A/N- Thanks for all the lovely response I have gotten! Once I get double the reviews, I'll post the next part. Warning: tissues needed. Hope you enjoy!
Chicago is in a record drought, but somehow, someway, it rains the day of the service.
Will's suit is pristine and dark grey. With any luck, he'd kept a few changes of clothes in his office in Chicago, and after he'd left for New York the articles had been tucked away in a box, in the back of a supply closet. Just in case. Forgotten. He'd left so suddenly, then. Rushed. Even now, the past few days passed in something akin to a storm. The media, however, was surprisingly tame.
There's Peter's statement to thank for that.
The morning of the twenty ninth had struck hard and quick, a new day, with its bright and blinding aftermath. Will had sat in a rocking chair, holding the sleeping baby, when the sun had filtered in through the blinds. The baby had whimpered, tossed, and Will had been reminded of the way he left, that morning. The last time he'd seen Alicia alive she had been sleeping. He wishes, even then, that he had stayed to wake her up. Had he been reminded that there are some dreams never to be woken from, he would have. He would have stayed.
But bargaining only gets him so far.
No, everything had rushed in a flurry of questions and answers and it almost felt like he didn't have time to grieve, didn't have time. The nurse told him as much, showing him how to change Julia, how to feed her. Will had positioned his arms and imagined Alicia sitting close, watching him learn.
Alicia would have laughed at him, smiled at his timidity.
Veronica insisted he go with Owen to find Alicia last will and testament, and so that's how he found himself, hours later. No sleep. Half a mind still with his newborn daughter. The other half walked through Alicia's apartment door and wanted to fall to his knees. The other half didn't so much as want to grieve, as just fall apart. Collapse.
Everything smelled like her.
And he'd forgotten, nine months past, he'd forgotten how potent her scent was, how it touched everything and consumed. Her scent was not a certain brand, but made up of the lotion she used, the air freshener plugged into the wall, her dryer sheets. Will walked into her apartment at ten in the morning, just as the morning rise was starting to permeate the entire apartment. Dust bunnies in the air from where Alicia had obviously not been able to clean, up off her feet the doctor had said, Grace had told him. There was a box for a car seat in the corner, and Will felt his stomach roll.
It was too much.
But there's only so much the human body can take, so Will cleared his throat and blinked away the tears, followed Owen, the trembling Owen, through the apartment and into the exponentially more painful bedroom. Her sheets were still rumpled from where she'd slept, the outline of her body a fossil remnant.
"It's in here, I think," Owen had murmured, thumbing open a drawer. "A hard copy, at least. Who else would have-
"David Lee," Will remembered, eyes widening. He'd clenched his jaw at the thought of making it real, of knowing that in just a few scant hours the world would recognize it and somehow it would make it more real. He wondered how Lee with his malice would react to knowing such a beautiful, whole woman was dead. Then he wondered-
"Did Alicia work?"
He could hardly imagine Diane would keep the pregnancy from him. Then again, he could hardly imagine even a word artist like Diane Lockhart could casually slip into a conversation, "The woman who may or may not be the love of your life is currently carrying a child that may or may not be your own. Should we be concerned?"
"No," Owen answered, and Will had actually stopped what he was doing.
"Did anyone know she was pregnant?"
He could hardly imagine she kept it a complete secret. It wasn't the fifties.
"Kind of. I mean." Flipping his hands through his fringed hair, Owen struggled to formulate a proper response, to put his words together right. He hasn't had any sleep either. "She didn't tell anyone who didn't need to know, okay? Peter knows, and that campaign manager knows, and Alicia's partner knows, but…I don't think anybody else does. Just family. Alicia didn't want questions. She did work at home, on her computer. She didn't want the baby to have that label, you know? She was always private. Even when we were little. Even when-
Owen grew quiet, and looked down at the file he had his hand on. "I've got it."
It shouldn't have been a punch in the gut to read over the fine, scrawling script, but it was.
Will had always loved Alicia's hand writing.
It's the little things that ended up hurting the most.
/
In the end, the instructions were explicit. There would be no burial. Will recalled her twenty years ago, hovered over a law book, speaking aloud her own thoughts, the way they dipped and swayed so. Alicia was unfiltered as much as she could be, back then, and Alicia had let it slip one evening that she was afraid of being buried alive, couldn't imagine even after death, even after whatever happened after that, wanting to be six feet under and rotting. Morbid, he had thought.
Alicia had just raised one perfect eyebrow at him.
The memory stings.
Will doesn't know how he got there, but the afternoon of the twenty ninth Will found himself in the offices of Lockhart Gardner, everyone quiet and gauging his every move when he walked through the door. It must have already been released to the press by then. He must have looked like a ghost, with his stubble and bloodshot eyes. It felt like the last twelve hours was written across his forehead.
Diane had pulled him in for a hug, strangely maternal in some shade, the moment they were tucked within the confines of her office.
"What happened?" she whispered in his ear. "It's on the news. Do you come to tell her goodbye? Was she sick?"
Will had let go of her, let his hands fall to his side. He had sunk down into the chair because his legs wouldn't support him anymore. "No," the word had been pain, pure and unadulterated.
He never said goodbye.
Will had closed his eyes, willing himself not to break down right then and there. Diane understood, by some fray. She understood him. "Alicia died in childbirth," he forced the words out.
She took a long, drawn moment to process that.
"What?" she choked. She took her glasses off and laid them down on the desk, pinched the bridge of her nose. "They won't say anything on the news. Is it- childbirth?"
"Hemorrhaged after she-" Will broke off tersely, something in him bubbling and grinding at the fact he was even having to explain, even having to- "-Diane, she's dead."
"Did the baby survive? Getting a divorce was gutsy, considering she was pregnant with her Pet-
Diane stopped talking.
Diane went pale.
Without even her knowing it, one shaky hand went to cover her mouth. "Will, it's your child?"
All Will could do was incline his head.
Diane had already started shaking her head back and forth, mind going a mile a minute to dart which way, in which direction, looking for all possible outcomes and scenarios. "You didn't know? You couldn't have known, you would have come back if-
"I didn't know anything," Will interjected sharply, making Diane flinch. She had closed her mouth, looked down at her hands in her lap. She talked with her eyes down.
"What will you need? A few months, at least the very least, and we could arrange for Humphries to take over your cases in New York. Or. Or, if it's what you'd prefer, we could set David Lee up to talk with adoption age-
"I'm keeping Julia."
Diane met his gaze slowly, steadily. "Okay, we can figure that out. Beautiful name, by the way."
She cracked a watery smile. "Congratulations, Will."
He laughed weakly, sounded like he'd been running ten miles. "I'm a dad, Diane. You know how weird that is?"
With a hint more of her usual airs, Diane tilted her head to the side. "You'll warm up to it. Before long I'm sure you'll be writing briefs and fixing booboos all at the same time."
Something in him turned sharply on its heel, made him swallow hard. His palms had been sweaty.
He'd felt like he could sleep for years.
"Diane?" he said, though his mouth barely moved.
"Yes."
"I don't know what I'm doing. She's not going to have a mother. She's not going to have Al-
He couldn't say it, and that day, Diane had understood.
"You're right," she murmured, thinking back on the woman and struggling to maintain her emotional control. "She won't. But she's going to have one of the best father's in the entire world. And I think that's just going to have to be enough, Will. It's going to work out. It will."
/
When he'd gotten back to the hospital, the baby had been crying in Peter Florrick's arms.
Will Gardner had promptly struggled not to lose his shit.
"Give her to me," he'd demanded severely, low enough so as to not add to the commotion. Peter's eyes were hazed over in something like shock as he did so. Will thought after Veronica, after Owen, but then looked down at the papers and pen strewn about across the desk area of the hospital room and realized it must have been spur of the moment.
Peter had passed off Julia to Will awkwardly, his hulking form staggering over Julia and her elfin fingers. "Watch the head," Will growled.
And for some reason, Peter didn't have anything to say back.
Just took it, quiet in his might.
"Have you seen the body?" Peter asked instead, something numb in his tone.
Will had frozen. Julia had whimpered.
Will had shaken his head, bouncing where he stood and finding something within him warmed and relieved when the baby began to soothe, when her discomfort was lulled to an eased sleep. Peter took a few steps back, and had leaned up against a far wall.
Will couldn't imagine it, at the time. He didn't want to. The thought made him physically ill to imagine seeing that, seeing-
He couldn't. He couldn't do it.
But apparently, Peter had. And looking over at the man, still dumbed and shocked from seeing a woman once so full of life, hard and cold on a metal slab- Will looked at Peter and knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that if he saw Alicia now he wouldn't be able to hold it together. The baby in his arms was the contradiction. The baby in his arms was reason.
"Grace wants to stay with a friend," Peter told Will, crossing his arms. He'd been sorely attempting to pull himself back in, to make himself more a man. "Just until school ends. It's her senior year, you know. Zack wants to return to school by the end of the week, says it's what his mom would have wanted."
"The trusts will be there for them," Will relayed, nodding. "I checked with David Lee, the lawyer she'd chosen to go with for family matters, the one who helped file the divorce, and I won't contest the will. The will is good."
Peter scratched his brow. "Veronica says the service will be in a few days. The apartment can be cleared, and what's left will go to storage until Grace or Zack decide to go through and pick what they want. Sell the rest, I guess. I'll be making a speech later this evening. Ask for privacy."
They were speaking in legal matters, all business.
They were deliberately not saying her name.
"Then that's that," Peter cleared his throat. He moved toward the door, but stopped suddenly.
Peter looked back. "For what it's worth, Gardner, you're a brave man."
There wasn't any menace in Peter's voice, no underlying snark. Just brutal honesty, laced with something resembling loss, something resembling nostalgia. Julia nuzzled Will's forearm, sniffling in her sleep.
"Oh?" Will murmured.
Peter looked at Julia, fast asleep.
"I don't know if I would have had the courage to do it without her."
And then he was gone.
/
Zack gives the eulogy.
It's powerful for how short it is. Jerking, yet to the point a way that makes Will know Zack's got his mother's way of talking. Zack only cries near the end.
A few seats away, Eli is wetting a handkerchief. Kalinda, near the back, is crying silently, thick tears that stream down her cheeks. Cary has a hand on Kalinda's thigh, his head bowed.
Peter holds Grace while she sobs, Owen rubbing her shoulder next to her. Veronica had stayed with the baby, said she didn't want to say goodbye to her daughter in such a final way. He doesn't know what he's going to do once everybody is gone, and he's alone in his apartment, in New York, in Chicago, wherever he ends up. He doesn't want to think about it, but he's desperate to distract himself.
There are so many people he knows the faces of but cannot recall the name. Clients, associates at Alicia's firm. Partners from his firm. As it is, Diane is next to him, her hand clutching his arm.
He doesn't know what he's doing, with his quaking limbs and his dry eyes.
He's not falling apart yet. He's not.
He's just there, shell shocked, feels like everything is going slow and everything is passing in a blur, blowing out candles and lighting dynamite. Moving.
A part of him hopes this is a dream, when he exits the meeting hall and big, fat drops of rainwater darken his suit. William Paul Gardner stands in the rain, lets it soak him in.
He imagines this is Alicia, weeping too.
/
Will doesn't go from the meeting hall to the hospital.
He wants to see his daughter, he does, but something makes him stop, makes him hail a cab and go straight to the one place in the world nine months ago, he never wanted to return to again.
The door cracks open, and the summer storm howls outside. The lights are out.
The apartment is empty, and Will inhales deeply.
He's barely slept in days.
They wouldn't blame him, would they, would probably think he's off getting drunk in some bar, like he's supposed to be. He strips off his tie and his suffocating suit jacket, gets down to his boxers right there in the middle of the living room. Starts in the direction of the bedroom.
This is pathetic. This is the most pathetic thing he's ever done, but he just doesn't care, anymore.
He doesn't even have the energy within him to fall apart, he realizes. It's there, hovering on the edge of his throat, but it's not that he's pulling himself back, not that he's got responsibilities or scruples, nothing like that. He's just too tired. Too much. It's too much, too much, too much.
He stops, by the bed.
Cannot find it within himself to ruin her outline.
Moves to the other side, the made side. The side that would have been his in another lifetime. Can remember three years ago, can remember kissing her in this bed just that once, when the kids had been with Peter for the weekend, can still hear her laughter echoing in the darkness, some bullet in a barrel.
He crawls underneath the sheets, and wilts at their softness.
He feels so close to Alicia it hurts.
He shouldn't. He shouldn't and he knows it, but he's just so tired. He's tired, so later he'll blame it on exhaustion, the way:
Will curls over to his side, staring across the empty space next to him. Imagines her sleeping there.
That nose. Those curls. The rise and fall of her chest.
"Alicia," Will says.
He swears he can feel the ghost of her hand across his cheek, stroking, soothing, as he falls asleep.
"Will."