Bruce Banner held his world in his hands, looking out through one of the floor to ceiling glass windows, out at New York in all its never sleeping glory. The city was awake still, as awake as he was. It may have been brightly lit outside, brightly lit by the many street lights,the 24 hour stores, the flashing blue of ambulance and police flying through the night on their way to save lives.
The city lived on, on even though it had seen so many disasters in the past years, disasters he had helped to end. There was destruction caused by him, sure, but there were less lives destroyed, and a planet saved, which would have otherwise been destroyed.
Avengers tower was never somewhere he had expected to call home, and he never expected to become a father the way he had. Yes, he had dreamt of delivering his child- or at least, being by his wife's side as she delivered- but this was not quite how he had expected things to go.
He hadn't know, she said she hadn't either, that it was impossible- but she had successfully won every lie detector test that she had ever faced, you could never trust he not to lie- especially if she was emotional.
She had been diagnosed as a sociopath as soon as she was accepted by S.H.I.E.L.D., they had seen what a childhood of desensitisation had done and she would never be very in touch with her emotions. Emotions made her vulnerable. She had been trained never to be vulnerable, it compromised her skill set.
The child was dressed in a simple white sleeper. It had little pink roses on the cuffs, and the snaps were also pink. The only indication it was a girl. It's hair was a very light colour and fluffy, fuzzy as the hair of newborns often were, but already he could see a tinge, a sprinkling of red amongst the pale blonde. She was going to have her mother's hair. Probably her mother's spirit too. He found himself wondering so much about her, was he really her Father? What did that mean, did it mean she would have problems, anger problems, in the way he did? At best she may have some psychological issues, at worse-well- he had created the hulk-ess.
But now, watching this newborn child, still with a close peg on her umbilical stump, and a little bit of vernix still in her creases. Her hair was a little crispy and she was in need of her first bath.
Bruce hadn't held a baby since his time in India four years ago, and he had never bathed a newborn. There was something that scared him more about this child than any other- and it wasn't just that it's mother could break his neck with her thighs. This child was his. He had made this baby, it was his own body that had created it, his own hopeless and broken body had managed to create this, this amazing human being that was just perfect in every way, from her strawberry blonde hair to her squared finger nails.
Nadezhda.
It was the name he had been thinking about since he knew he was a father, it was the name of a client from a past life,a girl with long black hair and the eyes of a goddess. She had been the prettiest girl he had ever met, before Betty, before Natasha. That name had more meaning than simply beauty. The child had been born via IVF, she was named Nadezhda because of its meaning, the very thing that she had given to her parents back when he was still studying for his PhD, her name meant Hope.
That was what this little girl had given, this little princess as she was by all rights of lineage, she was his miracle, his reason to fight and do all he could to protect her, and the world around her.
The baby girl yawned, her little face screwing up and her chubby gums showing in her open mouth. He lifted her so carefully, so scared he could hurt her little body, and rested her little cheek against his shoulder, turning her inwards so that her face was in the crook of his neck. Her eyes shut and she seemed to be content, content enough to sleep.
Newborns liked heartbeats, it was the only thing the same for them once they had gone through the biggest change of all life- being born. Nadezhda was only hours old, she had just been fed expressed milk in a dropper and she was ready to put her little mind to rest.
He smiled, he had a daughter. He had a newborn baby, a little one, and he could hold her, feel her, smell, her.
He had saved this city and now, now he had a reason to protect it.