Alone in his building's express elevator, Seto pounded a fist against the gold-toned metal of the doors. It wouldn't make it go down any faster, but he felt like he had to do something, anything - that is, anything over than shift his weight nervously from foot-to-foot and listen to his heart pounding and Mai's words repeat on an endless, maddeningly loop through his mind.

Hospital? Back Pain?

But they had barely hit the seven month mark!

Though Seto's logical brain - the one on which he had relied in nearly every situation in his life up to that point - reminded him that although premature, a baby born in a proper hospital setting would be plenty viable anytime during the third trimester, his autonomic nervous system and emotional brain operated on another track entirely. His heart continued to pound - if anything, even faster - and hands started to feel sweaty, so he clenched and unclenched his fists a few times and rubbed his palms on his jacket..

This was not what they had planned - well, to whatever extent they had planned any of this.

Serenity was supposed to sleep and laugh and read and eat healthy, high-protein, high-iron meals until the day her 40th week started, then go into a comfortable, predictable labor with plenty of time for a big epidural and professional supervision through every moment of the process.

It was supposed to be easy and follow the rules.

Hadn't they paid their dues already?

As the elevator hit the ground floor, Seto physically pulled the doors apart and hit the floor of the lobby running. A few people turned and looked, but he didn't even bother to make eye contact. He simply kept putting one foot in front of the other, pounding across the marble tiles, until he was somehow under the building in the executive parking deck. Diving into his red convertible, he gunned the motor, hoping nobody was in his blind spot because he didn't have the time nor the will to turn around and back properly.

As Seto pulled out into the sunshine, squinting, he felt his anxiousness start to evolve into something more akin to cold, hard panic.

But, as he reminded himself, what should he have expected?

This is what fucking happened when you started caring about someone, wasn't it? When you held their hand and ate and ice cream and listened to them make plans about baking you a birthday cake.

He cared Mokuba, after all, and every childhood sickness, every misadventure, every stupid argument, had been a nightmare.

He had cared about his biological father, at some point in time, and he barely ever even got the chance to know the man.

He had cared about his mother, too… and it was painfully clear how that had ended up.

What little he remembered about the day of Mokuba's birth flashed through his mind in bursts as he wove in and out of the crowded lanes of traffic, and he gritted his teeth from the way the memories stung. His mother's cries, his father's frantic voice, the doctor's solemnity as he passed a needy, squirming baby across the bed where a woman lay still.

Seto's phone rang again, and he almost dropped it in his haste to answer it.

Mokuba.

"I'm five minutes from the hospital, what's happening?" Seto demanded, not bothering with a hello.

"They took her back into a room. Mai went with her, and Joey just got here a minute or two ago because the construction site where he's been working is just around the corner. He went to find them, but I said I'd wait here for you," Mokuba explained in a rush.

"Okay - but how is she?"

"Oh. Well... as we were getting here, she said that the pain in her back had started to feel sort of… 'stabby.'"

"'Stabby?'" Seto demanded. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know," Mokuba admitted. "But as soon as we got out of the car a nurse near the door put her in a wheelchair and took her to a room like the one where she was last time. They told me that I could wait for you in the waiting room on the second floor."

"Okay, okay. I'm about two and a half minutes away, but call me the second you hear anything."

Seto didn't bother to hang up, he simply threw the phone into his empty passenger seat, floored his car, and rocketed into the right lane. He ended up cutting off a blue sedan - and the person honked - but Seto cared so little that he nearly laughed.

The hospital was in sight.

Somehow, this time, there was a parking place right in front of the emergency entrance. Seto might have called it fate, if he believed in things like that. Of course, he didn't, so he just shook his head at his luck, swerved in the space, and vaulted over the closed door of the car. The seatbelt was no hindrance, considering that he'd never bothered to fasten it in the first place.

"Hey - Seto!"

He felt a burst of shock at being jarred from his intense focus, but he suddenly realized who was calling his name.

"Mokuba! Do you know anything else?"

"Nothing," his brother admitted, jogging up beside him as he approached the doors. "They've got her in a room in labor and delivery. We're really just waiting now, I guess."

The worst, most frightening part of that was what he hadn't said, and that was the thing that they were waiting for: a baby that was getting there eight weeks too early. Not just too early to thrive perfectly on her own, either, though she obviously was. She was also getting there too early for Seto to be the right kind of father - the right kind of person - that she somehow was going to expect him to be.

Eight more weeks probably wouldn't have made that much of a difference, at least where the second part was concerned, but Seto was beginning to realize that he had been counting on a miracle to happen and some kind of switch to flip during that time and make him into a good father.

Now, it seemed, he had lost his chance.

The two brothers burst through the doors to the hospital, and one of the nurses - who apparently either recognized Seto from Serenity's previous stay or had been warned about what to expect - pointed to the left. Not even taking time to acknowledge the gesture, Seto sped up. They rounded a corner haphazardly and narrowly missed a cart of medical supplies; somewhere in the background, a nurse scolded them.

"Two-oh-three, two-oh-five…" Mokuba panted, watching the numbered rooms go by. "Oh, wait, here it is!"

And suddenly, there they were.

There she was.

Seto felt all the air leave his lungs and his head go light and numb as he saw Serenity lying in the elevated hospital bed facing the door. Her face was red and sweaty and a few locks of hair that hadn't made it into her messy bun clung to her cheeks. From each of her earlobes, two oversize diamonds still sparkled.

When she saw him in the doorway, her eyes lit up too.

"Seto," she whispered in relief, holding out her arms.

"Serenity," he breathed back, suddenly starting to run again.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was aware that Mai and both of their brothers hovered awkwardly beside the bed, but as Seto lunged across the empty space that separated him from Serenity, his vision narrowed into little except a tunnel of light with her at the end: the ultimate goal, the ultimate finish line.

He was on the bed beside her in no time at all, his arms tight around her waist while hers hugged his neck.

"You're here," she whispered in his ear.

"Of course I'm here."

Serenity may have been wearing a strange, boxy hospital gown and had an IV line dangling from one of her arms, but she smelled the same way she always did: herbal shampoo and chapstick and peach-scented lotion. Her soft arms also felt the same way they did on all the sunny afternoons in the mansion's downstairs master bedroom, locked around the back of his neck where his hair disappeared into his collar.

For the first time since his phone rang at the office, Seto felt himself take a breath that extended all the way into the deepest part of his lungs.

It might be okay. They might have a chance after all.

As the pounding of his heart slowed in the safety of Serenity's tight embrace, a trace of mortification began to sneak back into Seto's conscious mind. He imagined Joey's dumbstruck and scandalized expression searing into his back and Mokuba and Mai's smug smiles. This was exactly what the latter had wanted and the former had dreaded: he was bearing his heart on his sleeve, admitting with a gross display of need and desperation and weakness that this woman was probably the only thing anchoring him to surface of the earth, gravity be damned.

Defying his instincts, he hugged her more tightly.