Disclaimer: Don't own.
Author's Note: This is a sequel to Daylight, wherein Kaiba mused over his relationship with Shizuka and proposes. It's not one of my better pieces, but then, I'm still not very good at fluff. Please review.
The more she was starting to show, the more Kaiba's nerves became frayed.
At first, when she'd shyly given him the news, he'd done what he always did when faced with information he didn't like: he ignored it. Oh sure, she'd pouted, she'd pestered, and she'd tried to make him help pick out the décor for the baby's room, but he somehow managed to treat it like a business negotiation that was a necessary evil.
Acknowledge only as much as he had to, mouth whatever words would soothe the other party, and delegate the rest to someone else.
It was growing harder, however, the more her belly swelled, and once it got to the point where she had problems getting out of bed, Kaiba couldn't turn a blind eye to it anymore.
The truth of it was, he was scared. He would never in a million years admit as such, even to her, but he was frightened. Not of having children; that he could tolerate, perhaps even enjoy. But it was the birth of the child that had him on edge.
His mother had perished bringing Mokuba into the world, and he was beyond paranoid that the same would happen to Shizuka. In a way, that was the reason he was so overprotective of his little brother, though Mokuba didn't understand. The boy was all Kaiba had left of a family he could only remember now in bits and pieces, broken memories surrounding certain words and scents and the battered photographs he kept sealed in a shoebox on the very top of his closet.
Shizuka had somehow managed to worm her way into his heart, set up permanent residence, and even though he'd tried, he couldn't deny his own feelings. His proposal had been grudging, but the best decision considering their circumstances. The girl would never have remained content as simply his girlfriend, and he was relatively apathetic towards the whole deal, so marriage had been one of the many concessions he had made to keep her happy and by his side. Pregnancy had naturally followed, though he had voiced his opposition numerous times. However, the damage was done, and Kaiba couldn't run from the truth any longer.
He also couldn't bear to lose someone he cared about again.
So now, his initial inattentiveness became a cloying attention to every detail of her life.
She was no longer permitted out of the mansion without an escort. Her meals were carefully prepared by their cook. He made her live by a schedule; at certain times, she had to eat, and at other times, she had to exercise. He ensured she was seen by the best female doctors his money could find, and when he wasn't physically around to watch her like a hawk, he had Isono do it for him.
When she'd protested, Kaiba had pointed out that she no longer lacked for company. The arrangement was nothing less than practical, in his opinion, and any complaints were brushed under the carpet. After all, how many times had she called him at work, professing boredom and loneliness and begging for him to come home?
Then, slowly, his paranoia turned into fascination. It snuck up on him the day she'd bullied him into accompanying her to get an ultrasound. Reluctant to take the time off from work, he'd nonetheless gone along with her, though he'd sulked about it for a while.
But then he saw his child on the monitor, and for the first time, he'd pressed a hand to his wife's swollen belly. He'd felt his child – his child – move, felt the baby kick, and suddenly, it didn't seem so bad anymore.
Not that he'd relented on Shizuka's schedule in the slightest. If anything, his newfound fondness for the being growing within her made him tighten the reins even more. It also allowed him to endure her increasingly wretched mood swings, the sharp jabs and accusations that she normally would never have uttered, and the odd cravings that sent him or Isono out at three in the morning seeking food that was out of season.
And it was just his luck that Shizuka had a constant craving for truffles. It was hard enough keeping his own fingers out of the candy drawer, but now that there was a constant supply of chocolate in the mansion, Mokuba had gained a noticeable amount of weight.
He claimed, of course, that it was deliberate, to make Shizuka feel more at ease with her own expanded waistline. However, it didn't make the girl feel any better, especially after she could no longer see her own feet.
Kaiba regretted not being around when she first began having contractions. They'd known she was growing close to her due date, but an important meeting he simply could not push off combined with her monumental crankiness had driven him to the office before the sun had even risen. His assistant had fished him out of the meeting, and he'd torn off like a bat out of hell almost before she'd finished giving him the news.
The paranoia gnawed at his belly with a newfound strength, and his mind continuously conjured up worst-case scenarios until he felt physically ill. Each of them resulted in Shizuka bleeding out, occasionally with the child dying with her, and Kaiba cursed out his driver, firing him for the twentieth time that week, trying to get him to magically fly over downtown Domino City's notorious traffic.
Then, when he'd finally arrived, he wished he'd stayed at the office. It was harder than he'd expected, watching Shizuka in so much pain, his eyes constantly moving to the machines she was hooked up to ensuring that her heart rate wasn't dropping. He barked orders at the doctors, demanded updates on her vitals every fifteen minutes, and was generally a monumental pest.
They were used to overprotective spouses and family members, however, so the most he got was a dark look, perhaps a few nasty mutters. But for the most part, everything moved smoothly.
He finally held his screaming son in his arms, staring down at the tiny form before studying his exhausted wife. He took in her sweat-drenched skin, her mussed hair, the dark circles under her eyes. The scent of blood hung in the air, but the steady beeping indicating her heart rate soothed him.
She'd never looked so beautiful to him.
And suddenly there he was, a part of a complete family in a way he'd only known briefly before having it torn away from him. Mokuba was finally admitted into the room, and he came to stand next to Kaiba, staring at the child in his arms with equal fascination and adoration.
"Don't I get to see him?" Shizuka asked softly, shifting in her bed slowly and wincing.
Kaiba offered her a rare smile and went to her side, kneeling down and presenting the tiny, wrinkled baby in all his blue-eyed glory. He stopped screaming long enough to study his mother, little arms reaching out, before deciding that yowling at the top of his lungs was more fun.
"Can I hold him?" Mokuba asked.
"Me first," Shizuka interjected, giving a soft laugh. Kaiba pressed the child into her arms, and though she flinched at the sheer volume the child was projecting – he must have taken after her brother in lung capacity – she held him close, smiling tiredly.
"He's beautiful."
"You're beautiful."
Kaiba leaned over, kissing his wife on the forehead and smoothing her hair out of her face. That one picture perfect moment was all it took for him to decide that all the trials they'd faced, all the fights and the compromises and the bruises his ego had taken, had all been worth it. He recalled the day he'd proposed beneath that cherry blossom tree in the park, with the puppy he'd gotten her trying its best to eat through the trunk. He remembered the look in her eyes when she'd seen the ring, and the odd sense of embarrassment he'd felt when professing his love.
He remembered how she'd looked, walking down that aisle, resplendent in her white gown and looking happier than he'd ever seen her. He remembered the vows they had exchanged in that small, intimate ceremony, and the celebration afterwards that he'd tried his best not to be a part of.
Everything swirled in his mind, meshing together, combining to present to him the scene before him. Mokuba. His wife. His newborn son. Isono lurking in the doorway.
Kaiba's life felt complete.