Little baby Snart was born weighing seven pounds and four ounces, perfectly healthy, and apparently the cause for her fetal distress was her somehow managing to wrap her own umbilical cord around her neck. So once that was untangled she began recovering quickly from it. At first Sara and Leonard had been, understandably, worried about how long their daughter had been in her predicament but the doctor assured them that she passed all of her newborn tests with flying colors and that considering the cord didn't even leave a mark there shouldn't be any lasting damage.
So now it was just the three of them in the little hospital bed, Sara holding the baby while Leonard peered over her shoulder at his daughter. She had chubby little cheeks, which Sara had already teased resembled the ones he'd had as a baby, and a little button nose. She was wearing pink hospital cap but underneath she looked completely bald at a quick glance, only after studying her more closely had Len and Sara been able to tell that she actually thin little wisps of blonde hair. She was yet to open her eyes but considering almost all babies are born with blue eyes they were sure that's what she would have, at least for now before they could maybe change to Leonard's more grayish blue.
Just then their little girl let out a quiet cough before her eyes started to blink open and just as they thought she had blue eyes. Leonard certainly hoped that she would keep them; they were just like Sara's, a piercing blue that gave him chills every time she stared him down.
"Hi," Sara said to their daughter, the happy tears in her eyes obscuring her voice just a little. "Hi baby," she continued with a wide grin before she leaned down and pressed a kiss to her daughter's nose.
Len smiled warmly at the sight, remembering how eight months ago when he found out that this moment would happen Sara had been crying what he thought could've been tears of joy but he didn't peg her for the type. Now though, now that they were here, she was crying out of joy and even if they both know she isn't normally the type they also know that she had damn well earned it.
"Do you want to go to daddy?" She whispered to the baby and at the sound of that Leonard looked to his girlfriend as if she were crazy but when the look on her face seemed so sure he found himself sitting down on the edge of the bed as she maneuvered their daughter into his arms.
He took her somewhat awkwardly, it had been a long time since he last held a baby, and he had NEVER even been near one this young. It took a minute or two of adjusting and readjusting, but eventually he had the little girl settled in his arms and amazingly she didn't start crying once throughout his and Sara's handoff. All she did was look up at Leonard, allowing him to determine that her blue eyes were definitely a match to Sara's. She closed those eyes once she was settled in his grasp and he couldn't help his heart swelling at the fact that his daughter felt safe enough to drift off to sleep in his arms.
The three off them sat there in silence for a while until Sara, who had her head resting on her boyfriend's shoulder, looked up at him with a smile.
"We should probably go get my mom and Lisa," She suggested and so Len shifted the baby back into Sara's arms.
"You're the one who just had a baby AND surgery, your call if you're up to it." He told her and she nodded while straightening up and adjusting the baby in her arms.
"I am, please go get them and see if they know where Laurel and my dad are." She instructed and so with a sweet smile Len place a gentle hand on the side of his girlfriend's head and pulled her towards him to place a kiss on her forehead before he got up.
"Would you relax?" Cisco pleaded with Lisa as they sat in the hospital waiting area, his girlfriend biting her nails anxiously while Sara's mother sat nearby and sipped her cup of coffee as if it were a life force.
"I can't!" Lisa all but shouted, "They haven't told us anything since they brought her in and it's been over an hour now! What if something went wrong?" She babbled,
"So what if it did?" Cisco asked and that was the absolute last thing Lisa had expected to hear him say, and he knew it too. "Sara survived Lian Yu, the League of Assassins, she even came back from death. Even in a city constantly being attacked by meta-humans your brother still managed to hold onto his number one most wanted slot until he decided he was ready to give it up, not to mention they both took down Vandal Savage; something two demigods couldn't do in 4,000 years. Even if something goes wrong it's not going to matter, because with the DNA from those two, I can promise that that kid is not going to give up." He assured his girlfriend, who beamed at hearing his words. Dinah had been listening too, and it certainly made her feel a lot better to hear Cisco so sure that everything was going to be ok.
But no matter how reassured they felt, the sight of Leonard entering the waiting area five minutes later snapped them all to attention.
"Sorry keep you all waiting but Sara needed some time to shake off the pain meds after the surgery," he said,
"So…?" Lisa trailed off with her question and Len nodded regardless, he knew what she wanted to know.
"Everyone's fine," he assured her and next to her Cisco let out a sigh of relief.
"Oh thank god," he muttered and while Len simply smirked in amusement at him, Dinah and Lisa both eyed him skeptically, wasn't he the one who had been so sure that everything would be ok?
"What are you doing here Ramon?" Leonard asked; his arms folded across his chest but a smirk still on his face.
"It was either this or Christmas with my family," the engineer excused and Len nodded,
"Understood, now are we going to continue chatting in the waiting room or do you three want to come and see the baby?" He asked and of course that got Dinah and Lisa to their feet, Cisco was a little more hesitant but when Len nodded his approval he too rose from his chair and followed the others down the corridors of the hospital.
The moment before Dinah Lance entered her daughter's hospital room she promised that she wasn't going to cry. The moment that she did enter her daughter's hospital room was the same moment in which she started crying.
Sara was sitting in the bed, looking exhausted from the hours of labor and then the extra does of pain meds during her C-Section didn't help any, but she was still sitting there with a proud smile on her face and a little white bundle in her arms. Moving closer Dinah could see a small spot of pink that was the baby's hat and she became even more choked up.
Sara couldn't help but chuckle at her mother's reaction to seeing her granddaughter for the first time and was quick to pass her along for the older woman to hold.
"Oh, she's perfect." Dinah gushed and Sara beamed at the words while Lisa as Cisco both peered over Dinah's shoulder to get a look at the baby.
"Oh, hi sweetie." Lisa fawned over the little girl, giving her a small wave and a huge smile.
"What's her name?" Cisco was the first to ask the inevitable question.
"Aurora," Sara replied, "Aurora Dinah Snart." She said and upon hearing that her mother snapped her head up, causing Sara to chuckle slightly at the reaction. "It's partially after Laurel," she explained but that only appeared to make Dinah happier.
"Speaking of Laurel," Leonard drawled, suddenly realizing that he'd forgotten to asked about the rest of Sara's family. "Any idea on where she is?"
"They're a little over two hours away," Dinah informed before turning to Lisa and trying to hand off Aurora. However Lisa caught on to what she was doing and took half a step back, sending a desperate glare at her brother that only turned to shock when he nodded at her to take the baby into her arms.
"Lisa, don't worry, you're not going to drop her." He assured her but she still looked just as panicked, and maybe she had a right to be considering she had never actually held a baby younger than a year old, and even that had been a one time thing as well as years ago.
"Do you want to sit down first?" Sara offered from her seat in the hospital bed and Lisa nodded at the suggestion, at the very least it was safer than her holding the baby standing up.
So she slowly went over to the chair in the corner of the room and lowered herself into the seat. Once she was sure Lisa was all set Dinah crossed over and made to hand over the baby, Len even stood next to his sister and helped guide the newborn into her arms so she would be sure that nothing would happen. This did make Lisa feel better, because although she did try and figure out how to hold a baby before her niece was born the idea of actually doing it still made her unspeakably nervous. But before she knew it she was holding the baby, Lenny and Dinah had both backed off, and she was the actually holding her niece. Looking down, Lisa studied Aurora closely. Her face was still pink and her little eyes were now open, staring back up at her with a curious, if slightly unfocused, gleam. Len smirked as he watched his sister start to tear up but she just couldn't help herself. After everything that they had all been through, little Aurora was finally here.
The days following Aurora's birth were definitely an adjustment period. Laurel and Quentin finally made it to Central City about three hours after she was born and them meeting her had gone about the same as Dinah and Lisa.
By the next afternoon Cisco, using the version of Gideon that is located in the time vault at S.T.A.R. Labs, was able to contact the Waverider and send the team some pictures of Aurora. Sara also asked him to inform them that she and Leonard wanted them to come meet the baby if they could, as there would be no telling when the next time they would be able to stop in the present might be. So they stopped by and getting Mick to hold the baby was actually, somehow, more complicated than prompting Lisa to do so. The arsonist stayed clear of the little bundle as if she had the plague, but eventually Sara managed to guilt trip him into holding her daughter. Unfortunately for Mick, Aurora had been getting fussy throughout the who ordeal and so once her parents had finally gotten him to hold her he only had her for a short two minutes before she started crying and that just ending in him swearing that he would never touch the kid again. Len simply rolled his eyes at the comment, the only problem his daughter had was her diaper was full and frankly they had already been avoiding changing it. It had nothing to do with his old friend and she was calm right after he changed her but nope, there was no getting through to Mick.
During all this Sara texted her sister to come down, as she was currently staying with their mother for a next few days, and when she got there Rip took her arrival as cue for he and the Legend's to leave.
"We should be going, congratulations again to you both." He said as they started to leave.
"That's up to you guys, but Rip," Len began, prompting his former captain to turn around and meet his eyes, "Can you stay for just a minute?" He requested and although Rip looked very confused he nodded nonetheless.
"We'll, um, meet you back at the ship." Stein said as he and the other Legends, all just as confused as Rip, left the hospital room and closed the door behind them.
"What's going on?" Laurel asked; she had no idea why Sara had asked her down here and now that they apparently wanted to speak with her and Rip she was even more lost.
Len looked to Sara, who nodded her approval on some unspoken question with a smile, and so he then turned his attention on the other two currently in the room.
"Sara and I have decided that although we aren't religious people, we still want Aurora to have godparents." He began and upon hearing that both Rip and Laurel's mouths fell slightly open.
"Leonard and I never would've met without either of you, and yes Rip I know at Thanksgiving you said we would've met without you but you also made it very clear that we wouldn't have had Aurora; so we figured that if we're going to ask anyone to be her godparents we'd ask the two of you." Sara explained but it was still a good couple of minutes before either Rip or Laurel said anything.
"You two can say yes or no any time," Len finally prompted when the silence began to tread in ridiculous territory.
"I, I'd love to," Laurel finally accepted and Rip nodded.
"Same goes for me," he managed to answer, a bright grin spreading across his face after he did and therefor finally processed what just transpired. He then cleared his throat to shake off the sweetness in the room as if nothing at all had happened. "Well then, I better be getting back to the ship before the others leave without me, because they will." He said, that got a bit of a laugh out of everybody; mostly they knew that it was true.
Now Sara and Leonard had been home for three days with their barely one-week-old daughter (six days) and were quickly learning how to adapt to life with a newborn in the apartment.
For starters they learned very quickly that it's very lucky they've both lived the majority of their lives with very little sleep and crazy, if even existent, sleep schedules. Aurora woke up pretty much every two and a half hours to eat, the only exception being after four a.m. when she inexplicably would sleep until it was nearly nine. She was sleeping the bassinet in her parents' room; they would move her into her room when she was a few months older. Another thing that they learned is that their neighbors on the left are very tolerable of the noise, while the ones on the right had adopted a new habit of pounding on the wall every time Aurora cried for longer than twenty minutes. There was one day; today in fact, that Leonard is sure he'll never live down. Aurora was crying non-stop ever since she woke up and it got to the point where it was nearing one in the afternoon, nothing was calming her, and he was genuinely starting to fear that Sara might take her knives out. So he called his sister and said,
"I don't care where you take her, or how long you hold this over my head, but please come get the baby out of this apartment for five minutes!" Actually he was lying; he did care about where Lisa took the baby. He knows that there are more than enough places that you should never bring a newborn but he also knew that she wouldn't go anywhere other than her own apartment.
Lisa was over right away only to find her screaming niece already loaded into her car seat. Ordinarily she would've been hesitant about being alone with the baby for the first time, but one look from her obviously far past irritated brother had her scooping up the car seat and rushing back to the parking lot.
"What's wrong Aurora? Huh, what's the matter?" She asked in a baby voice as she loaded her niece into the backseat of her car. But Aurora only screeched louder, actually prompting Lisa to cover her ears. "Ok, ok. Now I know why they call your mom The Canary." She grumbled before shutting the door and settling into the drivers seat.
She got about halfway to her apartment before the crying in the back slowed, about five more minutes and it had stopped completely. By the time Lisa reached her apartment she looked behind her to see that Aurora had fallen asleep. She kept the baby with her for about two hours and then brought her home, informing Lenny that a ride in the car will knock his daughter out cold.
So anyway, it was now just past eleven and Sara had just finished feeding Aurora and brought her to the bedroom to put her down. She then returned to the living room where Len was settled on the couch watching the New Year's Eve ball drop because the only other thing on TV was bad Christmas movies and a Three Stooges Marathon they had already watched part of.
"You should be sleeping," he said to Sara, knowing that Aurora would be hungry again around 1:30 and she would have to get up.
"Don't care, I refuse to be that woman who can't stay up until midnight once she has a kid." She argued and Len couldn't help but laugh.
"So what's your resolution this year?" He asked and before she could answer he held up a finger, "And please don't tell me it involves losing weight," he said, to be honest a lot of Sara's baby weight had already gone away and the last thing he wanted was her focusing on getting rid of the little that's left.
"It doesn't," She promised, "I don't think I have a resolution this year, for the first time since I was a kid everything is going perfect." She said and Len smirked a little before sighing.
"Well I hope I don't throw a wrench in that when I tell you my resolution is to make a change, specifically involving me and you." He said, gaining Sara's full attention as she shifted nervously in her seat to face him.
"What kind of change?" She asked,
"Well I was going to wait until midnight to ask you, but I suppose that could end up interrupted by someone waking up so I figured I'd ask now." He explained and the next thing Sara knew he was getting onto the floor and kneeling in front of her, pulling a ring box out of his pocket.
"Len, what are you doing?" She asked, completely dumbfounded.
"Well I'm trying to ask you to marry me," Len stated and Sara laughed at his bluntness, not that she would expect anything else from him. "So will you?" He asked, taking her hand in his. She nodded as a few tears started to fill her eyes and she wiped them away with her free hand.
"I guess," she mocked with a smile that Len's soon matched before he slipped the ring onto her finger.