Work Text:
The fourth day was always the hardest. The body began its incessant pleading for food, water. Adrenaline present in the days prior was exhausted; the lack of true sleep an ache that only continued to grow against the need to keep moving.
It didn’t help that you were all he could think about. Nearly 37 weeks pregnant, sore, tired, struggling to do much of anything in the final stretch. Usually independent to a fault, you relied on him for so much more now—much to your annoyance—but he’d taken it in stride. Enjoyed it, even. And work had been miraculously slow, allowing him more time with you, to help, to bask in preparing for something other than his own potential demise for once.
Until now.
There was no apology for the interruption to his life—there never was. A simple call, vague instructions borne from even more ambiguous intel, and he was pulled from you when you needed him most.
It’s this thought that has him swiping a hand over his face as he leans against the cracked concrete of the wall behind him. The hall, so quiet that it echoes with his heavy breathing, is deserted, shafts of moonlight casting an inconsistent glow through wide breaks in the ceiling. A place to rest, recollect, then move on.
He brings his canteen to his lips, sipping, conserving the last of what’s left until god knows when he’ll find more.
The sudden crackle of his earpiece clangs through him in the silence, communication having been so spotty the last few days that he’d grown too used to his own thoughts for company.
“Leon?” The voice on the other end is so sweetly familiar that he sighs, eyes closed, head falling back against the wall.
“Hunnigan. Finally.”
“Are you ok?”
“The usual. Nothin’ new.”
“Thank god. Sorry, we’ve been working through the comm failures. It’s been chaos here.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Silence stretches. So long that he nearly breaks it, not ready for another extended blackout, before there’s a new burst of static.
“Leon, something’s happened.”
Rarely, if at all, did he panic—any reaction not calculated or practiced hammered out of him by years of intense training and experience. But it sears through him now at Hunnigan’s barely restrained urgency, settling a tight fist in his gut.
“Tell me.” It comes out harsher than intended, and Hunnigan, despite herself, falters.
“We’ve been trying to reach you, but the blackouts—“
“Don’t. Just—please.”
A pause, loaded, then: “Your wife was taken to the hospital yesterday. Premature labor. Updates are… infrequent, but we’re trying. The latest is that she’s stable and progressing.”
Sick. He was going to be sick. His canteen skids where he discards it, head in his hands, fingers snagging as he pushes them backward through his hair. The rare urge to scream, to rip at the concrete beneath him, forces a deep exhale through his nose. Another.
Hunnigan eventually speaks through his distressed quiet. “I’m sorry.”
He knew the apology wasn’t solely for the situation, but also the truth of it: he couldn’t leave. Extraction now could take days. The mission was too important, there was too much at stake. Fighting it, as much as the desire to do so was tearing through every inch of him, would do nothing if not delay him even further.
Helplessness takes hold. Then resignation, determination.
“Can you have a team ready even if we go dark again? I’m getting this done.”
Her response is soft but sure. “I’ll do everything I can.”
—
Two days. You labored alone, nurses and midwives your only support, their check-ins infrequent enough that they didn’t count for much at all.
You thought of him through the pain. Imagined it was his hand on your back, his voice in your ear as you groaned, screamed, and fought through the marathon that was bringing life into the world.
And at the end of it all, the warm, small thing placed on your chest, declaring herself as yours, as his—the curve of your brow, his soft, full lips. Perfection in its purest form, meant to be witnessed in tandem but instead held by you alone.
They kept you both for observation. She was early, but only just, so she remained with you, this tiny reminder of him. She was a comfort while you waited, hoped, to hear any word of how he was doing.
When the door opens on your second day in recovery, you don’t look up from where your daughter rests on your chest, expecting, as it had been, another nurse performing their daily rounds.
In absence of the familiar greeting, though, your eyes flit to the door.
Leon stands beside the curtain, bandaged on one arm beneath his black t-shirt, but whole. Alive. And looking uncharacteristically unsure, awe and apology warring on his face.
Tears, quick and heavy, spill down now familiar tracks on your cheeks, and you shake with the suddenness of your shock.
Then he’s there, carefully folding you into him while mindful of what you hold, your face buried into the crook of his neck, his head against yours. You grip the back of his shirt, one hand on the bundle in your arms.
“I’m so sorry,” he exhales into your ear, holding fast as a quiet sob chokes out of you.
He pulls back just enough to cup your cheek in his palm, thumb banishing the tears there in a gentle stroke. “I am so sorry.”
The profound grief so plainly contorting his features threatens to rip your heart from your chest.
Nodding, you bring your hand to rest atop his, unable to voice everything you’d endured, felt, and thought the last few days in the breath of a single moment. Instead, you smile, slight, running your thumb over his knuckles. “I know.”
He looks inclined to say more, but his eyes, soft where they take you in, trail down at the light, noisy breathing from your chest, as if dragged by an invisible, all-encompassing force he’d only just realized.
You fight to contain yourself as his expression changes. Awestruck, almost afraid.
“Want to hold her?”
The barest of smiles tugs at the corners of his lips, and his eyes don’t leave her as he nods, accepting the tiny, swaddled bundle when you move to place her into his arms.
He stands then, one hand supporting her neck, the other supporting her bottom as he lifts her face closer to his, like he needs to take in every bit of her.
You feel a renewed prickle at the corners of your eyes and you blink at it, unable to help your light laugh as you watch them, witnessing in real time what you’d been imagining for the last four days.
“God, she’s beautiful,” he chokes out.
His tender gaze falls back to you, eyes glassy, lower lids unmistakably shining. “That’s all you.”
You laugh again, overwhelmed, ecstatic. “I disagree. She’s so your child.”
The grin that splits his lips is one you’ll remember as the brightest you’ve seen from him. It morphs into something softer as he brings her head to rest on his shoulder, his chin dipping to lightly touch it.
And when she nestles closer, her comfort in his warmth palpable, Leon’s eyes are on you again, that silent apology returning.
“I never would’ve let them send me if I knew.”
You incline your head, tired, resigned. An argument, if there was one, for another time. “It’s the life I chose, Leon. We knew the risks. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”
He shakes his head, unconvinced, but remains silent, regret suffocating whatever else he needs or wants to say. Your daughter stirs in the sudden quiet and he begins a tentative tap against her back, murmuring softly to her until she settles into him once more.