Work Text:
Daniel smiled down at Celia sucking her milk bottle, staring down at his daughter for a little longer than necessary to avoid thinking about this new bombshell that had just been dropped on his lap. Finally, he looked up and met the sad eyes of Melinda, gazing at the positive pregnancy test in her hand.
"I'm sorry to drop this on your lap," the woman he had once planned to be celebrating his one-week wedding anniversary with right about now said. "I'm not having an abortion. Don’t need or want child support. In fact, I came over to say that if you and Annika’s sister sue my company for wrongful death to set up a nest egg for that baby and her aunt, then we'll settle right away. I’m here because not telling you that you were going to be a father once before was a mistake that got a good woman I'd have been glad to have as a friend under different circumstances killed and ruined a lot of lives. So here I am, asking if you want visitation rights, or if you don’t want to see any part of me again after all this."
Daniel checked her eyes for traces of deceit or manipulation and saw none. He had been in custody when Melinda found out her mother had committed the crime he stood accused of. She hadn’t had a chance to lie to him about that when she started protecting the woman who had died of a heart attack her first night in custody. The one thing she ever had lied to him about had been a lie of omission when she learned of his old girlfend's pregnancy, and he could see all the signs of that looking back. This time, he'd have bet his own kidneys that she was speaking the whole truth, and speaking it from the heart. No lies. No manipulations. No secretly selfish efforts to say this for just her own benefit
"I’ve got some good new job prospects lined up that I think would take care of us, but you have a point about Annika's sister and her bills. I'll ask what she thinks about the settlement. As for the baby, do you think I could love any other of mine less than I love this one?" He asked, gesturing down at Celia. "Just because of who your kid will have as a grandmother?"
"What about who he has as a mother?" Melinda asked, tears in her eyes.
"I loved you enough to almost take the fall for you when I thought you were the one who got Celia’s mother killed, why would you think that love would go away just because it turned out all you did was not be able to turn in your mother once you found out what she did too late to save Annika? I didn’t walk away that day because I didn’t love you anymore. I walked away because I love my daughter more. What kind of messed up life would she have growing up knowing that her step-grandmother got her mother killed? What kind of relationship would she have with your kids with something like that between them. After everything that happened to Annika herself just cause I happened to be the guy she had that last fling with, I wouldn't want to screw up her baby's life even if she wasn't my baby. We could try to keep it a secret, but with all the computers and media jackals in this city, she'd find out one day unless we moved somewhere practically off the map. I admit that when I started working for your mother, I had some dreams of building a nest egg for my old age and then spending the next 20 years doing aid work abroad, but that's not the kind of life for you."
"My mother is dead, half my friends act like they never heard of me, and plenty of Catholic saints said a little discomfort and sacrifice could be good for the soul," said Melinda, tears of joy in her eyes as she listened to Daniel admit he still loved her. "Whatever you want to do for that aid work, and wherever you want to do it, and whatever care and tutoring you’d need for Celia, you have my bankroll no matter what happens between you and me down the line. I can put that in writing right now. And maybe you'll have me and Celia’s little brother or sister."
"This is a big decision," Daniel cautioned her, feeling dizzy at how this had progressed. "Too big for us to rush into like this. You and our kid could always come out and visit now and then. Maybe let’s meet and talk about it every other day, for a month or so first."
"Alright," she said. But the smile on her face suggested it would take an awful lot to shake her from the course she saw such a glorious future in. And a part of him didn't even want to try.