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At first, Emily tells herself the ever-present nausea is just a physical reaction to seeing her friend with her new baby.
It isn’t something that makes her proud, but it’s what she’s convinced it is. Her stomach rolls with grief every time she sees JJ with Michael, every time she sees Henry proudly hold his little brother with a wide smile on his face - an expression she’d never had the chance to see on Jack’s face and one she would never see.
JJ had been nothing short of supportive since she’d told her about Elliot, any disappointment she may have at her best friend being unable to be involved with her pregnancy pushed to the side. She’d spoken to her privately before she let Penelope announce the baby shower she was throwing her, giving Emily a heads up on the date so she could make an excuse for why she couldn't be there. She’d tried to say she could go, that she could grin and bear it for a few hours, as if the mere sight of JJ’s bump wasn’t enough to make tears well in her eyes, but JJ had squeezed her hand and told her that she didn’t mind. That she’d rather she was okay, and she did a good job of distracting Penelope from asking too many questions when Emily acted as if the date was a surprise a couple of hours later when she claimed she and Aaron already had a weekend away booked.
Emily loved Michael, just like she loved Henry, but she couldn’t deny that every time she looked at him it hurt. When she held him for the first time - the weight of him in her arms so much heavier than Elliot had been when she was able to hold him - Aaron had taken him from her after a couple of minutes, his hand on her back before he took the baby, able to feel the tension spreading through her by the second. Seeing him hold Michael hadn’t been much easier on her, everything that she considered her own failures, her inability to keep her babies safe when they were still inside of her, lingering just beneath her skin as she watched him smile down at a baby that wasn’t theirs, a shake to his lips that only she could see. She’d excused herself to the bathroom in an attempt to gather herself. He’d found her a few minutes later, the two of them gathered in JJ and Will’s downstairs bathroom, Emily’s head on Aaron’s chest and her fingers gripping the E pendant on her necklace as he ran a hand up and down her back.
It’s easier to tell herself that it’s the grief, that everything else - her missed period, her irritability, her exhaustion - are all signs that she’s about to start the menopause. That this part of her life, the part that had been over for her before it had truly begun, was on its way to its final curtain.
The alternative was too much to think about, too ridiculous to even consider, so when her doctor tells her she’s pregnant, her smile achingly kind and understanding, Emily laughs. It catches in her throat, makes her choke on the sadness that had lived there since she’d lost Elliot, and she shakes her head, wondering why her doctor who knew everything would even try to make a joke like that during what she thought was an appointment where she’d get menopause advice.
It’s only when the doctor does an ultrasound, when she shows her the tiny dot on the screen and tells her she’s about 8 weeks along, that Emily believes her. She doesn’t get the rush of joy she did the last two times she was pregnant, moments of happiness that may as well have happened to another woman. Instead, dread fills her gut. Preemptive grief floods her lungs until she can’t breathe and all she can think about is how she’s going to tell Aaron.
If he thinks she’s acting strangely when she gets home, he doesn’t say anything. They had no secrets, not usually - which makes the ultrasound picture feel heavy in her pocket - so he knew why she’d gone to the doctor. He’d been supportive, just like he always was, and had even offered to go with her. Part of her wishes he had, so he’d been there when she got the news that had shocked her to her very core, but she’s grateful that they could have this conversation in their home. The place she felt safest in the whole world. Love and sorrow and joy painted across every wall, the space that they had cultivated for them and Jack something that was beautifully theirs.
She waits until Jack is in bed, the almost 10-year-old arguing the entire way about how long he could play his game until he had to turn off his light, because she knows it won’t be an easy conversation even if it was supposed to be.
She’s in the kitchen putting away dishes, the glass of wine Aaron had poured her for dinner still untouched on the counter, when he walks in, his familiar footfall both a blessing and a curse as his steps towards her create a strange kind of countdown.
“He talked me into 10 extra minutes,” he says, smiling at her when she looks at him over her shoulder, “I don’t remember him being this good at negotiation before you were his mom.”
She chuckles, the sound caught in her throat as she slips the last plate into its place in the cabinet, “What can I say, I’m a great influence.”
He smiles, but it fades, everything she isn’t saying thick in the air around them, and he steps towards her, worry etched into the lines on his face as he shoves his hands into his pockets as if he’s unsure if he should reach out for her, “Are you okay, Em? You’ve been…quiet all evening.”
She huffs out a sound between a laugh and sob and she crosses her arms over her chest, turning so her back is leaning against the kitchen counter, the smell of the glass of red wine next to her making her stomach roll, “I don’t know how to answer that question.”
He furrows his brow and takes another step towards her, “What did the doctor say, is everything okay?”
She presses her lips together and shakes her head, blowing out a slow breath as she holds herself together, pieces that she’d glued back together bit by bit over the last few years starting to come unstuck, “I…I don’t know.”
Any worry he’d had about her all evening, any concern he’d tried to tamper down, ignites in an instant as he stands frozen in place, worst-case scenarios flooding through him, “Sweetheart-”
“I’m pregnant,” she blurts out, the words escaping before she can capture them, any attempt she’d made at practising easing into the conversation wasted. He stands there and stares at her, clearly as in shock as she is, and for a moment guilt supersedes everything else, every other emotion she’d felt in the last few hours gone for a moment as she thinks she should have at least let them sit down in the living room first, “I…what I thought were menopause symptoms were actually pregnancy symptoms. A lot of the early signs are very similar which…” she fades off into a bitter laugh and shakes her head, “Feels like a cruel trick from mother nature to say the very fucking least.”
“You’re…” he fades off, his shock not fading with it, their agreement to never go down this road again rattling around in his head. The sadness she’d had in her eyes when she told him she didn’t want to do this again clear in his memory when he blinks, two versions of her with similar expressions on their faces replacing each other every time he opens and closes his eyes.
“I’m 8 weeks along,” she says, digging through her pocket to pull out the ultrasound picture, the edges of it slightly creased as she hands it to him, “She said everything looks good. So far.”
He didn’t have to be at the appointment to know those two last words were Emily’s, not the doctors. That she would have already started to prepare herself for what she felt was inevitable. He looks at the picture in his hands, treacherous hope sparking in his chest, and he looks back up at her.
“This is…” he clears his throat, “How do you feel?”
She laughs bitterly and shakes her head, “How do you think I feel, Aaron?” She shakes her head again and starts to pace back and forth, her arms still crossed over her chest, sure that if she looked at him for too long she’d burst into the tears she’d been trying to avoid for hours, “I am 45 in three weeks. That makes this high risk anyway. Then you take into account everything else…” she clenches her jaw, “We weren’t even trying. We haven’t been in years. It would be kind of funny that I’m apparently the most fertile fucking woman on the planet if it didn’t always end with my heart being broken.”
Her almost hysterical laugh breaks his heart and he puts the picture down, stepping towards her again but making sure he still keeps his hands to himself, knowing his touch could tip her over the edge either way, “If you don’t want to do this-”
“Of course I want to do this,” she half shouts as she turns to look at him, her jaw tight as tears finally slip past her lashline when she takes a calming breath as she desperately tries to remind herself Jack is upstairs, “I want this so much it hurts, Aaron. It physically hurts. But…I can’t go through it all again. I can’t. Losing Elliot almost destroyed me.” She grabs her necklace when she says his name, a habit she isn’t conscious of as she traces the E, the only tangible evidence she had of her son’s existence other than the box of keepsakes the hospital had given her that was in their safe along with all their important documents. “I can’t do that again.”
He knew she didn’t remember much about that time, that she’d been lost in her grief in amongst soft sheets in hotels across continental Europe as they tried to escape normal life whilst they came to terms with how it had changed forever, but he remembered all of it. It had been easy to push his own grief away at the time - all of his energy focused on looking after her whilst she was unable to look after herself - but it had come back to haunt him later. The acknowledgement of what they’d lost still prone to nip at his heels whenever he saw someone with a toddler who looked to be around the age Elliot would be.
“I know,” he says, stepping closer to her so they are practically chest-to-chest, their breath skipping across each other's faces as they both still hesitate to reach out for each other, both of them aware it would open the flood gates of everything they were feeling, “Whatever…” he clears his throat, an attempt to push down emotions just pushing them to the back of his eyes instead, “Whatever you decide, sweetheart. I’ll hold your hand the entire time.”
She chokes on a sob and nods, her chin trembling as she finally leans forward, her face pressed against his neck as she clings to him, her arms hooking under his as she grips at his shoulders, unsure she’d ever be able to let go now she was anchored to him, “I can’t…I don’t want to have an abortion, Aaron,” she says, finally addressing what they were talking around, “I want to have a baby with you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
He tries to soothe her, as if she can’t feel his tears hitting the top of her head, and he kisses whatever part of her that he can reach, his lips catching dark hair as he rubs firm circles on her back, “I know, Em. I know.”
“I just don’t know how much I believe that this will end with us having a baby we get to keep.”
He holds her close, squeezing her tighter before he pulls back just enough to look at her, one of his hands on her cheek, her smudged makeup catching on the callouses of his thumb as he swipes them under her eyes, “We’ll take it one day, one hour, one minute at a time okay?” He promises, smiling sadly when she nods, his forehead against hers as he catches the agreement between them, “Whatever you need.”
“You,” she replies, swallowing thickly, something that feels dangerously close to hope sparking in her blood, “I…always just need you.”
___
It’s as hard as she thought it was going to be.
Every twinge, every feeling that didn’t feel quite right threatens to tip her over the edge. Panic wrapping its hand around her throat as she spends what feels like more time in her doctor's office than she does anywhere else. Her doctor is endlessly patient with her, and ends up offering her weekly appointments - both justified by her history and her age - and it goes some way to making her feel better. The few minutes a week when she can see her baby wiggling around on the screen the calmest she feels until the next time.
When she hits 17 weeks and 6 days, the same amount of time she was pregnant with Elliot, she can’t get out of bed. Convinced that if she did something would happen. She half expects Aaron to try and tell her that she was okay, that the baby was too during their last appointment, but his usual assurances are nowhere to be found. Instead, he calls in sick for both of them and as soon as Jack is at school he climbs back into bed with her. They spend all day there, only leaving when Aaron makes them food, and when the clock ticks past midnight, when she officially makes it to 18 weeks - the longest she’d ever been pregnant - they wipe away each other’s tears. A milestone they didn’t need to mention the importance of easing something in both of their chests.
They don’t tell anyone until she’s 24 weeks pregnant, her doctor’s assurances that she’d hit viability the last thing she’d needed before she was happy to tell people. She knew even if she went into labour now, if her body decided to fight against her again after so many weeks of working with her, that they’d have a long road ahead of them still. But her baby had a chance. And that was all she wanted.
They tell Jack first. And then Jess. And then Elizabeth, who mercifully doesn’t question any further about how long they’d waited to tell her when Emily explains they just wanted to be sure everything was okay. A look in her eyes that makes Emily wonder if she and her mother had more in common than she might realise.
They decide to tell the team at Dave’s house, one of his regular pasta nights well timed as it fell on the same day as Emily’s 24-week appointment. She spends the entire evening either plucking at her baggy sweater, hoping that it doesn’t cling to her bump like she thinks it does, or with her hand pressed against it when hidden by the dining table, the roll of the baby in her stomach a feeling she’d never grow tired of.
Aaron reaches for her hand once dinner is done and squeezes, his smile soft when she turns to look at him, a look in his eyes she knows means ‘it’s up to you,’ and she isn’t sure she’s ever loved him more. She nods and squeezes his hand back, her heart thumping in her chest as she shares the news she thought she’d never get a chance to share.
“We have something to tell you,” she says loudly enough to be heard by everyone, her teeth sinking into her lower lip when everyone turns to look at her, their other conversations dying off as she has their attention. She looks back up at Aaron, her throat tight as she suddenly finds herself unable to speak and he nods, happy as ever to take over for her when she needs him too.
“Emily’s pregnant,” he says, smiling when the others gasp, joy and genuine surprise written across their faces, “We’re having a baby.”
There’s a moment of silence before the room descends into what he can only call chaos. Happiness filling the air in a way that was almost suffocating. Penelope is out of her seat in a flash and has her arms wrapped tightly around both of them, standing between them as she plants kisses on both of their cheeks in her excitement.
“I’m so happy for you,” she says, turning her attention to Emily entirely, holding her so tightly she has no choice but to lean into it, “I had given up hope that you two would ever give me a gorgeous niece or nephew.”
Emily squeezes Aaron’s hand a little tighter at her friend's well-meaning, but unknowingly hurtful, comment, but she laughs it off, the sound only empty to Aaron and JJ who was sitting across from them, her eyes shining at them both.
“Well, if you keep hugging me like that you might just squeeze her out of me.”
There’s another pause before Penelope squeals again, “ Her? ”
Emily wasn’t well known for her patience, so finding out what they were having was a given from the start anyway, but she wanted to know so she could prepare herself either way. She knew she would have been just as happy with another boy as she was about having a girl, but the grief would have been different. Sharp in a whole new way as she tried to get her head around it all.
“Yeah,” she says, looking over at Aaron, “We’re having a girl.”
The team throw endless, loving, questions at them for what feels like hours, especially once they find out just how far along she is, but they accept their answers about her age and the complications it brought with no further prodding. Emily steps away eventually, assuring Aaron that she is fine, that she just needed a minute, with a smile and a small nod as she disappears towards the bathroom down the hallway from Dave’s dining room.
She almost walks into JJ, her focus on how the baby kicks against her hand, the sugar from the dessert Dave had insisted she had a second slice of making her more active than normal, and the only reason she doesn’t is because her friend clears her throat. Emily feels tears press at the back of her eyes the moment they meet JJ’s, a similar expression on her face that she’s sure is on hers.
“I am…” JJ starts, choking on a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh, “I am so happy for you.”
“Thank you,” she replies, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I just-”
“Em, no,” she says, reaching for her hand and squeezing it, pressing all the love that they’d missed out on in recent weeks and months into her skin, the distance that had been created between them through no fault of their own finally starting to close, “Please don’t apologise. I get it. I promise.”
She nods and sniffs, laughing at herself when a tear slips past her lashline, “I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and that this isn’t real. That it’s some kind of cruel joke my mind has come up with,” she shakes her head and puts JJ’s hand on her bump where the baby is moving, “But then she kicks me like that and I know it’s real. Because…well he never moved like that. He never got big enough.”
JJ smiles and then pulls her into a hug, holding her tightly as she runs a hand up and down her back before she pulls back to look at her, “You do know that being happy about her doesn’t take away from how much you love Elliot, right?”
She blows out a breath and wipes away another tear, her hand drifting down to her necklace, gripping the pendant at the foreign sound of someone other than her and Aaron saying their son’s name. “I know,” she says, “I have to remind myself of that a lot. But I know.”
“Good,” JJ says, wiping one of Emily’s tears away for her, “And I hope you also know that Penelope is probably planning the pinkest, most unicorn-filled baby shower that has ever happened as we speak.”
Emily laughs, a real, hearty laugh that she forgot she was capable of as she nods, “Oh God,” she says, shaking her head as she looks down the hallway to the dining room, “I hadn’t even thought of that.”
___
She’s exhausted. Her body aching in a way she didn’t know was possible as she’s pushed to her very limit, another contraction rolling through her before she’s even had a chance to recover from the last one.
“I can’t do it,” she says, unable to find the energy to be mad at herself for the whine she hears in her voice, “I can’t.”
“You can Emily,” her doctor says, smiling up at her from between her legs, “I’m holding her head in my hands, okay? You’re so close.”
She whimpers, another sound she’d file away to berate herself for later, and she turns to look at Aaron. He looks exhausted too, worn down in a different way than she was. Torn open by seeing the woman he loves in pain and the emotions that were thick in the air around them, her chest tight with everything they had lost and everything they were about to gain.
He smiles at her, one hand tight around hers and the other holding a cold compress to her forehead, and he nods, “You can do this sweetheart, you can do it.”
Whether she thinks she can or not, her body takes over, instinct forcing her to push where her brain was stopping her. She feels as her little girl slips into the world, a feeling she’d associated with silence and heartbreak for years now, but then she’s on her chest, screaming loudly and insistently as she protests being born, her skin pressed up against hers.
Emily lets out a sob as she looks at her daughter, her skin red and her hair plastered to her head with god knows what as she wails, and she barely registers it as a nurse places a blanket over the baby to keep her warm. She’s locked in the moment between the two of them, the first meeting of their dark eyes and for a moment it’s just them. Just her and the little girl she’d spent months convinced she’d never get to meet. She tries to memorise everything about her, takes in the colour of her eyes and the slope of her nose. Her tiny cupid bow lips and the dimples she can already see in her cheeks.
“Hi sweet girl,” she chokes out, not recognising her own voice, “Hi. Mommy and Daddy love you so much.”
Aaron leans in to kiss them - the baby’s temple first and then hers - and it’s the press of his lips against her skin that brings her back into the room, her focus on the doctor as she smiles up at her.
“Is she okay?” She asks, the words torn from her throat as she holds her baby against her, unwilling to give her up yet, desperate to have as much of this as she could. Aaron kisses her again when her words, and the meaning behind them, register with him. He holds them both close, his tears slipping down onto her cheeks from his, the joy they were sharing now as much both of theirs as the grief that lay underneath it.
“She’s perfect,” the doctor replies, squeezing Emily’s knee, “Dad can clamp the cord when you’re ready for him to, and then we’ll clean her up and get her weighed and measured whilst you and I sort out the placenta,” she smiles when Emily holds the baby a little tighter at the mention of someone taking her from her, “She’s yours, Emily. And she’s safe. You’re both okay.”
Emily nods and laughs, the sound catching in her throat as she looks up at Aaron, one of her hands unhooking from around their daughter to cup his cheek, “She’s okay.”
“She’s perfect,” he says, repeating the doctor’s words as he leans in to kiss her, his lips briefly against hers, “Just like her mom.”
“Do we have a name for her?” one of the nurses asks, two matching wristbands - one for Emily and one for the baby - in her hands, “Or shall I put Baby Girl Hotchner for now?”
Emily’s eyes meet Aaron’s and he nods, a quiet agreement passing between them that the name they’d decided on weeks ago was perfect, and she looks back at the nurse, “She’s called Eleanor Clara Hotchner.”
The first few hours of Eleanor’s life slip by in a haze. Both she and Emily are checked over by the doctor, and once they are given clean bills of health all the medical staff leave the room, giving them their first moments together alone with their little girl. Eventually, Aaron convinces Emily to shower, promising he’d be just outside the door with Eleanor the whole time, and she almost hates him for being right about the fact she felt better for showering the moment she steps out of the bathroom.
The only time he leaves their side is to go meet Jack out in the hallway. He was the only visitor Emily wanted in the hospital other than Aaron, something that everyone understood - although she’s sure Penelope’s understanding came from JJ forcing her to understand - and it’s a decision she stands by as she gets to watch Jack meet his little sister with no interruptions, the expression on his face as he looks up at her and Aaron and announces that he loves his little sister enough to make Emily cry again.
When he goes home, reluctant but willing once Aaron and Emily promise him he can visit again tomorrow if she and Eleanor don’t get to go home yet, Aaron takes him back out to meet Jess. Emily takes the opportunity to look down at her little girl in her arms. She fusses over her, and adjusts the blankets around her and the little hat on her head.
“You look so much like your brother,” she says, her lips pressed together as she contains a sob, so fed up with crying even though she knows she won’t stop any time soon, “Both of them.” She lifts Eleanor to kiss the top of her head and she breathes her in, taking in the sweet newborn smell that she knows will fade before she wants it to, “You are so loved, sweet girl. And I’m so glad you’re here.”
She looks up as the door opens and smiles as her husband walks in, his smile soft and full of love and everything they never needed to say.
“How are my girls doing?”
“We’re okay,” she says, shifting in the bed to make room for him, not wanting him to be anywhere but right next to her, “Aren’t we Nora?” She strokes her cheek again and then looks at Aaron, turning her head so her cheek can rest on his shoulder, “I was just telling her that she looks like her brothers.”
He nods, his breath catching in his chest as he kisses the top of her head, his arms looped around them both, “She really does.”
Emily kisses him and then settles against him, tucking herself into his chest in the best way she can whilst she still looks at Eleanor, unable to tear her gaze from the baby for any longer than a few seconds at a time, “Thank you.”
“For what, sweetheart?” He asks, his fingers trailing up and down her arm, “You did all of the work. Thanking me feels like thanking the guy who just shows up for the group project on the day it’s due.”
She laughs, “As much as I appreciate you saying that, it’s not true,” she kisses his shoulder, “You held me together when I couldn’t do it myself. I don’t think I’d have made it through this pregnancy if it wasn’t for you.”
“You underestimate yourself, sweetheart. You can do anything.”
She playfully rolls her eyes at him and directs her next comment at a still-sleeping Eleanor, “Daddy sucks at taking a compliment, baby. You’ll get used to it,” she looks up at Aaron, “I mean it, honey. I know none of this has been easy on either of us,” she makes sure she has a good hold on Eleanor before she unhooks one arm from around her to cup his cheek, “Thank you for loving me, and her, and Jack…and Elliot,” she says, a tear slipping down her cheek, her hold on Eleanor tightening for a moment. Aaron reaches out and adjusts her necklace for her, aware of her habit of doing so whenever she mentioned their little boy they’d only had a couple of hours with. His thumb is briefly pressed against the single letter that now held even more meaning, the choice behind their daughter’s name purposeful in more ways than one, “I just hope you know that we all love you back just as much,” she smiles at him, “If not more.”
He smiles and kisses her, “I don’t think it’s possible for you to love me more than I love you.”
She shakes her head and stamps a kiss against his lips before she looks down at the baby in her arms, “I guess we’ll just have to spend the rest of our lives proving Daddy wrong, huh Nora?”
He rests his cheek on top of her head, a sense of peace he hadn’t known existed washing over him as he watches her watch Eleanor. Their family would always have a piece missing. There would always be what ifs and what could have beens that would roll around. There would always be moments of sadness that would linger between him and his wife when they saw little boys who got to grow up when theirs didn’t, but they still had pieces of their son with them. Not only in a piece of jewellery Emily never took off, or a box of footprints and handprints nestled between their marriage certificate and their social security documents, but in the smiles of his older brother and his little sister.
“I guess I can live with that.”