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“Oh, fuck.”
“What’s wrong?” Apollo asked, and then he heard it as well. Crying. The keening wail of an infant, the kind that sounded like their tiny lungs would give out at any moment. Midnighter was sifting through the rubble before Apollo had finished his sentence, and from the dust and debris he pulled out the squealing bundle. He hushed the baby, tucking it into the crook of his arm to bounce gently as he continued to search what was left of the building. He found the mother, what was left of her, and grit his teeth before turning away. Apollo touched down beside him, a hand on his shoulder.
“I think she’s an orphan now,” Midnighter sighed, brushing the dust off of the baby blanket.
“She?” Apollo asked, still looking over the rubble though he already knew that there was no one left alive. They had gotten here too late– this destruction wasn’t on them, which was the thinnest of silver linings. It wasn’t entirely their fault that a baby no longer had a mother.
“Pink blanket, pink onesie.” Midnighter shrugged, “maybe they were progressive, but I’m betting on gender norms.”
“We need to get her somewhere safe, she might have family outside of the area.” Apollo said, stroking a finger over the baby’s cheek, flushed red from crying. Midnighter settled the baby closer against him, glancing up at his husband.
“She needs to eat. Probably needs a change, too.” Midnighter explained, and Apollo quirked an eyebrow, incredulous.
“We can’t just… Take her.”
“I know that,” Midnighter scoffed, still doing that little unconscious bounce and sway combo. The baby had stopped wailing at least, but was still crying, fussing and he hushed her softly. “But we can at least get her comfortable before we hand her over.”
“Mid– Love…” Apollo started but stopped himself, shaking his head. He pressed a kiss to his husband’s temple, sighing. “Alright. I’ll do a supply run. Meet back at my apartment?”
Midnighter gave a tight smile, turning his head to kiss Apollo, soft and brief. “Door.”
Midnighter put the baby down long enough to change out of his uniform, then swapped out her dirty baby blanket with a throw off the back of the couch. With a damp cloth he gently cleaned the dust off of her face then checked her over for injuries– miraculously, she was unharmed. Not a scratch on her, and he couldn’t help but think of how desperate her mother must have been to keep her child safe. Was she an only child? The first and last, or had she lost her siblings too?
Apollo touched down on the balcony and paused in the threshold for a moment just to watch his husband, standing in their kitchen with a baby in his arms, dressed in jeans and a sweater that Apollo knew belonged to him and he suspected it had been borrowed because it was probably the softest item of clothing he owned, made out of a cashmere wool blend. A lot more forgiving on a baby’s skin than leather. Midnighter no doubt knew Apollo was there, but he still made his footsteps heard as he came to set down a bag on the kitchen counter.
“Thank god for twenty-four hour convenience stores,” Apollo smiled, leaning over to get a look at the baby’s face now that she was cleaned up. At six months old, she was nothing but fat rolls and rosy cheeks, rosebud lips. Sparse, dark hair and glossy dark eyes that were trying desperately to take in everything around her. “Want to go change her while I make up a bottle?”
Once the baby was fed and changed, she fell asleep in Midnighter’s arms. Forced to hold her for the entirety of her rest, he’d made himself comfortable on the couch with Apollo leaning over the back of it, watching the baby over his husband’s shoulder. He’d always known Midnighter had a soft spot for kids. He spoke to them gently, killed anyone who hurt them, and when he had briefly been allowed to be a parent it was like some of the trauma and rage within him was peeled away to expose what a caring and sweet man he was. Up until then, only Apollo had been privy to those delicate aspects of Midnighter’s personality.
“Reminds you of Jenny, doesn’t she?” Apollo asked quietly, slipping his arms around Midnighter’s shoulders, his cheek against Midnighter’s temple. “You miss her.”
“Of course,” Midnighter replied, voice low and raw with the sheer honesty of the statement. He leaned back into the couch, turning his head towards Apollo’s, his eyes closed. “I lost so much time with her… With both of you. By the time I was done being a moron, she was all grown up.”
Apollo kissed his face gently, across his forehead and the bridge of his nose. “We forgave you, my love.”
Midnighter only sighed, looking down at the baby again and adjusting the blanket around her.
“Do… Do you want another baby?”
“No,” Midnighter replied, steady and sure. “No, I don’t, and unless it was another century baby, our line of work doesn’t really leave room to raise a kid. Do you want another baby?”
“No,” Apollo said, just as sure as his husband. He rested his head against Midnighter’s again, watching the baby in his husband’s arms. She slept for another hour or so, and by then they had run out of excuses to keep her in their apartment. If she had any family left, they’d be looking for her. If she was truly an orphan, she needed to be somewhere that she could be cared for until she found a new family.
While probably not the first child delivered to authorities by superheroes, she was probably the first one that came with the threat of broken legs if she found anything less than a caring, loving home. A threat even more jarring because it came from the man dressed in white, adorned with a halo, and not the angry ball of black leather that stood beside him.
Her name was Emily, and she grew up in a healthy, happy home in the suburbs of Opal City. She excelled in math and science, loved skateboarding and believed, wholeheartedly, in the two guardian angels that lingered at the edges of her memories.
One dressed in all black, and the other dressed in all white.