A/N : Wow! Thank you all for the lovely reviews. does happy dance I'm so so thrilled. Trude, you had an excellent point. I meant to go one way with this story and then I went another way entirely and it was confusing. I went back and edited Chapter 1 slightly to reflect my new reality. If only I could do that so easily in real life...don't worry, the only changes I made was taking out references to the end of Series 4.
Chapter 2
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In the morning Abby woke up tired, and babyless. Connor had evidently kept her in his room for the rest of the night. The door was open to his room and Abby stood in the doorway and watched them sleep. Connor had done the same as she had and cleaned out a dresser drawer to act as a makeshift crib.
She ventured in and looked down at the sleeping baby. Abby watched her twitch in her sleep for a minute before turning to Connor. He looked back at her, awake. "Morning." She whispered, sliding in close and resolutely ignoring the fact that she was laying on his bed, "How was the night?"
Connor yawned and stretched before answering her, she tried not to notice how his muscles rippled. 'Down girl,' she told herself sternly.
"Alright," he yawned, "She fell asleep again about four. Going by yesterday I think she'll wake up around seven. When does sleeping through the night happen again?"
"According to everyone at the ARC, between before now and six months."
"Oh, we'll have to make up a roster then. You take the early shift and I'll take the late one." He joke with her as he slid out of bed. At some point he'd slipped a pair of Darth Vader pajama pants on instead of being clad only in boxers.
They went on with their normal morning routine, with one ear cocked towards Connor's room when she woke up. There was no missing it. Maddy first thing in the morning sounded like an air raid siren. Abby went to get her and Connor started mixing up the bottle without a word being spoken between them.
Connor discovered that Maddy would suck on a pacifier and so they dressed her in the little one piece baby suit that truthfully, was a bit large. Connor had bought it on impulse the night before because it had a cartoon Princess Leia on it and then they went to work.
Neither one of them had a reason to spend any time around the day-care before. They were making up for lost time now. Connor and Abby met all three of the day care workers and discovered that Maddy would be the youngest baby there by about a year. There was almost fifteen little kids, from between sixteen months and four years old in the daycare suite.
Nervously, they filled out the contact information card and read the rules. No dropping her off if she was sick and they had to get her on a vaccination schedule as soon as possible. Abby passed over the little bag she had packed with the formula, nappies, wipes, diaper rash ointment, pacifier and extra baby clothes and they both left, slowly.
"She'll be fine!" Ashley, the youngest woman called to them, "Don't worry."
They didn't say anything until they got in the elevator. "Do you feel as nervous leaving her as I do?" Connor asked quickly as soon as the doors slid shut. "Yeah." Abby confessed. It didn't get easier when they got downstairs to the main area. "How was the first night?" Jess asked them immediately when they appeared.
"Good." Connor took over, "She only woke up a few times. Easy-peasy."
Jess grinned. "Lester wants to see you both, but he wanted to talk to Connor first."
"That's odd. I'll be in the menagerie." Abby ducked out to try and calm some of the butterflies that appeared in her stomach. Surely he hadn't changed his mind? Connor watched her go and then glanced over at Lester's office. He could see the man watching them through the window. Connor had a private theory that Lester loved his fishbowl office just so he could see what everyone else was doing. After all, nobody else would be rude enough to just sit and watch him working so it was really a one way street of nosiness.
"Wish me luck Jess." Connor requested before obediently heading over.
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"Good morning Connor." Lester greeted him, "How was it with an infant in the house?"
Connor plopped down in a chair without being invited. "Not so bad. She's a cute little thing. She got Abby up once and me up once. I don't know what people make such a fuss about."
Lester, father of two little girls, one of whom was fussy and colicky for nearly the first year, marveled at his optimism. "Glad to hear it was such a breeze. I need to talk to you seriously about her. Did Abby ask you about her birth certificate?"
"Yeah, she said you wanted to put me on it?"
"I wasn't serious, at the time but it would make life easier if I could fill out the paperwork with two parents. If I put you down it would be nearly impossible to change things later if you decided you didn't want that much responsibility." Lester was dead serious.
Connor was just as serious. "Put me down."
"Are you sure? You're not just doing this to please Abby? What are your reasons?"
The younger man thought about the revelations he had while he was sitting on the couch at three in the morning gently rocking a baby. "I can't let her go into care."
Lester sighed, "If this is about Abby's past-"
"It's not." He objected, "It's about Madeline's future. She's got one with Abby and I. She hasn't got one with some nameless, faceless foster family." Connor spoke from the heart, earnestly and fervently. "I'm not doing this to please Abby. I'm don't know why I'm doing it really, except doing anything else...I can't contemplate walking away from Madeline."
His boss twitched. He had read all of Connor's files also. "You named her Madeline?"
"It was my sisters name." Connor told him absently, not thinking then that Lester would have no reason to react to the name, or to even know he had a sister, given how young he'd been when she died. "Madeline Sarah, with Abby's middle name."
Lester sighed, "All right then. I'll put you down. Go find Abby and come back here will you?"
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Ten minutes later they were treated to James Lester's lecture on child rearing. It was not a conversation they had ever expected to have with him. One of the many things he told them was to be flexible, babies and children went by their own schedules, she would sleep through the night when she was ready, she would sit up when she was ready and she would walk and talk when she was good and ready. They couldn't rush her, they couldn't hurry her along, all they could do was go with it.
It was not something that they ever expected to hear from their stodgy boss. They were still marveling at how their world was changing.
Later that day they were surprised to be summoned to his office again. He presented them with an impressive stack of paperwork on Madeline Sarah Maitland Temple. "As you can see, she's adopted from a small orphanage in Siberia-"
"Siberia?" Connor was incredulous, "That's so bad sci-fi character history."
Lester raised an eyebrow, "Next time, I'll hack all the files and you can generate all the paperwork."
"Forget I said anything." Connor backpedaled. There was an art to forging documents and for some reason Lester was incredibly talented or had lots of training at it.
"Why's it Maitland Temple? Why not Temple Maitland?" Abby questioned him with narrowed eyes. "I wanted her first."
"I went alphabetically." Lester lied smoothly before continuing his explanation of Maddy's official history. "You picked her up from the airport a few days ago, there was a flight from Russia that you'll be hacking into the flight manifest and adding her to, Connor, and her official birthday is April 1. Sign here, here and here."
"April Fool's day?" Abby questioned him as she signed what looked like perfectly legitimate adoption certificates and paperwork.
Lester was a little proud of himself, "It fit. It makes her eleven weeks old instead of ten, but a week one way or the other doesn't really matter."
"Anything for a laugh right?" Connor joked and watched Abby sign her life away. A minute later it was his turn. He signed 'Connor Temple' with his neatest handwriting and felt a weird protective twinge when he saw his name next to Abby's on the adoption degree that was dated four days ago.
"Right Connor, Abby. There doesn't seem to be an anomaly today so you two can leave early, just this once. Keep your phones on you, I expect you back here immediately if we call." Lester couldn't let them think he was getting too soft. Those two had no idea what they were in for but he couldn't help himself, "Congratulations, it's a girl."
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They took the chance to duck out to the store without the baby. Abby knew there was tons of stuff for sale for babies, but she had never really realized how overwhelming it was to be the person that had to pick through it all.
"You weren't kidding about information overload." Abby said drying as they navigated the baby store. "I don't know how you got in and out of here so fast last night." There was a whole aisle of just diaper bags!
"I don't either." Connor was distracted by a display of impossibly tiny T-shirts with Jedi Knights on them. "Abby look, it's the whole Jedi Academy! They've even got Tikiri!"
"Those are too big, see the T? That means toddlers. She'd swim in that." Connor pouted at her and picked out a shirt anyway. "She can grow into it." Abby rolled her eyes but she got just as excited at a completely adorable package of bibs. They lingered and looked at everything. It wasn't until it was nearly their regular time to get off work that they finally wrapped up their shopping and headed back to the ARC to pick up their daughter.
Connor caught her hand out in the parking lot. "Abby, we have a daughter together."
"Yeah? It's a bit shocking isn't it?"
He quirked a smile at her, "Yeah. About that crib...I was thinking...what if I stayed in your room?"
That question deserved both eyebrows arched. "What?"
"It would be easier, until she's sleeping through the night if we're in the same room, that's all." Connor tried to explain quickly. Abby narrowed her eyes at him and remembered how he had half-blackmailed his way into living with her. This had the same odor.
"You're sure you don't just want to sleep in the same bed with me?"
He scoffed, "We'd hardly be getting any sleep. I was just thinking it'd be easier to take turns getting up with her if we were in the same room, that's all." Connor looked so hopeful that she would just agree that she couldn't just slap him down out of hand. "I'll think about it," she compromised. "Now we have to go get our daughter."
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It felt very odd picking up an infant from daycare but millions of people had done it before them and doubtless would do it again. Maddy hadn't changed her mind on car seats. She arched her back and protested when they fastened her in.
Connor laughed at her, she looked so annoyed at them for putting her back in the hated seat. They got back to the house and in a repeat of yesterday, Maddy went to sleep in the car and stayed that way for nearly an hour. Connor unfastening the car seat and bringing her in didn't even cause her to stir. This time they waited until she woke up on her own to feed her. They were learning.
Something was really bothering Abby. Connor had to have known about her sordid past for years and he had never even hinted at him. After dinner, she couldn't contain herself any longer. "Connor, why didn't you tell me you knew?"
He looked completely surprised. "Knew about what?"
"Me. Social Services, all the therapy they made me go to, being imprisoned because they wouldn't just leave me alone." Once she started talking about it she couldn't stop. "You peeked at my ARC file. Why didn't you ever let on that you knew?" Abby demanded exasperated at him.
Connor realized what countless men before him had realized. He was in trouble for no obvious reason. He thought for a second and carefully answered, "Abby I have no idea what you're talking about. I read your file to find out when your birthday was. Nothing about that is in there." He hesitated, morbidly curious, "What happened to you?"
The blonde woman was absolutely gobsmacked. "Lester knew about my childhood...I assumed it was in my ARC file."
Something that had been pricking Connor's mind came up, "He knew about my sister also and I know that's not in my file. Maybe he found out that stuff because of our security clearance?" Connor speculated aloud while he helped her load the dishwasher.
Abby turned to him, "Can you find out?"
He grinned at her, "If it's on his computer I can."
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Five minutes later found all three of them on the couch. Connor had his souped up laptop fired up and he was past the ARC's firewall in seconds. Abby held the baby and watched him work.
Lester had put some of his own security on his computer but Connor was a genus, in a pathetically short period of time they were in and looking at Lester's desktop.
Personnel...Abby Maitland.
Connor clicked on it. It opened up several documents, a background check, work history, social services...Connor opened it before Abby could tell him not to. It opened to the last place it had been when it was read last, the end. He read the last paragraph aloud.
"Mrs. Maitland is being released from Juvenile Detention early due to passing her final exams. She has expressed an interest in animals and has enrolled in college with the intent to become a Veterinary Assistant. She'll be moved from J.D. to her dorm on Monday. The emancipation paperwork has already been filed, see appendix D."
Connor was shocked, "Abby, why were you in prison?" he asked.
She jostled the baby a bit before answering with the strict truth, "I ran away, a lot. They finally said that they had a responsibility to be sure I finished school so they locked me up with criminals. I shared a cell with two prostitutes, a crazy violent girl that had stabbed her grandmother and a shoplifter for almost a year."
"Oh wow." Suddenly her insistence on her space and things being neat made a lot more sense. "I can see how that would be stressful."
"Yeah...stressful. I got through it. Will you change her?" She passed the baby to him, "I have to go to the loo."
"Okay." Connor agreed quickly. Abby bounced up and headed to the bathroom. Connor looked down at Madeline. "In just a moment baby." He started reading from the top of the extensive file. He only read a moment before a few key words leap out at him. Appalled, he closed the file and tried hard to pretend he was only changing a wet nappy when she returned.
His poker face sucked. She knew him better than anyone in the world.
"Connor! Why did you read it?" Abby was pissed and over the years the sweet man had tried really hard to avoid pissing her off. She had succeeded in teaching him a bit about girls. Step one, apologize immediately.
"I'm sorry Abbs, I couldn't resist, I closed it when I realized how personal it was!" Connor tried to save himself. He didn't know it, but standing over an infant he had just finished changing was scoring him some pity points.
He looked so pathetic, and desperate to be forgiven for invading her privacy that she sighed and felt her anger downshift into just annoyance. "It was personal, but they made it ten times worse." She could see that Connor was getting pretty confused. She was going to have to explain, again.
"I'll tell you everything but you have to let me finish before you start asking questions." Abby bargained with him. "You don't have to tell me anything." Connor said immediately, "Not if you don't want too."
"Not this again! I forbid you from pitying me." Abby switched back to anger again and took a deep breath to calm herself down. "Seriously Connor, do not pity me."
"Okay, fine. No pity." He shut his mouth with a snap. Madeline was laying in his arms, giving him that unblinking baby stare as she focused on his face. He glanced down at her for a second. "Let's at least sit down."
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A/N: Moving right along then... Please review if you were entertained.