Title: Seeing Red
Prompt: Beginning
Characters/Pairing: Lincoln/AltLivia, Henry
A/N: Just the first in a series of fairly unplanned one-shots revolving around the Alt!World.
It's two in the morning when his phone rings. In the past forty-eight hours alone, he's closed two vortex' and investigated three more possible Class Four events; it'd been a hell of shift, and when he finally pulled himself into bed at eleven thirty, he'd had no intention of getting up until Tuesday.
And then the phone rang.
He knew that she knew exactly what a heinous couple of days it had been. In fact, she was the one who'd suggested sleeping until Tuesday, just seconds after she'd forbid him from so much as thinking about entering her apartment until he was caught up on sleep.
"Maybe if you're good though," she'd practically purred as soon as Charlie had stepped out his office, "I'll get a sitter for Henry, and I'll stop by tomorrow morning. See if I can help you sleep better."
For her to be calling it would have to be bad news; he didn't realize how bad it was until he realized it was Marilyn, not Liv, on the other end of the line.
She was sobbing uncontrollably into the receiver, trying to relay some sort of message to him that was far too garbled by her tears to be comprehensible. The only thing he really understood was St. Cement's Hospital. Funny, how those three words were enough to make him wish it'd been Liv on the phone with a Class Seven event.
He was still dressed from work, and if he hadn't been, he wasn't sure it would matter. He would have run into the streets in nothing but his boxers and bare feet just to get to the hospital two minutes faster.
Not that it really would have mattered, because the City Transit was running on its usual schedule: twenty minutes behind.
He waited in front of the bench, pacing back and forth across the sidewalk as his imagination flooded with the thousands of equally-horrific situations she could have gotten herself into.
By the time he gets to the hospital, it's like his own personalized horror film is on a mental-repeat. He sees her covered in third degree burns, half-encased in amber, ridden with bullets, infested with beetles. It's one nightmare after another playing in full-color, right before his eyes.
So it throws him a little, when the first thing he sees after practically forcing his way through the automatic doors is her. She has two arms and two legs and ten fingers and she's leaning against a wall like it's the only think keeping her up; but as far as he can tell, she's perfectly fine.
Then he sees the sign above her head, and for just a fraction of a second, he wishes she weren't.
Pediatric Emergency Care Department.
He feels like he's going to throw up.
(He will, later; after he knows she's fast asleep and he's safe, he'll pull himself from his bed, and let himself truly comprehend what he thought he lost today, and he'll be sick in a way he's never been before.)
But right now, he doesn't have the time. He's practically sprinting across the room, and every person standing in his way is nothing more than an obstacle he'd do anything to pass.
"I'm sorry sir. Immediate family only," one doctor starts to say. Lincoln honestly can't believe this man is making an effort to stop him. If nothing else, his Fringe Division Jacket and badge were enough to get him into any room. But he's not thinking about anything other than Henry, and he's certainly not thinking about his job. So, when he opens his mouth to rebuke the man, he doesn't list off his credentials.
"I'm his father," he mutters quickly, without thinking, without stopping. From where he's standing, he sees Liv's tear-stained eyes widen, though it's not until later that he'll actually be able to piece together what had surprised her.
By the time he reaches her, worry has reclaimed dominance in her eyes; but the tears he's though he'd seen before were dried and it takes him a few seconds, but eventually he realizes she's much calmer than he is.
"What's going on? Where is he?" He can't keep the panic out of his voice, though by now he knows that noting is seriously wrong. "Is he okay?"
Before she can answer, a nurse rounds the corner, Henry in her arms. There's something red wrapped around his left leg that he recognizes as a cast as they get closer. A cast.
He feels like he's going to throw up again.
He must have looked like he was going to throw up again too, because the nurse let out a soft giggle as she came to a stop in front of him, and slid the baby into his arms. "Don't worry, daddy," she's says with a calming smile, "your little man took a spill today, but he's going to be just fine."
He knows he should hand the baby the Liv- she's his mother after all- but he can't quite bring himself to let him go. He's held Henry a million times over the past year, but he feels awkward in his arms now. The cast is bulky, and he's fussy and squirming lethargically, like every time he moves it's unbearably painful.
He feels like he's going to throw up for the third time that night when he realizes it probably is.
He's shifts him around in his arms a bit, and mechanically begins pacing the hallway, bouncing Henry in his arms and cooing fairly incomprehensible sentiments of love and relief in an attempt to lull him to sleep.
Much later, after ten years of marriage and three kids and more visits to that same emergency room than either one of them can count, he'll realizes that this moment was the beginning.
This moment, with that baby boy sleeping in his arms, and his mother watching awestruck at the other end of the hallway was their beginning.
It's the day he stopped being "Uncle Linc", and became "Daddy".
