Work Text:
“She has your eyes.”
“You know that’s not actually possible.”
“Is too and she does, don’t you baby?” Zip cooed to their new daughter, blinking wrathfully at them in the bright sunshine. “You have your mama’s way of looking at the world—” Fed up with all the bright light, the little one screwed up her face and began to wail.
“And she has your patience,” Cindy said, voice dry and face quietly, wonderingly soft. “Come on, Arlie.” She tugged the baby blanket (covered in oranges and lemons because June thought she was cuse) over her daughter’s eyes, then tugged at her wife’s arm. “Once we get her fed, she’ll be much happier.”
“True,” Zip agreed, and they started up the hill. Control over her superspeed had grown subconscious over the years, but anytime Zip held Arlene—and therefore any time at all over the past twelve months—it seemed like fully half of her mind was shouting carefulcarefulCAREFUL as she moved. No taking risks until they were sure Arlie had inherited her mama’s enhanced build; she ate like it anyhow, but that wasn’t proof enough. This moment, this family, was so fragile Zip felt she would shatter it if she looked at it too hard.
Time passed, and Zip was proven right, over and over again. Her girl was hers, but she was always, always Cindy’s too.
Arlie grew, and she had Zip’s red hair, and her freckles, but it was Cindy she took after—Zip didn’t care what genetics said. She saw Cindy in Arlie’s laugh, in the careful way she pet Qitt when they visited Mal, in the graceful dance as their daughter dipped and twirled around the kitchen making lemonade.
Watching Cindy and Arlie together made Zip’s heart twist in a peculiar way, a love so deep it almost hurt as she watched her girls read together, as Cindy tucked Arlie in with butterfly kisses and extra snuggles.
Every time she loved her wife and daughter so much it took her breath away, Zip brooded that she was too fast, too rough, too much to be allowed this. This couldn’t be real.
Then Arlie would spin around from Cindy’s embrace and throw her tiny freckled body at her mother, and Cindy would come kiss the frown from her lips, and her girls would whirl her away with them, into the same world they lived in of sunshine and butterflies and happily ever afters.