Work Text:
3 months
Alana buys "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and hides it in her lunch bag. She reads it between lectures and consulting, soaking up the information. Much of it is familiar from receiving her medical degree, but now, she has a new perspective on it. She still hasn't made up her mind yet on carrying the fetus to term. She knows she should have made up her mind by now. In the deepest recesses of her mind, she thinks she already has decided. But she is Alana Bloom, prone to deep reflection, not action. So she continues to ponder her choice, what it means, and its consequences.
As she excuses herself once again from her Introduction to Behavioral Science course to speed walk to the restroom, she thinks that morning sickness is definitely a misnomer in her case. Her "morning sickness" occurs primarily around lunch time. She thinks the smell of certain undergraduates triggers it; they still stink of adolescence, that sour yet musty scent, covered by too much cologne. She never thought her students smelled particularly bad before, but her sense of smell is heightened now.
She remembers how Hannibal could smell the corpses in the examining room and know details of the crime that no one else could, simply by scent. She remembers how he'd smell what she'd eaten for lunch as he cooked her dinner, rebuking her for her unhealthy choices.
She wonders how many people she's eaten at Hannibal's dinner table.
She leans over the toilet and heaves, coughs, heaves. Her stomach, her throat, her jaw aches, as she vomits every bit of food inside of her body into the bowl.
---
She heads to the lab at Quantico after finishing her afternoon teaching. There is a new case she's been asked to consult on. Alana doesn't know the details as she walks into the lab and sees the team assembled around an examining table.
Saliva floods her mouth as she smells roast meat in the room. She's been craving meat during her pregnancy, going on binges of pork, beef, and lamb. Someone has been eating barbeque for lunch. She wonders who would eat barbeque amongst the corpses. "Probably Zeller," she thinks.
"Alana. Join us." Jack motions her over to the table.
Jack begins speaking. "We have here a killer who has been amputating his or her victims' limbs..."
"...before literally 'roasting their torsos like a pig on a spit,'" Will finishes.
That delicious smell of charred meat wasn't somebody's lunch.
This time, she has to run, not walk, to the restroom. It turns out that her "morning sickness" isn't simply confined to lunch time either.
---
4 months
When Alana wakes in a cold sweat, she knows it's the wendigo nightmare again that wakes her. Except this time the wendigo is inside of her. She is a black wave, darkness embodied, and the wendigo is inside of her.
Except it's not the wendigo at all. It's her fetus. Her baby.
She's woken from her nightmare in cold sweat by her own laughter. It rings loud and strange in the darkness of her room. She's always been a light sleeper so she awakens when her nightmare was ended by a message in Morse code from her womb. A flutter like a beat, and then two short little bursts. They're so faint, these flutters, but very real. They feel almost like tickles, deep inside. She gasps and lays her hands over her womb. The sweat dries as she flushes warm from holding her breath, waiting for another flutter.
She waits to feel her fetus move again. "Come on, baby. Move."
Hours seem to pass as she waits for the flutter, the tickle, the movement, again. But the fetus doesn't move, so she curls up under her blanket with her hands over her womb.
Eventually, she sleeps.
---
Another night, another nightmare of the wendigo. Again, she is woken by the fetus' movement.
She wants to feel it move again when she is wide awake. She gets up to prepare herself a snack. She wanders to her kitchen, swaying her hips as though she balances an infant upon them. She talks to the fetus as she prepares her snack. "Little one. Move for your mama. C'mon, little fetus. I...I love you. Love you, little one. Move for me, baby." She talks fast, speeding through the words over and over again, feeling foolish. But she knows that fetuses develop hearing around the 16th week, so her baby should be able to hear her, and may even be beginning to recognize her voice.
She starts to recite poetry to the baby as she sits, letting her stomach calm after her late night snack. She runs through all she knows, poems by Tennyson, Whitman, Cummings. Then she starts pulling books off her shelves, reading snippets of novels, non-fiction, and more poetry.
The last book she takes off the shelf is a book of French poetry. She hesitates as she runs her fingers along the spine, wondering why she hasn't yet thrown out the book given to her by Hannibal, so many years ago at her graduation from medical school.
She pulls the volume off the shelf and opens it to a random page near the middle. Clearing her throat she begins reading. "Vous demandez si l'amour rend heureuse; Il le promet, croyez-le, fût-ce un jour. Ah! pour un jour d'existence amoureuse, qui ne mourrait? La vie est dans l'amour."
Alana drops the book as her baby flutters inside her, suddenly awake, moving, and so very alive. Alana trembles with equal parts fear and pleasure.
---
5 months
Alana thumbs through her mail as she transfers her weight from one foot to the other. She’s started to gain some serious weight. Her obstetrician tells her she is “right on target.” Actually, the baby is “a little on the small safe, but there is nothing to be worried about.” The baby she is lugging around certainly doesn’t feel on the small side, and wearing high heels is starting to hurt more with the extra weight.
She pauses when she gets to the heavy mauve envelope. The paper is like cloth beneath her fingertips. There is no return address, but she knows who it is from. She reads the familiar script of her name and address. The same script that she read on many a B (or occasionally, an A) paper.
Dropping the rest of the mail on her credenza, she takes a deep breath in preparation. Then she slides her index finger under the envelope’s flap, ripping it open, and pulls out the letter.
It smells like Hannibal.
She starts to read.
“Do you dream of me, Ms. Bloom?
They have taken away my books. Fortunately, I have in my head a compendium of poetry and cookbooks. The cookbooks are useless to me in here, as you know. The poetry, my dear, is not. Do you recall the book of poetry I gave you when you graduated? Allow me to quote one of my favorite poems from that volume.”
She knows even before reading further what poem it will be.
“Et, dans sa fièvre alors lente à guérir, vous souffrirez, ou vous ferez souffrir. Dès qu'on l'a vu, son absence est affreuse. How many have suffered for your sins, Ms. Bloom? How many still suffer? You deny it, but I know my absence est affreuse for you.
I doubt you will call on me. So I must offer my congratulations from afar.”
Her hands start to shake.
“Name her Mischa, after my sister.
Alana.
H.L.”