You don’t realize you’re pregnant all at once.

It happens in fragments.

The way your body feels heavier after a kill, like gravity has doubled. The nausea that hits you not from blood, but from mornings. The way your hands linger on your stomach without you meaning them to.

At first, you think it’s stress.

Barty tells you stress is weakness.

So you keep quiet.

⸻

You’re twenty now. He’s older by a year. Old enough for the world to stop calling what you do kids playing murderer and start calling it what it is.

Serial killers.

Ghostfaces.

Plural.

⸻

You find out alone.

A cheap test in a gas station bathroom, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead like insects. The result appears faster than your breath can catch.

𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦.

The word feels foreign. Heavy. Dangerous.

You sit on the closed toilet lid for a long time, mask tucked under your arm like a second face you can’t remove.

A child.

Inside you.

Made in a world soaked in fear and lies and knives.

Your first thought isn’t joy.

It’s terror.*

⸻

Barty notices before you tell him.

He always does.

“You’re slower,” he says one night, watching you from across the room while you clean a blade. “Careless.”

“I’m fine,” you reply.

He tilts his head, eyes narrowing. Studying you like evidence.

“You’re hiding something.”

You learned a long time ago that lying to Barty is pointless.

So you don’t.

“I’m pregnant.”

The silence that follows is absolute.

Then—

He smiles.

Not wide. Not manic.

Reverent.

⸻

“Say it again,” he whispers.

You do.

His hand presses flat against your stomach without asking, fingers splayed possessively, as if claiming territory.

“Ours,” he says softly. “That’s… perfect.”

Your blood runs cold. “This isn’t—this isn’t a gift.”

He looks at you then, really looks at you, eyes bright and sharp and alive in a way that terrifies you.

“It’s destiny,” he says. “Proof.”

“Of what?” you ask.

“That we’re permanent.”

⸻

*Everything changes after that.

And nothing does.

⸻

^Barty becomes meticulous.*

^You’re not allowed on front line kills anymore. You handle logistics now—planning, calls, surveillance. You become the voice more often than the blade.*

“Risk is unnecessary,” he says. “You matter more now.”

You don’t miss the implication.

You are no longer just a partner.

You are a vessel.

⸻

The mask feels different when you wear it.

Heavier.

You imagine the baby hearing your breathing through it. The distortion. The screams on the other end of the phone.

You wonder what kind of world they’re learning before they’re even born.

Sometimes, late at night, you press your hand to your stomach and whisper apologies.

Sometimes, you don’t.

⸻

Barty talks to your belly like it can hear him.

“You’ll be brilliant,” he murmurs once, almost tender. “Better than us.”

You flinch. “Better how?”

“Smarter,” he replies. “Colder.”

You snap, “They won’t be like us.”

He smiles indulgently. “Everyone is shaped by what protects them.”

⸻

The police get closer.

Two Ghostfaces become legends. The city breathes fear.

And you realize something horrifying:

Pregnancy doesn’t make you weaker.

It makes you 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦.

No one suspects the quiet woman with the steady hands. No one imagines the monster nesting instead of hunting.

You adapt.

You always do.

⸻

One night, after a close call, you throw up in the sink.

Barty holds your hair back, gentle as ever.

“You’re doing so well,” he murmurs. “I knew you would.”

You stare at your reflection—pale, hollow-eyed, mask on the counter beside you.

“Do you ever worry,” you ask quietly, “that this will destroy everything?”

He laughs softly. “It already has.”

Then he leans down, pressing his forehead to yours.

“And that’s why it’s beautiful.”

⸻

Later, alone, you sit on the bed and cradle your stomach.

Outside the room, Barty hums to himself, cleaning a knife.

Inside you, something shifts.