Author's Note: This is on AO3, and I decided to cross-posting here. This was my first Star Trek fic, and first attempt at writing something like this in a long while. I am typically over on AO3, but I decided to put my work here as well. Thank you for reading if you do so!
The starry expanse outside the viewports of the Captain's quarters on the Enterprise E provided a calming aura of dim light in the bedroom. Captain Jean-Luc Picard sat in a plush glider, gently rocking back and forth. A small but very precious bundle of warmth laid against his chest, the child's whimpers quieting with each rock of the chair. Picard glanced across the room to make sure his wife, Doctor Beverly Crusher, was still within the much needed realm of sleep.
Seeing the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she lay on her side in their bed, Picard surmised that young Renè's restlessness had not managed to wake his mother.
Renè was just shy of four weeks old, with soft auburn hair that was a mix between his mother's red-gold locks and his father's long-departed light brown hair. The baby had yet to sleep through the night, but Jean-Luc was already cherishing every moment with Renè, even looking forward to caring for the boy in the dead of the Enterprise's night, particularly if it meant that Beverly could get more sleep. As Renè squirmed his tiny body slightly, Jean-Luc rubbed the infant's back in tandem with his rocking, the boy's whimpers ceasing altogether and giving way to the small inhales and exhales Picard associated with his son.
His son. It had been only four weeks that Jean-Luc Picard had been able to hold the child in his arms and realize that he was a father after decades of believing he never would be. Beverly's pregnancy had been a time of great joy and anxiety (mostly on Picard's part), and the moment he had felt his son move within his wife's womb was the moment that the true idea of fatherhood finally took hold of his mind. That yearning was fulfilled the moment Beverly passed the blanket-swaddled infant into his arms following his birth. Then, Renè had gazed unsteadily at Picard as all infants do, and Picard knew that he would move star systems for this tiny human with cloudy blue eyes.
Now, Jean-Luc looked down into the now-sleeping cherubic face in his arms and re-experienced the joy he had felt first when Beverly had told him of his son's existence and then later again and again as he grew in her womb. Jean-Luc had thought at the time of Renè's birth that the euphoria of the moment would never be replicated, but as he gazed down at his son now, Picard realized that he hoped there would never be a time in his life where he did not feel this utter joy and wonder at the life he and Beverly had lovingly created. The elation that Picard experienced within his Starfleet career would never be matched in the same way as knowing that the small, warm bundle asleep against his body was safe, healthy, and loved.