A/N: I was literally crying with some of the sweet, sweet comments I got from the last chapter! Thank you all so much for reviewing, and as usual, the same review policy still applies. This one's for Jess! And there's some sugar up ahead, no worries! Hope you enjoy! :)
A rap falls across the wood.
"Trick or treat!" comes a crawling voice.
Will Gardner winces, holds his breath and bounds through his apartment to open the door as efficiently as he can before there comes another knock. He moves to press his finger against his lips in a widely known hand signal at the exact moment an ear shattering cry splits the air.
"Jesus," he curses, rubbing a hand over his face, chest and neck aching. "Just got her to sleep."
"Sorry," Aubrey frowns, guilt weighing her brow.
He pivots to rush back through the entryway and into the darkened hallway. He's learned Julia sleeps better if there's little light, little noise. He doesn't quite know where she got being a light sleeper from. As it is, when she sleeps, he has quickly reverted to falling into dreamless, dark bouts of unconsciousness. They're rarely satisfying, rarely fueling. The pediatrician says she might have colic, but doubts it. The book will read said that children with a lack of attachment can exhibit signs of restlessness. Insomnia for babies, almost. Will picks her up out of her crib and cradles her.
She falls quiet immediately.
That's the thing about Julia:
She likes to be held.
Aubrey pauses in the threshold of the bedroom, flipping her sandy hair behind her shoulder. "Three months and you still haven't painted in here? I mean, the furniture is fantastic taste, but white walls? Really, Willy? It's not a mental institution."
Her eyes soften as she looks over the infant, now perfectly awake and staring. "Man, she's gotten big."
"Yeah," he acknowledges, maybe a little more sharp than need be. "Been a little busy, Aubs."
His sister swallows, finally takes in his haggard appearance and the deep, set bags beneath his eyes. Will looks like he's lost weight, too. "I know," she murmurs. "Sorry. Don't mean to nag. You sure you don't want my help? I'm only a state away. And you know Mom would be more than happy to-
"No," he rolls his eyes. "No way in hell. It's just- she's been a little fussy today. Nothing too bad. I'm just exhausted. Not overwhelmed."
He raises his eyes up from his daughter's fringe of dark hair and adjusts her so that she can get a better look. "Want to hold her?"
The woman's face splits into a grin. "Hell yes!"
Will inhales sharply, just as Julia cringes and mewls. "Not so loud, Aubrey. She doesn't like that."
It's strange, how quickly he repositioned parts of himself to accommodate for taking care of Julia. He's always been a hard worker, always been cut throat and perfectionist, determined to get the best possible outcome out of every situation. But it's different, learning another person's wants, needs. It took him two weeks to learn the difference between a cry for hunger and a demand for attention. He studied like he would in law school, books and books of material on what to watch for, what to expect. Sometimes he went against all the advice, didn't sleep when she slept, just because he wanted to be more prepared. Sometimes, he would have to take five, maybe ten minutes to collect himself when the particular thought struck him, that Alicia would know all these things.
He's really, really trying not to think of her much these days.
At first it was self-preservation, because there was only so many parts of him he could stretch so thin before he started to break in crevices, started to unravel. He'd taken the furniture she had bought from the apartment, put it all in a U-Haul and bit his lip bloody when he unpacked it, imagining her buying each item, picking it out like she would an article of clothing. She'd chosen these items for their daughter.
Will wishes with all he has he could have helped her pick out the rocking chair, the changing table.
The patterns are a muted yellow with dusty pink, winding scrolls. The wood is cherry.
It's as elegant as you can get, for baby furniture.
He wonders how other people are getting by.
He wonders how Grace is adjusting to life without having a mother, if she has random moments when she desperately wants to ask her mother something, goes so far as holding the phone in her hand to call her, before realizing there won't be anybody on the other end of the line.
He contacts them as often as he can. Zack and Grace, Owen and Veronica. But they need their space. Everybody needs their time. He loathes that it feels more running a bandage around it than healing, though. Hates that every time he smiles it's only half there, like behind his teeth are metal clamps wiring his mouth shut, and he hates the feeling. He's a perfectionist. He's competitive. He is in control.
And he's not any of those things, anymore.
The book says when you become a parent, you lose your identity, for a little bit.
Will feels like someone else is wearing his face.
But then, sometimes, sometimes it gets easier. There are moments when it almost feels like the vice holding his head underwater lets up, and he inhales air like a dying man. Fresh and new.
The first time Julia smiled at him, he laughed. It came from his belly in spurts, made him holding his stomach and chortle so loudly he thought he'd wake the neighbors.
And then he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks before he could help himself. Julia's meaty fists had reached up to bop him in the face, garnering attention and drawing him out of his misery. Of remembering. So,he'd scooped her into his arms, made this obscene noise imitating a horse or a donkey, desperate- and there it was again.
All Alicia.
It hurt, it did. It hurt in some awful, pinching way. He felt like he'd have bruises in the morning, black and blue things that were tender to touch. But it felt good, too. It was the happiest he'd been in the three and a half weeks since he'd gotten the call, the happiest he'd felt in a long, long time.
Bittersweet, his mother had told him. She and his sisters had come to stay, that first week after he'd gotten back to New York. To help him get settled. Everything felt bittersweet, nowadays.
Aubrey bounces the baby softly, makes faces at the way she gurgles and coos. "She's precious. I think I might want one."
Good naturedly, Will quips back, "Just wait until you have to get up for feedings every three hours."
/
He starts working again a week later.
All from home, and he conferences with Diane to hold off on going back in until at least after the holidays. It's semi-easy, writing emails while Julia plays patty cake in his lap and thinking through strategy while giving her a bath. He talks with her about it, sometimes. He knows she's not getting a word of what he's saying, but she likes it, loves it when she's spoken to in a voice that's not distorted with baby talk. She gets this awed look on her face, alert in the eyes. She knows the difference between real and fake, and she's barely four months old.
A part of Will wonders if he needs to get out of the house more.
Grace extends an invitation to the Governor's mansion for Thanksgiving, but Will can't fathom going back to Chicago this soon, can't stand the thought of being around Jackie Florrick. She had the nerve to come over to the apartment, when they were clearing it out, getting ready to sell. She'd had the nerve to give him the wrong kind of look. A judging look.
Will hates that woman forevermore.
He politely declines, on grounds that Julia won't be able to take the flight, but by some shred of decency he does manage to make down the coast to see his mother and sisters in Baltimore. The dinner isn't huge, and his niece spends half the time interacting in a somewhat adorable way with Julia, so that's something. He's not into fashion for obvious reasons, but knows that if he's actually going to do an honest job at raising a little girl he has to apply himself to something more than shirts and jeans for the baby, so he manages to find a flowery dress that makes the green in Julia's eyes pop- and if he sounds like a gay man (and he does, in his head), then slap him and call him Owen Cavanaugh.
The company is good. They play board games like they always do, and Julia likes being passed around in everyone's arms, loves Aubrey throwing her in the air, loves tasting her grandmother's cranberries. He feels lighter than he has in a long, long time.
It's all good fun until he imagines Alicia helping his mother with the turkey.
He escapes to the bathroom for five, maybe ten minutes.
Comes back with swollen eyes and a tight smile.
/
A week into December, he's picking up groceries when he hears the cashier talking about basketball.
And that's the moment, hand hovered over a jar of olives, Julia resting in her car seat in the shopping cart, that he realizes he hasn't even thought about sports in months. Sure, he'd spent a little extra time ordering Julia some child sized jerseys, and fantasized over taking her to basketball and baseball games as soon as she was physically able, but the last time he thought about scoring, about how local teams were faring-
It was before.
He pulls out his phone to find the app, and Julia kicks her legs against the fabric of the seat.
Will looks down at her, mouth twitching up at the corners. He leans in to press a kiss on her nose, make her squirm.
Will moves onto the next isle to find cereal.
/
On the twentieth Will realizes he still hasn't put a tree up.
It's a silly thought, because Julia won't understand it in the slightest, but it irks him enough that he hops up off the couch and strides through the living space to the miscellaneous closet where he knows there's a small one, maybe a three footer, back from the things they'd gotten from the apartment.
Grace had wanted him to have it. Said the family had the same mini tree for years, that it wouldn't be the same to put it up without her mother in the corner, drinking a glass of red wine, laughing at her and Zack's uneven lights.
Alicia had never been one to go on about Christmas, anyway.
He rummages through a box such for a good two seconds until he finds it,
And then his hand falls on something else, something black and white and hard covered.
He pulls it out like he's holding a time bomb, something clenched around his windpipe.
He hadn't realized.
Will finds it hard to swallow.
He hadn't known she'd done this.
Tree long forgotten, Will moves back into the living room carefully. He looks over at Julia, sleeping soundly, nestled in one of her favorite blankets that had been Alicia's. Will sinks down onto the couch, just feet away from the five month old, and opens the book.
The first thing he sees is a tattered, grainy ultrasound picture.
Scribed formatting on the book reads something along the lines of 'Mother's First Thought', but he barely notices that, eyes darting past it as quick as they land, and he closes his eyes for a long moment before he pulls himself together enough to start reading the scrolling, elegant script.
I didn't even realize I was pregnant until I was three months along, because I had almost no symptoms up until that point. I'd been sick for a few days but had passed it off as a stomach bug until I realized what it really was. My first reaction was fear, because I was so scared you might not be okay, and I didn't know how it was all going to work out. But then I went to the doctor and saw you up on the monitor, and I knew it was all going to work out perfectly, no matter what. My 'official' first thought was that I loved you very much.
There was more to be read, but Julia chose that moment to inform her father of her alertness, rolling over and struggling to sit up. Will helps her, tries to blink away the tears threatening to spill. He'd cried more than any noble man could ever dream the past months. He wonders if one day the moisture would just run out. Julia squeals, places both of her arms against her father's chest, balancing precariously until he tickles her stomach and she bends inward, like jelly.
She laughs like Alicia, too.
She looks so much like Alicia it hurts.
/
On Christmas morning, he wakes up with a mission.
The picture is vague and he doesn't do much besides shave and put Julia in that flowered dress thing, but he poses it in front of the makeshift tree and positions it so that Julia giggles when the shot is snapped. Titles it family selfie and sends it out in a mass text. The responses he gets tell him he's at least doing something right.
Julia has cranberries as a treat, seems to be in a relatively good mood for most of the day. Will, on a whim, wraps a box with wrapping paper so that she can tear it open herself. Nothing in the box, but that doesn't matter to her. The entertainment she gets out of it is enough to make the day perfect.
Well, almost perfect. What makes the day perfect is when about six at night, warm and cozy with Christmas carols on the radio, he dances and bounces with her around the small living area, careful not to trip on any of her toys. She throws her head back, hysterical and shrieking, content to be held in her father's arms.
It's perfect, right up until the moment Will imagines Alicia sitting on the couch, watching them with a proud smile. Watching him make a total fool out of himself, all in the name of their daughter.
He can imagine wrapping his arms around her and swaying to the slow rendition of White Christmas, kissing her neck and telling her how much he loves her, how much he wants to stay like this, forever, forever. Another lifetime. Another life.
Instead of disappearing to take his five, maybe ten minutes, Will just lowers the volume of the music and plops down right there in the middle of the floor. He grows quiet and closes his eyes. Julia's little hand slaps against his cheek, but she's calmed too. Different than when he's reading her legal briefs. Just this all-consuming, knowing look. Like she's been there, done that, a thousand times over.
Will thinks she might get that from Alicia, too.
"Merry Christmas, baby girl," Will murmurs, kissing his daughter's forehead.
Julia pinches her father's cheek in her chubby fingers, tethering him to reality.