The mask feels heavier now. Not just the plastic pressing against your face, but the weight of everything you carry beneath your skin.

Your body has changed. Your stomach rounds in a way that can’t be hidden, even under the loose jackets and dark robes you wear to blend in. Barty notices, of course. He always notices. But instead of being frustrated or panicked, he watches you with a new kind of fascination—a mixture of pride and control that makes your stomach tighten in ways unrelated to the baby.

You’ve grown stronger. Slower movements, but deliberate. Careful. Calculated. You don’t stumble over your fear anymore; you’ve learned to let it simmer quietly, like a heat beneath your skin. And yet… every time you catch yourself imagining the tiny life inside you, you feel the vulnerability that never fully goes away. A reminder that even monsters can carry something fragile.

⸻

Barty adjusts everything around you.

“Sit,” he orders one evening as you finish wiping down the knives. “Not because I don’t trust you, but because the last thing I need is a misstep.”

You comply, sinking onto the floor beside the bed. Your hands rest on your stomach absentmindedly, and for a moment, you forget he’s there.

He doesn’t remind you of anything—he doesn’t need to. He simply watches.

“Good,” he murmurs, and his voice carries that same dangerous reverence you’ve learned to read as both praise and warning. “You’ve adapted. You’re… perfect.”

The word should unsettle you. In any other context, it would. But now, months into this life, it feels almost like a shield. You’ve become something Barty hasn’t fully controlled, yet he admires—his work, yes, but also his reflection of it in you.

⸻

When you move through the city for your surveillance runs, people notice nothing. A pregnant woman carrying groceries, walking through alleys under cover of night—it’s absurd how unassuming you’ve become. And yet, you know you could turn and strike, take control, leave a body where it would be months before anyone realizes what happened. You’ve been trained too well. Every nerve, every instinct honed for survival and stealth, runs just beneath your skin, coiled and ready.

Barty knows this, too. He senses the shift in your confidence, in your posture, in the way you carry both yourself and the child you’ve been forced to nurture in secret. And it excites him in ways you refuse to name, a dangerous mix of pride and possessiveness.

“You don’t struggle as much anymore,” he observes one evening, leaning against the doorway while you plan a new operation. “I could almost forget you’re carrying it.”

You glance at him, a slow, tired smile touching your lips. “Almost,” you correct him.

His grin widens, but it’s not playful. “Good,” he murmurs. “I like it when you’re useful—and obedient.”

⸻

The nights are the hardest.

The mask presses against your face, the knife cold in your hand. Your stomach aches from both the child and the tension. You move slower, you think longer, you calculate every step—but the fear hasn’t fully left you. The world is still dangerous. Barty is still dangerous. And yet, there’s a strange exhilaration in realizing you no longer flinch.

You’ve become a Ghostface not just in training but in identity. You carry your new weight like armor, a physical reminder of life and death intertwined. And when the phone rings in the middle of the night, when the voice comes through altered and menacing, you answer with calm authority, knowing the city doesn’t just fear Barty anymore. They fear both of you.

⸻

One evening, Barty sits beside you on the bed, his mask discarded for once, watching your hands rest on your rounded stomach. He studies you like he’s seeing a work of art for the first time, a mixture of control and awe in his expression.

“You’re more than I imagined,” he says softly, almost reverently. “Stronger. Quieter. Perfect.”

You let your gaze meet his. There’s a moment—a dangerous equilibrium. Barty leans closer, a whisper brushing your ear.

“And you’re mine,” he says.