.
Keeping your eyes closed, your lips started to move in a silent prayer, one so casual maybe the devoted would cringe. But you spoke like a desperate woman reaching out to a last hope for support, not like a devoted echoing words expected of them at the usual service.
Halfway through, you were interrupted by a voice directly beside you. An older woman's voice, and it was sharp and scathing, judgement dripping like tar from her tongue.
"You've got the devil's seed in you."
You looked up from what you were doing, turning to the older woman with the curly white pixie cut in front of you, her eyes hard as flint, and the combination of her eyes and her voice throwing you off.
"I'm...sorry?"
"You're carrying evil. You should stop it before it's allowed to breathe in this world if you don't want your soul damned and sin embodied to walk the Earth!"
Disturbed, and now wanting desperately to leave, you got to your feet and tried to slip past her without a word in an effort to make a hasty retreat, but the woman grabbed your arm before you could move past her.
"You can feel what it's doing to you, can't it? You're already stained beyond cleansing. It's very existence pollutes, you should stop it before it pollutes anyone else."
"Let me go," you said harshly, pulling free of her grip and rushing for the door before she could grab you again. As you ran out the door with your heart pounding, you could hear racing footsteps echoing through the nearly empty church as the woman started shrieking words after you.
"Demon! Devil! You cannot come in here! Sin! Foul! Filth! BE GONE!"
You didn't dare look back. You just kept running.
***************************************
The woman back at the church was probably crazy, but something she'd said had stirred to life thoughts of your own that you had been harboring long before this pregnancy thing began.
Thoughts about those glimpses of Levi's eyes changing from the normal steely blue or grey to suddenly all black with molten gold irises. About the tail he'd claimed had always been there that he'd used to touch you in ways no human being ever could. How you'd noted his stamina and ability to bounce back, by itself, was inhuman. Hell, the whole concept of becoming pregnant through dreams suggested something...unnatural.
And it prompted you to finally do something you probably should have done months ago when you'd first had your suspicions.
Curled up in bed with your phone tucked close to your body, you Googled the words 'Creature Sex Dreams Humans' and hit enter. You had to scroll past some psychological posts about what it meant when you dreamt about someone you knew sexually, but at the bottom of the results Google presented you with, you saw a Wikipedia page for something called an incubus.
Looking at the brief preview under the link, you felt your skin start to crawl as you realized you might have something here.
A male demon that lay upon women during sleep to have sex with them, sometimes producing children. Prolonged exposure tended to lead to deteriorated health, mental wellbeing, or possibly death. A bit more clicking around to pictures and brief blurbs online revealed comments that they induced a sexual sleep with women, that they fed off a human being's soul through sex.
Some of the descriptions were off, and quite ridiculous. Stories about them being cold to the touch–Levi had burned hot. Or how sex with them was painful and unpleasant, while Levi had given you things you would never experience again. There was also some ridiculous belief that they couldn't produce...semen...by themselves and had to steal it from other human beings.
Some of the more ridiculous points had you doubting that this was what you were looking for, so you set it to the back of your mind. But after an hour or two more of scrolling through google, you couldn't find anything closer to what you knew about Levi.
You turned the phone off and set it well out of reach, laying on your side and attempting to fall asleep, the woman's screams about demons and devil spawn creeping into the back of your mind and making your spine tingle and your rest to be an uneasy one.
***************************
Well into the second trimester of your pregnancy, you found yourself fast asleep in your bed, getting some of the deepest sleep you'd had in so long despite the worries that had started to plague your mind. Your morning sickness was going away, the pregnancy was developing well, you were starting to get comfortable in your skin again.
Of course, there was the lurking fear with your recent questions and experiences that what was growing inside you...wasn't even human. It was like you were being pushed back to square one, hearing that you might have devil's spawn growing inside you, something unnatural and inhuman that had been forced inside you by a creature known for cruelty and damnation.
Of course, that was still a lot to swallow, and it was too terrifying to accept, so you were trying to ignore your fears. Even as Dr. Weiss remarked that something seemed to be making you regress, something had you afraid again, something made you doubt your decision.
It had made you doubt. One time when you'd been letting those thoughts filter through your mind, you'd actually had the briefest thought you should have ended the pregnancy when you had the chance.
You didn't want to be thinking like that–didn't want to second guess yourself anymore than you already had. You'd made your decision, and you were going to see this through, no matter what people on the outside tried to say.
But you could feel that fear trying to creep back in, even as you slept soundly with the help of a pregnancy safe sleep aid, deep in REM sleep, dreamless...
Wake up!
Your eyes squinted shut, and you shifted in your sleep at the toneless voice in your mind, trying to ignore it as you tried to slip back into your deep sleep.
Something's wrong! Wake up, now!
Wake up!
You couldn't ignore the insisting voice shouting in your brain, and your eyes flew open, sitting up in a gasp with that voice still rattling in your mind, arm instinctively lowering to protect your middle as you looked groggily around the empty bedroom.
There was no one there. No pain, nothing amiss. Just the quiet of the room, and the comfort of your bed.
Sighing, you laid back to try and go back to sleep, barely starting to snuggle back into your blankets when that voice seemed to return full force, almost tangible, just shy of being recognizable.
Don't go back to sleep! You need to get the babies checked right now! Something's wrong with them!
That got your attention.
You were sitting up straight, feet already swinging out of the bed at the bad feeling that suddenly shivered down your spine, and for a moment, you wondered if you were experiencing some of that mother's intuition from the Facebook stories about mother's who had insisted something was wrong when there was nothing to suggest there was, and they were right.
You got dressed, deciding not to second guess that voice of intuition, and drove yourself to the hospital, feeling a sense of panic and dread inexplicably falling over you during the ride. Upon arriving at such late hours, you were, at first, waved off–you had no actual medical emergency, just a bad feeling that had woken you up. No signs of danger or trauma, no pain, no blood, just a bad feeling, but you insisted that someone take a look, that someone just check your babies.
Finally, finally, you got someone to listen. Or maybe they decided to check just to show you everything was all right so they could get you out of there and focus more on the people who actually needed help, from what they could see.
You went into the exam room with the nurses, the doctor came in to see you, bringing out the ultrasound to check on the babies well into development by now. The gel was still cool against your belly even though you were growing used to it by now, and the doctor moved the wand around smoothly, looking for and then closely examining all three babies growing in your belly. They were far more defined by now, and you could make them out on the screen as the doctor guided the wand around your abdomen.
The wand stopped, the image mostly still as it hovered over one of them. The doctor moved closer to the image, and the silence in the room suddenly became painful as you realized the doctor had gone still, and you couldn't see his face.
"What? What is it?" You pressed, desperate to get some kind of reaction, to be told something, given anything that could soothe the fearful words you'd been woken with.
The doctor said something lowly to the nurse, who left the room with a pained glance at you, which made you panic before the doctor turned to face you.
"What's wrong? Something's wrong with one of my babies, isn't it?" You asked in a rising voice, and the doctor held up a hand to stem the flow of words, a serious look on his face.
"We're going to take a few more tests before we give you a definite answer, all right? I don't want to give you bad news and stress you out if I'm wrong. Please, hold your questions until we can be sure," he said calmly, but unlike Dr. Salazar, his calm tone did nothing to soothe you. It only made that dreadful feeling in your gut grow, hearing echoes of that voice screaming at you to wake up because something was wrong.
The tests went by in a blur, anxiety clawing through your chest and making your throat close until the doctor was sitting across from you as you lay on the exam table with your hands resting on your stomach, and he was telling you in a solemn voice...
"One of the baby's heart seems to have given out. I'm not sure how long ago, but I'm afraid you've lost one of your triplets."
Your stomach dropped, hand clutching a little more desperately at your stomach as you stared blankly at him, denying the words he was saying for several long minutes. He stayed silent, giving you the time to come to terms with what he said as your breathing came quicker and you tried to blink away tears, breath hitching, shoulders shaking.
"Are my other two babies going to be okay?" you asked in a barely-there voice before your voice could fail you entirely.
Your babies.
Your babies.
Not the monster spawn the old woman had shrieked at you and you started to fear they might be.
They had never been just fetuses to you, that was why abortion was always out of the picture even if you hadn't realized it at first, because you had always seen them as your babies. Even when you grappled with their nature and the nature of their conception, with the very real and likely possibility that they weren't entirely human.
They were your babies, and they always had been.
And now you had lost one. You were desperately holding back a grief you hadn't known a human being could experience, just so you could make sure that at the very least the other two would be all right.
They were your babies, and you wanted desperately for them to be okay.
"This seems like it might be a case of what's known as Vanishing Twin Syndrome. The third fetus that passed will likely be absorbed by the other two twins and yourself. Whether the third fetus is absorbed or not, the other two will likely be fine as long as they continue to develop healthily."
He seemed to be speeding along his words as the tears started to fall from your eyes, trying to get the barest part of the information to you before you became unreachable.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he tacked onto the end, and you turned away, covering your face with your hand as a harsh sob escaped you, biting down on your hand to try and muffle the sound in vain. It simply turned into a pained keen, and the tears fell fast, your sobs drowning out the sound of the doctor leaving to give you a moment to grieve the unexpected and honestly unexplained loss of one of your triplets.
**********************************
(Two Months Later)
You were with Dr. Weiss far more often after the loss of one of your babies. You didn't have anyone else to turn to emotionally for help, so you went to her to work through the loss, as well as the pregnancy itself. The revelations happened slowly as you crawled out of your grief one inch at a time, trying desperately to get your head above the water.
As a result, you stopped holding anything back and just spilled what was hiding in your thoughts to her in the hopes that maybe, if you purged it, you might free yourself of some of these thoughts and fears.
**********************************
Not long after the loss of your child, your thoughts were on your isolation.
"I know no one believes me but I didn't...I don't know how this happened to me," you said, eyes watery as you played with the damp Kleenex in your hand you'd been using to mop at tears throughout the session. "And I am...completely alone in this."
Your friends hadn't been as supportive as they might have thought they were being with the pressure to give up the babies, which hadn't lessened since you lost one. Maybe they were more roundabout when they brought it up, but they still didn't think you should keep them. You had no one in your corner still, and even after the loss of one of the babies, Levi was still missing.
That was probably what made it worse.
Not only were you alone for the pregnancy, for the discovery, all the reveals and every step of the process, alone when faced with everyone telling you not to keep them, but you were also alone facing the loss of one of the babies, and you would be alone at the birth.
When you shouldn't be. You shouldn't be alone. You should have someone at your side, someone to hold your hand, or stroke your hair, or support your decision because they believed it really was the best one.
When you imagined having a child for the first time, it had not involved clutching the edge of an exam bed as you sobbed in grief, it hadn't involved crying alone in exam rooms faced with impossible and scary decisions and situations, it hadn't involved the glaring absence beside you where someone should have been.
You didn't want to be alone.
But you were.
And you were still scared.
***********************************
"You haven't talked much about the father, to be honest. I know you said the pregnancy was unexpected, that you don't know what happened, but surely you have some idea or theory?"
You laughed bitterly at Dr. Weiss's question. "The only person I could possibly think of that might be the father; it's impossible!"
"The man in your dreams, the ones you were having up until you found out you were pregnant?"
You nodded slowly, staring out the window and watching the light rain pattering against the glass with the occasional burst of sunlight through the morning shower. "Levi. But...they were just dreams. That's what makes the whole thing so insane I'm afraid to say anything to anyone. Even if it was him, which it has to be, considering there's literally nothing and no one else...how do you contact someone that you just met in dreams?"
You laughed low in your throat, burying your head in your hands, fingers threading through your hair. "God, I really am going crazy..."
******************************************
"I didn't tell anyone about this...but there was...I didn't believe it at first. I went into full denial, I mean, it was impossible for me to be pregnant. But the reason why I reached out to Dr. Salazar was because when I came home from work one day her contact information was taped to my bathroom mirror. And I remember how...terrifying that was, and I suddenly felt like I wasn't alone, but not the reassuring way, the threatening way, like I was being watched, but I had no idea who or why or where. And I never told anyone. Cause I already sound crazy as it is."
Dr. Weiss looked genuinely concerned, brows furrowing as she paused and gave you full, undivided attention. "Do you feel like you're in danger?"
You rubbed the back of your neck slowly, thinking over her question. "I feel like I might have been...once. But I haven't felt that way since...since I lost..." You cleared your throat, taking a moment to let the nauseous feeling pass and for your eyes to stop misting before you continued. "I know that sounds strange, but I've never once felt like I myself was in danger after that. Almost like I had a...like I had a guardian angel...Though I doubt it's anything angelic," you added with a bitter snort.
"Why do you say that? That it's not angelic?"
You shifted in your seat, unsure if you should spill your latent incubus theory that had taken a back seat. In the end, you decided not to, keeping that part for yourself, and no one else.
***************************************
"I'm not going to give the babies up for adoption."
Dr. Weiss leaned back in her seat, appraising you closely for several moments. You were officially wearing maternity clothes for your last trimester, on maternity leave and taking extra care of yourself to make sure everything would happen smoothly with no more difficulties. Each day brought you closer and closer to your due date, and your whole body seemed to squirm in anticipation of what would come on that day. From the babies, to an end of the stress of the pregnancy and a solid decision going forward, to perhaps some form of closure.
"It's been quite a process for you, deciding how to approach your pregnancy, what you're going to do. What's changed your mind?"
"I know there's still a lot that I...a lot that I need to accept and come to terms with, about what happened, how I got here...but whatever I decide about all that, it doesn't change the fact that they're my babies. I didn't realize how...attached I was, how strongly I believed that, until I lost one of them. It made me realize that...I wanted to keep them. I wanted to make sure they were going to be okay–I wanted to be their mother. So...yeah. I'm going to keep them. I've already bought baby supplies, and now that people know I'm going to keep them, I've started getting some baby supply gifts. Though I'm not having a baby shower, I don't think I want to light the match on that powder keg."
"And all the technical parts? That were making you worry, things you told me you thought made motherhood–single motherhood, at that–impossible? Have you figured something out for that?"
"It's going to be difficult...and it is terrifying, but...I'll have to make it work. Find someone to babysit, find a good daycare, something so that I can keep working to support. Maybe I'll push for a promotion so I'll get better pay. I don't have all the answers, but...I want to make it work. Whatever I have to."
"That's quite a big change."
"Well...I realized that even though I've been alone externally through all of this...I haven't really been alone. I had them, even though it took me a while to realize that. And now that I have...I don't want to give them up. I want my babies to be a part of my life."
"And the father?"
You grew silent, dark clouds in your eyes as some of the old, unbidden thoughts arose.
"I don't know. I never knew what his role was in all this, exactly, besides getting me pregnant. Maybe he'll never be a part of their lives, maybe he's just gone. As much as I don't like the thought of them growing up without a father figure, I can live with that."
"And if he did show up one day? What then?"
You swallowed thickly, a confusing well of emotions stirring deep inside you at the prospect.
"That's entirely up to him."