Adam fumbled with the straps on her car seat. His fingers felt too big for the buckle, he felt clumsy and Matilda still seemed to small for his hands. He was pretty sure that the reason for his anxiousness was because he was scared. Walking back into the District threatened to bring everything rushing back to the surface. "I'm not very good at this am I?" he looked at Matilda who was suddenly wide-awake and she stared back at him, giving him nothing as he popped the pacifier into her mouth.

He chatted away to her as they picked their way through the parking lot. It was a warm day and he didn't want to keep Matilda out for too long in the sun. The things he worried about now made him laugh. Was she too hot? Too cold? He was hot in his jeans and short-sleeved shirt so he hoped the little yellow dress and matching shorts he had chosen were cool enough for her. He even laughed at himself when he dressed her that morning as he commented how pretty she looked in yellow. What had become of him? Tough cop maybe, besotted Dad absolutely.

He stopped at the top of the stairs and took a deep breath, looked down at his daughter and held onto her just a little bit tighter before pushing open the door. Platt saw him first and just about jumped over the counter leaving two very bemused looking Patrol Officers in her wake. "Oh look who's here." She rushed at him, her arms wide and hands twitching until she got hold of Matilda. "Hello beautiful girl." She cooed before turning to Adam and squeezing his arm. "It's good to see you both out of the house."

"I thought it was time. We had our well baby check today."

"And?"

"Apparently we are both doing what we should be doing. I am not stuffing up too much." He nodded, willing the tears not to fall. He had already sat in the car after seeing the Doctor and cried; he wasn't embarrassed by his tears anymore and usually didn't care who saw them but he didn't want to cry here. Kim should have been here for this. These were the moments that he found the hardest along with the nights. He hated the nights; sitting alone in the dark feeding Matilda gave him too much time to think and too much time to miss her.

"Of course you're not stuffing up, I mean look at her, she's perfect."

Slowly he was starting to come out of the fog that had surrounded him for weeks. It was lucky you didn't have to remember to breath. This had been his first week alone with Matilda. He actually begged his mother to go home after he assured her that he was quite capable of caring for her, he'd been a diligent student over the past few weeks and as he reminded her, even if Kim was still with him he would be learning on the fly. He needed to give it a go, he needed to be alone with Matilda and start his life with her.

Matilda's appointment hadn't been as bad as the one he had with Kim's OBGYN. He needed to know what happened that day, however painful it was going to be. Going back and reliving that day was emotionally draining and he knew that it put him in real danger of crashing back to the beginning again. "What went wrong?" Adam breathed out slowly; his voice had an unmistakable tremor.

"Sadly your wife was one of the rare instances that there was no warning signs. Her pregnancy was unremarkable." Adam frowned at the Doctors choice of words. Unremarkable…he thought it was amazing, actually it was damn near perfect or so they thought. "What I mean by that is that she had a textbook pregnancy, there were no red flags."

"I don't understand what happened."

"When Kim delivered your baby the placenta did not release easily from the uterine wall, instead of just coming away her uterus ruptured. As you know there are some major blood vessels involved that kept your baby alive and growing. The tear was significant and we did perform a hysterectomy to try and stop the bleeding but the damage had been done. It took too long to control her bleeding and that sent her into cardiac arrest. We got her back and were hoping that they hysterectomy would be enough. It is a big call to make as obviously that would mean that you could no longer have children but that is preferable option considering the alternative. However in Kim's case, despite trying to replace her blood volume twice the trauma was too much for her other organs to cope with."

"It was the pregnancy that caused it?"

The OBGYN tried to find the words to explain that while it was a pregnancy related event it wasn't his fault. On the fortunately odd occasions when he had to explain to a husband or partner why they were now a widow most of them sat opposite him wondering the very same thing. "Postpartum haemorrhages are rare and unpredictable. I wish I could have saved your wife and we did our best."

"I know; I am not blaming you." Adam tilted his head to the side "Not today anyway." He forced himself to smile. He had definitely blamed her Doctors on more than one occasion.

"It was nothing you or your wife did or didn't do."

He wasn't sure if it made things better or worse, he wanted something to cling to, some reason to explain why this happened to them. He wanted something that he could tell Matilda when she was older as to why her mother left her. Adam didn't take Matilda with him, he had left her at home with his mother and after the appointment he stopped by Kim's grave and sat for two hours and let it all out.

His mother still came over everyday and Janet would do the laundry and cleaning and cook him meals so that he could just focus on Matilda, being a father was his job now until he went back to work. He had three months off and half of that was already gone. Matilda was just starting to become more aware of things around her and he had even gotten a smile, which melted his heart. Those moments were so bittersweet. And of course he was also the Intelligence Unit's Special Project; lucky he liked them…most days.

Whenever he had the chance he was trawling the internet trying to figure out if he was making the right choices for Matilda, he obsessively researched her milk and ended up changing her formula because he found something he thought was better. That wasn't an easy or pleasant experience. The first site he went to told him that Breast milk was perfect for babies. Well that wasn't possible, or fucking helpful. He slammed the lid of the laptop shut. Everywhere he turned there was information about how all a baby needed was breast milk, how much better for them it was and what a terrible thing formula was. That was great, if you had a mother. Excellent….guilt on top of grief.

He read about her social development and would sing and read to her and he talked to her constantly. They'd spent the first three weeks in silence and now he wouldn't shut up. He didn't want her to miss out on anything just because she didn't have a mother. He wanted Kim to be proud of the job he was doing with their daughter and he wanted to make it up to Matilda for those first few weeks that he missed.

Adam had gone from not wanting anything to do with her to not wanting her to be out of his sight. He needed to work on that otherwise he was never going to be able to go back to work. Platt was happily chatting away and introducing her to anyone who was in the vicinity before he had time to change his mind and turn and run. "You're Daddy's going to have to watch those boys upstairs. I think they are a little bit in love with you. I can see why."

Erin heard the unmistakable sound of a baby's cry. Not just any baby, it was Matilda. She'd know that cry anywhere as they had heard it often enough. She smiled at Jay as she jumped up from her desk and ran down the stairs. Adam heard the gate open and wasn't surprised to see Erin practically bounding towards them. "I wasn't sure you'd come."

Adam had promised Erin that he would stop by on his way home but until he walked through the door she didn't believe it. He often backed out of things because he felt overwhelmed and uncertain. He didn't like crowded situations when people were constantly at him and he hated people's pity and worse still he hated it when they started crying. He would find himself apologising to them, which was stupid so he just decided to avoid them as much as possible. They had yet to get him out to Molly's for a drink when his mother was still staying, now that he was by himself he was even more reluctant to leave her.

"Neither was I." Platt handed Matilda over to Erin just as she started to ramp up her crying, her little legs kicking and her arms waving wildly. It had been a big morning and he knew she hadn't had as much sleep as she needed. "She's hungry. I better get her home." He held out his hands towards Matilda but Erin turned towards the stairs.

"Come on up. We are quiet, everyone would love to see you." She took off up the stairs, he was pretty sure Erin wasn't giving her up anytime soon and if he wanted her back he would have to go and get her. He looked at Platt who just shrugged and he followed his rapidly disappearing daughter up to the bullpen.

He heard Platt turn to the two Patrol Officers she had left standing at the desk when he arrived and bark "What are you still doing here?" and he smiled to himself. Some things never changed.

They all knew that he needed a little push sometimes. It had to be gentle and he certainly let them know when it went too far. "Look who is here?" Erin announced excitedly. Every one may have been happy to see them, and Matilda was definitely more popular than him but he didn't feel the same sense of excitement. He stood back and now that he had a moment to breathe it settled uneasily on him and seeing his desk caused an unexpected pain in his chest. He turned away from it and tired to focus on everyone else. Matilda cried louder, letting everyone know that it was time for lunch and he rifled around in her bag and handed Erin a bottle of milk and she sat down at her desk as everyone crowded around them both.

Adam looked at his desk again. He had been sitting there, finishing off some paperwork when Kim had called him to tell him that she was in labour. She had been going it alone at home for four hours and wanted him to come home now. Sitting on the corner of his desk was a photo of Kim; he had only just put it there a few days before he lost her. She was heavily pregnant and he had taken it a week earlier and she looked so happy and comfortable in the swinging chair on their balcony. He often took Matilda out there when she was fussy and they would sit in the chair and let the gentle swinging motion soothe them both. He wondered if she remembered being here before she was born. Adam had bought the chair for her early on in her pregnancy and she loved it and the bigger she got the more time she spent in it.

They had debated whether to remove the photo before he came back to work but didn't want to upset Adam one way or the other. It had to be his decision. Right now he was feeling okay about seeing pictures of Kim, by tomorrow he could feel completely different. He really was just taking it a day at a time, which was an improvement. Initially he was just trying to exist from one hour to the next.

Al saw him staring at his desk before he quietly slipped down the corridor. He followed him slowly but his pace quickened when he heard the sudden crash of a metal locker. Adam was slamming his fist against his locker door and was pushing so hard he knocked two of them over. "Hey, Hey." Al grabbed his shoulder. "You know how much Platt hates people breaking her stuff."

He sat down heavily on the bench. "I didn't think it would feel like this."

"What? Being back here?" Al leant against the lockers that were still standing and watched him struggle to keep everything under control. They had already talked about how it was going to feel coming back here for the first time and the best way to handle it. Until he actually walked through those doors they could speculate how it was going to feel all they wanted. Reality had smacked him in the face so often lately and it hadn't been kind.

"Yep. The last time I was here Kim called me. She was in labour. I left here thinking my life was about to change, for the better. It did and then it didn't."

The sound of the crashing lockers had bought almost the entire team running and Al held up his hand to stop everyone charging into the locker room. Everyone desperate to help him and Voight had done his best to manage their time so that someone always was able to get away in the evenings or weekends if needed. It grated on Adam's nerves some days but he had learnt to grin and bear it.

"This was never going to be easy."

"Al, please don't tell me to just be grateful that I have Matilda, that I have to be strong for her, that I am lucky I have a beautiful daughter. I am sick of hearing that. I don't need that from you of all people."

One thing Al had always given him was honesty, from day one. Whether he wanted to hear it or not. He didn't sugar coat things and it was exactly what Adam needed. When everyone was tip toeing around him early on and they were all trying to get him to acknowledge the baby, Al never pushed Matilda on to him. He never told him that he needed to see the baby when he couldn't be around her, he never told him that he was lucky to have her or that Kim would hate what he was doing. He never told him that he was avoiding being a father to her. He knew he needed time and he would get there eventually because he knew him better than most.

"I don't need to tell you that because I think you know it already. I know you miss Kim, I know this sucks big time. I know this is all bullshit and fucked up. I don't know how you feel or how hard it is for you to be here today but I know you and I love you and I am proud of you." He rested one hand on the side of Adam's head and let him lean against his hand for a few seconds.

"Thanks Al." He ran his hands up and down his thighs. They both heard Matilda cry. Adam pushed himself up off the bench.

Before Al let him go he threw an arm around his shoulder. "Hey. You're doing good kid." Al couldn't have been prouder of him. He had been dealt a savage blow, one that had the potential to make a man buckle at he knees. Hell, he wasn't sure had he been in that situation he would have been able to cope but Adam had. Sure he still stumbled every now and then, he still cried, he was still angry but he was fronting up each and everyday for that girl. And that made Al damn proud.

As soon as he took Matilda back she quietened down, it was like she knew exactly what he needed. She would cry at times and he had no idea why or what to do but she seemed to know when he needed her to comfort him. When he was feeling particularly sad she would quiet down as soon as he picked her up and snuggle into his arms and they both drew comfort from each other. Everyday he was seeing more and more of Kim in her. Some days he loved it and some days it hurt like hell.

Voight called Ruzek into his office and had barely got through the door before Voight had whipped Matilda from his arms. He had a soft spot for babies and missing his Grandson as much as he did he was happy to let Matilda fill that hole. Olive had left Chicago after Justin's death; she couldn't handle being around the place anymore. Adam couldn't think of being anywhere else, he needed to be close to Kim and this was her home. "How you doing? Both of you?"

"We are okay. I don't think I have damaged her too much yet. Apparently despite my shambolic attempts at fatherhood Matilda is meeting all of her milestones" Voight was watching Matilda drift off to sleep. "We are doing okay."

"I know you've still got a few weeks to go but have you put much thought into what you want to do about work? Do you want to come back to Intelligence?"

"Yep." He didn't even hesitate as he sat back in his chair and crossed his feet at the ankles. "Not quite sure how I will pull it all off though."

"What do you mean?"

Voight noticed that he was wringing his hands nervously. "I don't like leaving her with anyone."

"You know, you can go back on Patrol, take a more structured job. Everyone is on board with that, even if it's just for a few months until you get back into the swing of it."

"No way. I couldn't stand it. Kim would hate me giving up Intelligence. She knew how much I love this job." He shook his head.

"Adam things change."

"I need to be back up here. I need life to return to normal." He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He clasped his hands together to stop them shaking. One thing he was dreading was being told he couldn't come back to his job. He needed to be back with his family. "Well as normal as my life can be right now. Please Boss I need to come back."

"Okay but we have decided, as a unit that initially you need to pull back a little. No weekends, limited nights and I won't be sending you Undercover anytime soon."

"Boss…"

Voight held up his hand to stop him. "Adam, we want to do this for you and for Matilda." He looked down at the baby in his arms as she slept peacefully in his arms. "We all want to help you take care of your daughter. We love this little girl." He ran his finger down her arm and stroked her hand. "She's not going to be a baby for long and before you know it you are sending her off on her first date and wondering what happened."

"Not something I want to think about."

"I look forward to seeing you back at your desk." He stood up and handed Matilda back to his father. "And anytime you are struggling or need some time let me know."

Adam, with Matilda tucked up in one arm shook his Boss's hand. He knew he was making the right call coming back here. It was where he belonged.