Sarah`s wedding

Summary: the one where the youngest Swarek gets married.

"Thought I`d find you here", Andy spoke softly as she came up behind her husband from almost thirty years. Placing her arms around his waist and closing her eyes, she could still take in the almost intoxicating and familiar smell of his cologne after all these years, and nothing in the world made her feel more safe.

"They ready t leave?", Sam asked, pulling his wife in front of him and letting his arms take a hold of her.

"Yeah, their flight is at five". She turned her head and looked at her husband. "Hey, what`s with you? You seem drifted and a little lost...", Andy acknowledged.

"I just...It`s all over now, you know? Last baby married and all. I knew we shouldn`t have stopped at five kids", he joked.

Andy Chuckled. "Yeah? Then... think about all the grandkids we`ll have, because that`s also happening these days..."

"What? Who? When? Is it Sarah?"

"Calm down grandpa. It`s still early, but uh... Isach told me that Anna is three months along, and I`m pretty sure that Ava is definitely hiding something under her dress. She`s been pouring down water all weekend".

"Wow, this family keeps getting bigger and bigger. They keep this up and we`ll have seven grandkids by the end of the year".

"That`s crazy! I... you know, sometimes this whole thing still boggles me", Andy says dreamingly.

"Oh?"

"Come on... did you actually think we would be here the day we met? Married for three decades, five kids, five grandkids and many more to come?"

"Well, not the day we met... Back then I hated your gut sweetheart", he teased, placing a kiss on Andy`s head.

"Uhu... and then there was Luke, and us being stupid undercover, Jerry died, I left, you moved on, I moved on, you got shot, Marlo left, I told you I still loved you", she rambled, chuckled and taking a deep breath.

"And we got our shit together, said we loved each other, Marlo came back... Then there was Ava, our wedding and everything amazing between and after... S`been one hell of a ride sweetheart".

"It sure has. But I love our ride... It`s...perfect, it`s us. Messy, complicated and amazing-".

"Hey mom, dad...we`re about to leave now so...", a voice came from behind. They turned around and was met by Sarah.

"Hey pumpkin", Sam said, reaching out his hand for her to take.

"Oh no, you`re reminiscing again aren't you? Is that why mom is crying?", she teased, as she placed a kiss on each their chins.

"Maybe...you uh... have everything packed up?"

"Everything set to go...oh, come on, stop acting like this is my funeral guys... I`m just leaving for my honeymoon".

"We know... it`s just... you're our last baby and all, so we get a little emotional that's all. Especially your dad... you know how he is..."

"I haven`t been your baby in a long time...You should have had more kids... I knew it", Sarah joked taking her mother's hand in hers.

"That`s what I told her too", Sam joked back, giving Andy his biggest smirk all day.

"I think I did my fare share of populating the country... I passed that stick on to you kids a while back..."

"Okay... I think we should head back up yeah?", Sam asks leading his girls ahead of himself.

Sam takes the hand of his wife and motions for them to head back up to the cabin, but turns when he feels the lack of his daughters presence. "Sarah? Everything okay?", Sam asks as he stands in front of her.

"Yeah, I just... thank you... for, you know, everything", Sarah starts, and Andy is pretty sure she`s not the only one who is getting a little teary around her eyes.

Andy finds herself staring at her daughter for a minute. And suddenly Sarah is a little girl again. Stubborn, but easy to please and so utterly beautiful. "A cloned version of yourself", Sam always said about Sarah`s exceptional resemblance to her mother.

Somehow, every one of Andy`s childbirth`s had been somewhat dramatic. Except Sarah`s. She was a winter baby. Due on January tenth, twenty five years ago. No child of theirs had ever come on the due date, So when the day came, they really didn`t think they would spend it at the hospital.

Andy had woken up in the middle of the night, shooting pain and unbarebul agony that it was. Everyone else in the house was in the deepest slumber, totally unaware of what was about to happen. She didn`t mean to wake them up with the loudest scream in history, but halfway up the stairs, Andy McNally-Swarek lost it.

Auntie Gail came over and stepped up as the adult in charge, while Sam Swarek managed to get his laboring wife at the hospital just in time.

"Damn you Sam Swarek! How could you do this to me again?".

So, not once, during any of her bringing-their-baby-into-the-world-jobs, had she ever ended up like the most embarrassing cliché in the century, screaming and yelling and pinning it all on her husband, or landing her in that bed again and again and again.

It seemed to work, is the thing. For her.

Not for Sam, who got his hand squeezed a couple of times. Andy was happy though. "You got what was coming for you", she had said afterwards, when everything pain was forgotten, and the promise that she would not in a million years push a watermelon through the eye of a needle ever again.

The room was dimmed, the early morning was cold, and a new, white layer of snow had landed into the early hours of Sarah Grace Swarek's life.

"Beautiful. She`s just so beautiful Sam", Andy had sobbed out. All cleaned up and wrapped in a bundle, laying on top of her mother`s chest, Sarah Grace Swarek was one gorgeous baby. Just like her older siblings. Born with a handful of dark hair, brown eyes, that later became their weapon against Sam, who not for the life of him, could deny his babies anything.

He never did. Almost.

"Mom, you coming?"

She looked at her grown up daughter and remembered that she was twenty five years older and back in time.

"Mom? where did you go?", Sarah asked, taking her mother's hand into hers.

"Uh, I... just a few years back", she joked, putting her hand around Sarah`s waist, leading her up the stairs made of stone, that she remembers Oliver and Sam making with their own hands twenty or so years ago.

This was the end of one era and the beginning of another one. Andy praised everything and anyone for the life she and Sam had managed to built for themselves, and can barely wait to see what comes next for the McNally-Swarek pack.