Partum Asunder

Anyone else might have seen bringing a baby into the Mikaelson family’s current complicated, dangerous situation as a significant question mark, but to Rebekah, it made perfect sense. In the thousand years of her life, she and her brothers had always been in danger; a fact that was unlikely to change any time soon. At the very least, people thought her submerged in the ocean at the moment, so they would not be looking for her. That was as safe as a Mikaelson could ever hope for.

It was also an entirely familiar situation. When Hope was born, it had been necessary to convince various ill-intentioned parties that the infant was dead. While Hayley and Klaus sold the subterfuge with their very public grief, Rebekah had been given the honor of secretly taking care of Hope the first few months of her life. At the time, those months had been the greatest months of Rebekah’s long life. Now, it felt like those months were mere practice for her own pending situation. She already knew everything she would have to do, and how to do it.

The first order of business was to locate a baby. Compulsion could have secured for Rebekah any baby in existence, but she thought it best she not begin her pregnancy by taking a child from a mother who wanted it, so they restricted their search to clinics. Rebekah quickly settled on the donor. A young mother, too young to raise a child herself, who desperately wished a better future for that child, but had chosen to visit a clinic because she could not risk her condition being found out. A quick check confirmed the baby’s father was similarly young and oblivious as to his girlfriend’s condition, but otherwise healthy.

It was a simple matter to compel the young woman to join the ritual. Channeling Elijah, Freya had all of the combined life and death power she needed to complete the spell minus the sacrifice of an entire coven, and Elijah’s almost enthusiastic participation seemed to make casting the spell all the easier. To their collective relief, the spell worked entirely as intended, and Freya confirmed the fetus alive and well in its new mother.

Spell complete, they compelled away the donor mother’s memories of the entire situation and sent her on her way -- with a small added layer of compulsion to use protection until such a time as she and her partner truly wanted a baby.

The only thing that remained was for Rebekah to leave, for her own safety as well as the baby’s. Her pregnancy was a miracle best experienced far from her family’s many enemies in New Orleans. She waited patiently for night to fall and slipped away under cover of darkness.

Being pregnant changed everything. From the tiniest decisions to the grander meanings of existence, it was no longer a question of what she wanted to do for herself or what was best for her. Every single element of what she thought and did was shaped by the life growing inside her.

In particular, the growing life occupied her thoughts about her own appearance.

From the first moment of her pregnancy, Rebekah longed for the visible signs. She stood in front of the mirror daily scrutinizing every possible detail: were her breasts swelling? Her nipples darkening? Most importantly, had her belly begun to expand? Two and a half months was when a bump could be expected. The donor mother had carried the child over a month before transfer, which gave Rebekah four weeks of dutiful examination before she finally felt confident in saying the faint bulge beneath her navel was in fact the proof of the baby inside her, and not the waffles she had craved for breakfast.

Once she came to that conclusion, she caught herself studying her reflection throughout the day repeatedly. Standing in profile, lifting her shirt, touching the tiny, raised band of flesh and imagining how it would grow: it was a great source of pleasure in these otherwise trying times.

It was during one such examination that Rebekah noticed the faint mark on her arm.

Physical changes were expected during pregnancy, and at first Rebekah tried to ignore the faint blush of red on her skin, but she was also a vampire, and vampires healed quickly and were not typically susceptible to minor skin irritations. When the red patch did not heal and instead began to steadily darken into a recognizable symbol, she began to panic.

It was a skull, clear as anything. More than that, it bore the particular proportions and characteristics of the skulls adorning the accursed stake from her time in the ocean.

There was only one thought in her mind: she had to return to New Orleans and find Freya. She had to be certain the curse had not done anything to her baby.