Chapter Text
Their daughter is a miracle between his palms; a tiny wrinkled thing that coos around air as she sleeps, content to slumber away the early morning after her birth.
İso has barely been able to put her down since the midwife settled her in the arch of his arm to recite the prayer in her ears, studying every bit that made her up with unrelenting awe.
The others filtered through the Koçari house in rotation, alternating between preparations to pass by and offer congratulations. They were content to marvel over her just like that, noting her downy hair, the scrunch between her eyes which have yet to open but for the barest of flutters, and her lovely toes.
His grandmother, flushed with the tears she freely allowed to fall, pressed a kiss to his forehead, patting his cheek with hands that have grieved too much. Eleni was delighted, unable to control the smile spread from ear to ear. Oruç clapped him on the back with a shadowed strength of their usual brotherly teasing, contentious of the new soul in the room, who deserved the gentlest care. Adil scarcely breathed, overcome as he was and Esme sobbed as she laughed over the baby. İso offered his daughter in effort to soothe the wound that will always bleed anew even after it scabbed over but his aunt turned sister-in-law, always dear to them, only shook her head with a smile, whispering verses of protection over his daughter's head as she rubbed her index against the small tips of her fingers.
What a small thing she is with her button nose and curled hands, smaller than his wrist, no thicker than a knuckle and a half.
“İso.”
He startles and lifts his head up from where it's bowed over their daughter. He murmurs her name, in it a thousand feelings and one. “Fadime.”
Wrapped in the thick quilts, his wife makes an endearing impression of their child, blinking her big eyes at him while her nose remains buried in the end of the blankets. He lets out a breathless sigh of relief at the healthy parlour of her face; restored after the excruciating hours of labour.
Her eyes twinkle with the reflection of a smile. “Are you going to keep standing by the window?”
“I don't know, my dear wife, if I come any closer, will you try to break my hand again?”
“Try?” Fadime holds her hand to her mouth, wide-eyed as she pouts with apology. “Yoh, sorry, İso, I didn't mean to stop, I thought I actually broke it.”
He laughs, shaking his head. His index aches to wag in her face as he is prone to do but they're preoccupied with forming a secure cradle and so their teasing must take on a different, more tempered form in light of the new change to their family unit.
“Fadime, Fadime.”
“What?”
“You're too energetic for someone who pushed out a baby just this dawn, you know that?”
She leans against the pillows with a groan, clicking her tongue. “Well, that's over now. My back is breaking off and I can feel the blood flowing down like a monsoon.”
“Ayy."
His wince disturbs the sleeping rhythm of his girl and she protests this most grievous insult by low-pitched whimpers, grimacing against her deteriorating rest.
Fadime's shoulders lose their tension and her eyes trace the moving bundle in his arms. “Is she awake?”
“Yes.”
“Give her to me. I want to see.”
He moves towards the bed, adjusting the covers as he does. İso sits slowly on the mattress, facing his wife, but her attention is solely reserved on their daughter, whose cries hitch as she furrows her brows. Fadime opens her arm to receive her weight and the transfer is a slow thing coiled with tight awareness of her delicate skin and fragile bones.
She moves the fabric that hides her cheeks from her eyes so she can properly study their baby and her eyes well with the shiny gleam.
“Oh. Zeynep.”
İso cannot tear his gaze away. His heart expands in his chest until it threatens to engulf his lungs and burst from his throat. Fadime unwraps the yellow cotton, scrunching her mouth in an adoring pout when she glimpses the smallest feet they have ever seen. She runs her finger up the length of her onesie, outlining her mouth and feather lightly messaging the wrinkles above her closed eyes.
“So small.”
He nods.
“You drove me crazy, kicking around my womb those last weeks and now that you're here, you're sleeping again.”
She takes a hiccuping breath, Zeynep, but settles when Fadime runs her fingers in circles along her covered side.
“Do you see that? She has my hair.”
The first thing İso noticed once the shock of holding her faded, the thick, dark locks gleaming with the early light. His wife's inheritance from her mother, now passed down to their daughter in turn.
Fadime looks up at him and he finds himself hard pressed not to smother her in kisses and never let her leave his side, with her sparkling bright face that radiates unfiltered joy.
“You know, Eleni takes a lot after Abi. Do you think Zeynep will, too?”
“Oof, I hope not.”
She rears back and she narrows her intent gaze upon him, which promises the swiftest retribution for his words. “Here I thought you called me the only woman for you.”
“That's exactly why. Imagine if she has your eyes, Vallah, one look and I will give her the entirety of Furtuna, Oruç's properties too. How will we manage the business, then?”
“Poor Zeynep,” she shakes her head, batting her lashes teasingly, “just a few hours old and he doesn't want to give you his company. What a mean Babacığım.”
He opens his mouth to speak but that word, Baba, out of Fadime's mouth short circuits his brain. He has to blink several times, swallowing around air as his tongue works to get out a single sound that doesn't resemble that of a strangled cat.
“Did I say that, Kuzum? Whatever she wants, she gets.”
“Really?”
“Anything.”
“Hmm,” she smiles in satisfaction, “Maybe the Furtuna have to fear after all.”
Fadime moves against the headboard like it's a throne and İso leans forward, meeting the narrowed glint of her eyes with his own. Their staring match fits seamlessly with Zeynep between them as their lips threaten to curve, their dead giveaway, at the possibility of a round of push and pull.
Then, he brushes his nose against hers and Fadime softens, closing her eyes when their foreheads bump together in greeting. He caresses her hips, twisting his hand so it settles in comfort against where the cramps are most intense.
“I'm glad you're okay, Fadime.”
İso kisses her temple. She looks at him and wipes her fingers along his jaws, the tension that yet lines his muscles, contrasting harshly with his dark circles. He almost lost his mind when the midwife arrived late and there was fierce competition between him and her brother on who would drive the woman to kick them out onto the front driveway first.
“Well as any mountain goat, hungry too.”
He pats her hand, bracing. “That's the spirit. The women have cooked a whole table worth of food and enough sherbet to last you a week.”
“Oof.”
“You need to regain your energy quickly,” İso leans forward so he can whisper, “Anneciğim.”
Fadime stills, her nose turning a bright red and she shoves him backwards, jostling Zeynep. Their daughter cries and does not fall silent until patted to sleep once more. They hold their index to their mouth in mutual agreement to keep quiet.
Soon, they will have to open their sanctuary to the rest of the family, weave beads into onesie and blankets protection and distribute livestock in joy of the safe birth. They will bury her umbilical cord for the child's blessed life and accept gifts of congratulations. Trabzon will sing all the way from the mountains of Koçari to the Furtuna lands.
For now, little Zeynep rests against her mother's chest, who leans against her father's as they take turns in tracing her every feature and tiny wrinkles. It's enough.