"Aw, babe, look at this one! I think I found my favorite. We should print it when we're back home, what do you think?"

Lying in their hotel room bed after having tucked their daughter in, Amy and Jake are looking at pictures they took earlier at the water park. She turns her phone around and watches Jake with fondness in her eyes as she shows him what's on the screen. His smile turns immediately soft as well at the sight.

The image is of him and Ana going down a water slide together with the little girl securely sitting on his lap. Both of them are laughing and waving at the camera. It was taken during her second ride of the attraction – she pulled at his hand and looked up at him with the same puppy eyes he himself mastered doing through the years to get something from Amy.

(Smart as she is, Ana picked up on it pretty quickly as well.)

"Daddy, I wanna go with you now!" she pleaded.

And of course he went, chuckling with his heart full of love when she started dancing in victory after he agreed (something she most definitely picked from her mother), his wife being the one staying behind this time. The picture perfectly captures the light atmosphere following this moment, and what their first day at the water park has been like: nothing but quality time as a family.

Nothing but pure unmitigated happiness.

"Definitely," Jake grins as he puts his eyes back on his wife. "We should send it to our parents too. Show them how much fun their granddaughter is having on her birthday."

At that, Amy lets out a sigh. Her eyes switch from Jake to the picture again. "I can't believe she turned four already," she dreamily says and Jake nods.

"I know."

It feels like it was just a few months ago they went there for the first time to celebrate one year of married life. And yet here they are again, more than half a decade later, with the newest addition to their little family not being a baby – not even a toddler – anymore. It's true, what they say; your kids grow up too fast.

Jake still has a very clear image in his mind of the day Amy told him the news, of the tears of joy streaming down both their faces at the words I'm pregnant. After she lied to him about it during the Cinco de Mayo heist, he didn't believe it at first, thought it was just another ruse he wouldn't fall for this time, but the moment he realized it was all true then, the happy tears became unstoppable.

He also perfectly recalls the long hours of his wife's labour (she went through them like a pro, although she almost broke two of his fingers in the process – the woman has strength), the sudden silence after one last push quickly followed by a piercing cry and the tiniest, most fragile human he'd ever seen being presented to the new parents.

It's a girl.

Welcome to the family, pal.

She's not that small anymore. She can run and talk and play and she's becoming her own little person already – an awesome little person, if you ask her parents (even if they have to admit she can be quite exhausting sometimes – the perks of being a Santiago Peralta). There's one thing that hasn't changed since the day of her birth (and even before that), though: the enormous amount of love she brings into the family.

Amy was right when she argued with him these years ago that children bring meaning and love into your life.

(And Hitchcock was unsurprisingly wrong when he said people with kids were less likely to be happy in their lives – he never felt as happy as he's been since Ana came along.)

It took time for him to get there. Took time for the image of him as a potential father to linger into his mind and feel right and heartwarming, even if he started to try to picture himself as such no later than a week after The Talk, while surrounded with all of these children running around the same water park they were at today. I would never go with you, but you know who would? Your kid.

He tried to picture what it'd be like back then, but now it's the reality. He is here, with his dream girl, and their perfect daughter.

Sure, he freaked out about it more than once, had several of his therapy sessions entirely dedicated to his fears of fatherhood, and he's still afraid he's gonna mess something up sometimes, but it's oh so worth it in the end.

He wouldn't have it any other way.

"Mama! Daddy!" A little crying voice coming from the room beside theirs startles Jake out of his reverie. He recognizes his daughter's call immediately – he's been reassuring her after a nightmare enough times by now to know what this is all about just from the tone of her voice and the tremors he can make out in there as she calls for her parents.

He exchanges a quick glance with Amy.

"I've got this."

She nods at him and he gets out of the bed, wasting no more time to head to Ana's room. He finds her sitting on the mattress with her favorite teddy bear wrapped around her tiny arms, holding onto it as if life depended on it and her eyes filled with tears. Jake takes a seat by her side.

"What's up, Ananas? You had a bad dream?" he softly asks.

She doesn't say a word – simply nods her answer before throwing herself into his embrace. She buries her head against his chest. Jake gently smooths down her dark curly hair (that, she got from him) in a soothing gesture.

"It's okay, sweetheart. You're awake now. I'm here," he whispers reassuring words.

They stay like this for a little while, with Jake trying to change his daughter's mind until Ana draws away from him and looks into his eyes. He can see then she's not crying anymore.

"Feeling better?" He smiles at her with relief.

He hates seeing her sad, or afraid, or anything that isn't happy and well.

"Yes…"

"Ready to go back to bed?" he asks in a hopeful tone but her eyes grow bigger and her lower lip starts shaking with new upcoming tears as soon as he lets out the words.

"Can I stay with you and Mama a little?" she innocently pleads. Jake considers her question for a beat, but quickly agrees – it's still early and they're on holidays, so if it can help her feel better…

Plus it's her birthday. He can't deny her this on her birthday.

"Okay. But then it's back to bed, promise? You need to rest if you want to play in the water park tomorrow."

"Promise!" She extends her hands in her father's direction so that he can grab her. She wraps her arms around his neck and her legs around his body as soon as he lifts her up, literally glueing herself onto him. He walks to his own bedroom like this then, with his daughter holding onto him koala-stylez. His own arms are keeping her close to his chest to make sure he's got a good grasp on her. She nuzzles her head inside the crook of his neck and Jake smiles.

It's in moments like these he realizes how much she's grown the most – for sure she's not that little baby whose head could easily fit in the palm of his hand so that it wouldn't fall back and who barely weighed anything anymore.

She's four years old.

She's a preschooler.

But she's still his little girl who will hold onto him every chance she gets.

(He surely doesn't mind – quite the contrary. He dreads the moment he won't be able to carry her like this anymore, with her little arms and legs wrapped around his torso and hugging him tight.)

He sees Amy frown at first when he doesn't come back alone, before her face quickly softens at the (adorable, he can only assume) sight they offer.

"Someone wants to spend some time with us to recover from her nightmare," Jake answers his wife's silent question as he carefully sits down and Ana finally lets go. She easily finds her preferred spot in-between her two parents, all safe and sound when she's curled up against both of them.

"Wanna look at the pictures we took today?" Amy offers once everyone's perfectly settled, her phone still in hand.

"Yes!" Ana seems thrilled by the idea.

This is how they find themselves going through her camera roll and reliving the highlights of their day together with occasional bursts of laughter. Ana's nightmare is soon completely forgotten – so much so that she eventually falls asleep against her mother's side, exhausted from a full day of playing in the water. Her head rests against Amy's arm and her little hand instinctively curls around the woman's NYPD T-shirt.

Jake watches them with a dreamy beam showing up on his face. The scene's adorable – he needs to have it captured so that he can go back and look at it forever. Even though he already has tons of pictures like this, of his two dream girls sleeping. He'll never get tired of such a sight. This is why he grabs his own phone and takes a few shots, all the while making sure he doesn't wake up his daughter in the process. Once satisfied with them, after exchanging a knowing glance with Amy and the both of them kissing Ana goodnight on the top of her head, he takes her back to her bedroom and tucks her in again.

It's only then, when it's just him and Amy again and he's comfortably settled under his own covers with his wife curled against his side now, that Jake takes a look at the pictures he took. He stops at the best one, a fond smile forming on his features.

His heart warms up in his chest as he shows it to Amy.

"This is my favorite picture," he proclaims with a huge loving grin.

(They end up sending both clichés to their families – the one at the water park and the other –, as well as a selfie of the three of them with their daughter they also took during the day while eating well-deserved birthday ice creams.)

(Ana doesn't have any more nightmares that night – on the contrary, she dreams of herself going down the water slide with her parents again, as she happily and excitedly tells Jake and Amy over breakfast.

And, as they all go down the attraction once more later that day, her dream becomes reality.)