A/N: THAT IS IT; I AM JUST GOING TO HAVE TO BE UNSATISFIED WITH MY WRITING (but when am I ever satisfied with my writing?).
Anyhoo, hello again! I bring you new chapter! Trying to lighten it a bit in this one. Also, typo in the last chapter when it says "two months". It's meant to be two weeks, as Clara is two weeks old. Also, I don't know if anyone noticed, but until this point Erin has never referred to Clara by her name, always by some general pronoun.
It's so quiet.
So absolutely quiet for 9pm.
Erin has walked around Chicago's streets for as long as she can remember, in various capacities, and never known it to be this noiseless on the roads.
And why was it so hard to find a fucking bar at 9pm?
If there is one thing Erin Lindsay knows how to do damn well (besides dump anyone who tries to get close), it's drink, and after today, she really, really needs a drink.
She doesn't really care where, so she stumbles into the first one she can find (long-ass walk away) and orders a beer.
With condensation on her hands and her legs weary, Erin heaves a sigh and drops her head into her hands, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.
What had just happened?
Had she truly walked out on the only family she had?
The last few months spin in a whirlwind through her mind.
She and Jay. Those few months of total happiness, lazy weekend mornings and sex in broom closets (how they never managed to get caught is beyond her). He was always convinced Platt knew, practically walked on tiptoe around her. The day she didn't use her standard six or more insults on him (there were only four), he pulled Erin into a broom closet, a mess of oh my god Erin and she knows, she freaking knows!
Coming clean to Voight and the way Jay had stepped ever so slightly behind her. ("A human shield? I'm a human shield to you?)
The gruff rumble of "don't screw this up, Halstead" that meant they had his approval.
Unofficially moving in together. He had given her a drawer with a bow affixed to it, an uncharacteristically shy expression on his face.
The pregnancy test, sitting on the cold tub rim, hands and legs shaking. The positive sign and the first appearance of The Terror, lasting to present day.
Her pregnancy. She thinks, with a start, that she probably pushed all thoughts of the coming baby from her mind for the entire time. Dissociating, she guesses. Has she ever really stopped? Does she think about her baby now? Can she?
The birth. If she's honest, she remembers little of it.
A bit too real. A bit too fast (although she's sure she didn't think it was fast at the time).
And the The Now.
Where she's sitting in a dingy bar, a beer her only company.
But she just couldn't face her, couldn't face them. Jay loves their child, adores the little girl, and she…she couldn't.
She couldn't because she was so completely terrified of seven pounds of living, breathing human that was relying on her.
So why shouldn't she give her to Jay? At least him the child could rely on.
Because it's about her, and she deserves better.
Logically, Erin knows this, but this child is untainted. Completely innocent. Completely dependent.
And suddenly, Erin needs to talk about what she can't talk to Jay about.
Her fingers grab for her phone dial without even realizing it and as soon as a voice answers, Erin hears the coos of an infant in the background. Her stomach knots painfully, but the words spill out anyway. All the words she's been holding back for weeks, maybe months.
She's not sure what she's looking for, but maybe it's understanding. Sympathy.
Should have known she wouldn't get that, maybe didn't deserve that.
Erin can feel Olivia Benson's sigh through the phone.
"Erin," she hesitates. "My mother hated me."
Erin starts to protest, but Olivia stops her.
"My mother hated me, at first for what my father did to her, but then just…for me. There is nothing, nothing worse than being hated by the person whose job it is to love you, and I know you. You are a good, kind person and you can love this child. Please, don't make her go through this."
Tears well in Erin's eyes, and the cooing starts again in the background.
"We're mothers, Erin. You and I. We're mothers now."
Something new comes over Erin. She has never thought of herself as such, but she is. She's somebody's mother.
"And as mothers…it's not our job to be the person they're protected from. It's our job to be the person that protects them. That's the promise you made, even if you never said it, from the moment you decided to keep her. Because it's not about you anymore, Erin. I get that you're scared, but you need to get past it. When she was born, it became all about her."
The words wash over her.
Her thoughts spiral.
She's a mother.
She has a daughter.
Her daughter needs her.
She needs to protect her daughter.
Because everything had changed, In The Now. Erin was, is terrified, but she has to do better than her mother did, because her tiny, perfect daughter is counting on her.
Her Clara Victoria was counting on her and she just….abandoned her.
She was scared. She was selfish.
And those are two things she can't afford to be anymore, as a mother.
(break)
Jay is blessedly, thankfully asleep when she comes in, so she moves with practiced, quiet steps to stand next to their bed. His face was peaceful when he slept. She supposes she never realized how tense and cautious he has been recently. Not cautious around the baby.
Cautious around her.
She passes her fingertips up his cheek and into his hair, pressing a kiss to his forehead.
How lucky she is.
How stupid she is to have never realized it.
With movements still whisper soft, she opens the door to the sweet-smelling, dark little room.
The baby is sleeping; her little fists sprawled out on the mattress, wrapped in a pink blanket.
Erin takes a deep breath.
It's about her now.
She gently reaches down and cradles the child's head with one hand, bringing the other around the baby's body, until she is tight against her.
It strikes her that this may be the first time actually holding her daughter as she makes her way ever so carefully over to the rocking chair and lowers herself into it.
She stretches out so that the infant is lying in her arms, and look at the face of her daughter with Down Syndrome. Her almond eyes, her round cheeks, her flat nose bridge.
"Clara Victoria Halstead," she whispers, running a finger over the baby's tiny forehead and soft, round cheeks, and realized something. Something she hadn't thought of before.
Those things that scared her, those features that would tell the world that her baby was imperfect in their eyes, they were really just parts of her daughter. Like a half-finished puzzle, she only saw the outside. But one day, she knew. One day she wouldn't be Clara, a child with Down Syndrome. One day she would just be Clara.
The child opens her eyes and levels a blue-eyed gaze at Erin, so like her father. A smile creeps onto her face as she strokes the child's face, arms, and any skin she can reach.
"Hi," she whispers as her eyes fill. "Hi, my Clara. It's Mommy."
Clara waves her arms toward Erin's face, trying to grab at Erin's nose before her hands settle on her mother's cheeks, wet with tears.
Erin bends down and takes in the fresh, newborn scent of her baby, the tears falling unchecked.
"I'm so sorry," she whispers. "Mommy's so, so sorry she didn't see you."
She readjusts the girl so that her hands are supporting the tiny body and head and the child is facing her.
"But that's going to change," she whispers. "Mommy is going to be the best mommy she possibly can to you, because you deserve everything."
And she swears, she can see it in her eyes, the child believes her.
She lays the baby back in her arms, and that is how they fall asleep, mother and daughter, wrapped in the dimly lit room and each other's arms.