Title: Looking Back
Pairing(s): pre-Kurtofsky
Rating: PG-13 for the below warnings
Word Count: 996
Warnings: Angst, death, domestic violence (but not between Dave and Kurt, calm down)
Spoilers: Right up to On My Way.
Summary:
Ficlet for the 100 Themes Challenge on K Love. Based in the same verse as my fic Right on Time, but can be read as a standalone story.
Looking Back
Theme: 75. Mirror
When I was twenty-two, I saw the most beautiful thing on the face of the earth.
Her name was Rosie.
Her name was Lily.
When I was twenty-two, I saw the face of God reflected.
There's the sound of a body hitting the other side of the door and Kurt screams, beating his fists against it.
"Rosie! ROSIE!"
He can hear sobbing and cries of pain, grunts and shouts and the thudding of fists on flesh. God, oh god, he's going to kill her!
Kurt pounds on the door again and shouts threats at Rick, that bastard, and demands to be let out.
An hour later, the world is eerily still, and Kurt manages to shoulder barge the door open. He hears something under his skin crack but ignores it. Rosie is in a pool of her own blood, barely conscious and wracked with spasms.
"Kurt," she gasps, "Kurt, its happening."
"I'm calling triple nine," he reassures her, wiping the blood from her face and taking her hand. There are tears on his cheeks.
"Too late," she breathes. "Baby's coming."
"Breathe, baby," Santana is crooning, gripping Britt's hand and coaching her through the contractions. "Just like Wendy said at Lamar's, remember?"
Britt nods, forehead plastered with sweat, cheeks streaked with tears, but intent, focused, determined.
Dave has never been more proud of either of them.
Young, openly gay men don't expect to be fathers at the tender age of twenty-two, but that's exactly what's happening.
The kid's actually a couple of days overdue. The girls had camped out in Dave's guest room because it's closer to the hospital and Britt likes the view better. Two days into their stay they were halfway through a late lunch when there was a splash from the kitchen and Britt saying wonderingly, "That's not pee…"
Now, when Britt looks over at him, smiling in between one contraction and the next, and holds out her other hand to him it's like another kind of homecoming.
"Kurt?"
He looks up, surprised, as Rachel approaches him, heels click-click-clicking down the dim corridor.
"Rach? You…you're early."
"I heard what happened," she says softly, taking his hands, heedless of the blood still covering them. "Of course I came early."
"Where's Finn?" he manages.
"At the hotel, settling the children with Carole. Kurt…how is she?"
It's a fight to speak. "She…god, Rach, there was so much blood…the doctors said she barely made it through the birth, and they were only just able to get the baby out before they had to operate on the bleed in her brain…"
He chokes, and Rachel draws him close. He presses his face to her hair.
"They're saying she might not wake up. If she doesn't start breathing on her own…"
"Kurt…"
"She put me down as her next of kin, Rach. Her living will says she wants me to have custody of the baby and if – if she doesn't wake up, I'm the one that has to pull the plug."
Rachel's arms go tight around him, and for a moment he can only cling to her and sob.
"I'm going to lose her," he gasps. "She's been one of my best friends for so long and now I'm losing her…"
"Did you settle on a name?" Paul asks, and Dave looks up, briefly tearing himself free of the hypnotizing creature nestled against his chest. She's got one small hand clamped firmly in the chest-hair peeking out of his open collar.
"Liliane," Santana says before he can get a word in, "after Britt's mom. Your mom's a Lillian too, right?" she directs at Dave.
"Step-mom. Dave's mom's name is Deidre," Paul corrects with a rueful smile at Dave. "I'm, uh, sure Lila will be very pleased."
"Mom's going to hit the roof," Dave says, grinning at his daughter. "Oh well."
He goes alone to the nursery.
The nurses treat him like fine china and watch with eagle eyes as he looks down at the tiny bundle in his arms.
She's pink all over, like her blanket, and Kurt can only just feel the little ribcage expanding against his chest. Sometimes she stirs in her sleep, making tiny, restless noises. She's so unbelievably small…
He kisses the perfect miniatures of Rosie's hands, touches a fingertip to that familiar Cupid's bow mouth.
"You look just like your mom," he tells her in a whisper. "And she'd kick my ass for it, but I know what I'm going to call you."
When he fills out her birth certificate he makes sure to put his name in the space labelled 'father' instead of Rick. In the space above, he hesitates only once before writing 'Rosalie Elizabeth Hummel.'
Liliane Anamaria Pierce, eight pounds 6 ounces and expanding, is blinking myopically at the endangered animals that make up the mobile attached to her bouncenette. She flails one tiny arm at the elephant. Dave grins.
"Yeah, they're my favourite too," he tells her, "although my elephants don't usually wear pink bows, so."
Lily looks over at the sound of her father's voice, stares at him for a few seconds, and then manages the feat of sneezing violently and farting at the same time.
Dave can only laugh, because really, "You are so, SO my kid."
Kurt sits with her until she flat-lines and the orderlies come to take the body away.
Then he picks up his phone and makes the call he's been aching to since they put Rosie in the back of an ambulance.
"Dave?" he says, fighting to keep his voice level, "Dave, its Kurt. I'm…I'm flying to the States in a week, with Finn and Rachel. Can I see you, please…?"
"Of course."
Dave looks down at Lily, dozing in her bassinette. He touches her tiny palm and watches her fingertips close over his thumb.
He thinks of Kurt, alone on the other side of the planet, suddenly a father.
His heart clenches.
"Anything you need…"