WHO: Lucy Lyon → Catherine de' Medici WHEN: Late morning of January 31 → Summer of 1549 WHERE: Her office, then her DC apartment → French court SUMMARY: During the middle of a meeting at work, Lucy is given a vision of Catherine finding out she's pregnant once again and, in retrospect, she finds herself relating more than she'd anticipated. WARNINGS: Mentioning of pregnancy symptoms
It had hardly been a year since Catherine had last gone to her physician to confirm her suspicions. After three pregnancies before the birth of Louis, she had become well acquainted with the symptoms that would herald the early stages of another. The soreness, the fatigue, the nausea coupled with the vomiting. It had been the last, as it had been with Francis, Elizabeth, Claude, and Louis before, that had brought her to the physician yet again. The confirmation he'd given wasn't a surprise, yet Catherine couldn't help but feel a jolt of joy and ease at the news.
Another child. He or she would be the fifth in the royal family, not counting the addition of Mary Stuart to court. As Catherine walked through the corridors of the castle, making her way back to her rooms before she would deliver the news to Henry herself, a satisfied smile crossed her lips. Maybe next time, Diane.
Her thoughts were ripped from her husband's mistress as the sound of laughing and shouting echoed through the open door of the balcony that Catherine was passing by. Her pace slowed, that of her guards and ladies behind her doing the same, and she slipped out onto the balcony. From her vantage, she had full view of the grounds, including the source of the laughter that had distracted her -- children. More specifically, her son and his betrothed.
Pausing a moment to watch them play, her gaze flitted once to the guards that were watching the prince and queen lazily, some not even looking at the children at all as their gazes found a group of ladies crossing the grounds. Though Catherine found herself irritated at such inattention, she realized the children had made no notice of it. They were perfectly content to run in the grass, Mary much faster than the prince thanks to her longer limbs. In the time that Mary had been brought to France, Catherine had come to develop genuine affection for the Scottish girl, thinking of her as her own. Both children had difficult lives ahead of them -- predetermined, thanks to circumstances of their births and political alliances, but still difficult. They deserved these moments of levity and innocence.
"Emile," Catherine said, her voice firm as she left the balcony and glanced once toward the head of her guards. "See that the guards watching over our dauphin and the Queen of Scotland are dismissed immediately and replaced with anyone with even an ounce more competence than them." Her orders made, she continued down the corridor, finding herself smiling once more as her hand gently grazed the silks of her dress at her stomach.
"Lucy."
With a jolt, Lucy found herself not in the stone corridors of a castle in France, but sitting on an uncomfortable chair, her legs crossed as she took notes during yet another meeting. At least, she was supposed to be taking notes. As she glanced down, she realized that her hands had stilled far too long ago -- at least, she could assume as much given the expression on her colleagues' faces.
"I'm terribly sorry," she apologized, her accent a bit thicker than usual; she'd learned not long after she'd arrived in America that people had a tendency to forgive her for small infractions if she leaned into the Charming Brit persona. "Apparently I ought to have opted for that extra shot of espresso this morning, yes?"
That drew a few chuckles, letting Lucy know that her mission was accomplished, and the few points that she had missed were gone over again for her benefit. Though she did her best to pay attention to the remainder of the meeting, it was difficult to keep her mind from wandering back toward the scene she had been gifted. It was far from the first and she'd come to accept that it wouldn't be the last at this point. Over the last several months, she'd had dream after dream and she'd finally come to understand who she was meant to be -- Catherine de' Medici, a long dead Queen of France. Though she had taken plenty of history classes throughout her life and was familiar enough with the Tudors and the royals of other countries from that period, she had no clue why she was being plagued with these flashes of a life she cared little about.
This one, though, had affected her in a way the others hadn't. It wasn't the first time that Catherine had been with child. Hell, Lucy had actually endured dreams of her giving birth, which was right up there in nightmare territory. This time, though, she was finding herself being visited with an odd sense of deja vu.
Soreness. Fatigue. Nausea and vomiting. She had been blaming the first on her body just being difficult, the second on simply stretching herself too thin at work in the habit she was too accustomed to, and the third on the flu that had been going through the office. Now, though, she considered it. The flu everyone else had been catching had left them calling out for days at a time, complaining of fevers and a whole score of symptoms that she didn't have. She glanced at her phone as another thought struck her, taking in the illuminated date above the time. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she did some mental math. Though Lucy Lyon was not one to panic, she found herself doing exactly that, thankful as the meeting drew to a close.
"Lucy, wait." The blonde turned, her eyebrows raised as she looked to her boss in curiosity. Before she had a chance to say anything in return, he continued, "You don't look so good. Maybe -- maybe you ought to take the rest of the day. Rest up? You might have that thing everyone else has."
It was proof of just how worried she suddenly was that Lucy agreed. She wasn't one to call in sick or leave for anything less than an emergency, but this seemed downright emergent to her. Five minutes later, she was donning her jacket and heading toward the door, her purse and laptop bag swung over her shoulder. She didn't stop for anyone, her heels clicking on the tile and then the sidewalk at a rapid pace.
Before long, Lucy was standing in the bathroom of her studio apartment in DC. She longed to be back in Dunhaven, where her most comfortable of pajamas were tucked away in her dresser at the house she owned there. Her apartment in the city was more or less a glorified hotel room, with little decoration and only a fraction of the belongings she had in Dunhaven. But, she didn't think she'd have been able to wait the duration of the drive before knowing for sure. It had only taken her a moment to hurry in and out of the CVS nearest to her apartment, glad for the anonymity that came with the large city compared to the small town she normally preferred, and she had wasted no time with the pregnancy test. She hadn't even changed, still wearing her heels, pencil skirt, and blouse ensemble that she'd chosen for work that morning.
Lucy had been in this situation only a couple of times before. She was careful when it came to her sexual partners and the previous scares had been just that -- scares born of paranoia and overthinking. Lucy was, if anything, responsible. However, as she stood waiting for the test to do whatever chemistry it was cooking on the bathroom counter, she knew that she may have been less responsible than normal in the last couple of months. Work had become a constant distraction, as had the holidays and her mother's threats to actually cross the pond and visit her despite her daughter's insistence that she stay in London. Even Mikhail himself had become a distraction; they may not have been dating, but that didn't stop her from making sure she was in Dunhaven whenever he visited. Still, they were poor excuses for forgetting her birth control, she thought, her eyes closing as she drew in a deep breath.
It wasn't that Lucy didn't like children or even that she didn't want them for herself. She always assumed that she might have them, in one of those far distance someday sort of ways. As for children themselves, she loved them. When a coworker brought their child in, she was just as excited to hold a baby or get down on the floor with a toddler as she might be if someone brought in their dog. Though she didn't have any nieces or nephews yet, she often sent gifts to her second cousins, the progeny of Francis's sister, despite very rarely seeing them. Children as a concept wasn't the issue, so much as that this would go against every plan she had made for herself. Career first, family once she'd established herself. Finances would never be an issue for her, unless she made a terrible choice in her investments, but she had resigned herself to focusing on her career over everything else.
Part of her wanted to delve into denial for the remaining thirty seconds before the test would be ready, but Lucy couldn't. Not this time. In the times past, she always knew that in her heart that it was overreacting that led her to the test. This time, though, she felt certain, much as Catherine had in the memory. The only denial she was letting herself partake in was attempting to not think of Mikhail.
The seconds passed, then the alarm on her phone began to chime. Lucy sucked in one more breath, holding it as she opened her eyes and looked at the test on the counter. The air rushed out in a heavy sigh.