Little Wonders
Haylie is barely a couple minutes old when he first holds her.
She is placed on Skye's chest right after she's born, wailing and red faced, smeared in blood and hastily wrapped in a thin blanket that'll end up in the trash afterwards. Skye's weak from exhaustion – it was a long labor, and he has seen more seasoned agents break under tenth of the pain she's just endured –, her hair is damp, but she is laughing and crying at the same time, running her fingertips along the baby's face. He's barely more than an observer then, unable to get enough of the little face that has since ceased crying, now blinking curiously at this new world she's just arrived at.
Then he is pulled from his haze by somebody calling his name, and looking up he sees a pair of surgical scissors offered to him; he blinks a couple of times, trying to put two and two together, then takes them, nodding, then rather uncertainly cuts the umbilical cord (it's harder to do than it seems).
Then Haylie is transferred to his arms – because their baby girl needs to be washed and clothed and examined, but Skye's not exactly done yet with her… tasks, so the responsibility of taking care of his infant daughter is bestowed upon him for the very first time.
He is startled by how small she feels in his arms – head easily fitting in his palm, tiny fingers barely long enough to curl around his one digit, weighing about as much as a pair of feathers. It seems so impossible that somebody so small should exist.
He bathes her under Jemma's watchful eye, reminding him to mind her head and to be careful – as if he hasn't already been handling her like the most precious jewel in the world. Haylie is strangely calm in the water – she whines a little at first, but then relaxes, blinking up sleepily at him as he pours warm water over her short, dark wisps of hair.
Then he steps aside – albeit a little reluctantly –, and lets Jemma do her job. She measures and probes and checks, then lists of a string of statistics he knows he'll remember forever: APGAR score ten at five minutes; seven pounds, seven ounces; twenty-one inches. She assures him that Haylie is completely healthy and absolutely good-sized (she still seems unbelievably small, and he still counts all of her tine fingers and toes), beaming at him and patting him on his arm, as if she was proud of him, when he didn't do anything – it was all Skye.
Then Haylie is diapered (he hasn't realized until now how tricky these little things can be), clothed (in some onesie he doesn't remember seeing before; he actually had a dress picked out for her, but he completely forgot about it when Skye went to labor the night before, so somebody must have just picked up something from the nursery and brought here; he isn't sure – all details of the last sixteen hours or so are kind of fuzzy), and swaddled (in May's old blanket that she was supposed to pass on to her own child – and then gave to Skye). He takes her into his arms once again – it feels more fitting now, and yet still so foreign –, and takes her back to Skye.
He is in no hurry – Haylie's finally succumbed to the exhaustion of being born, her eyes dropping closed, a tiny fist – the only things visible from the depths of the blanket, save for her face – curled around a fold of the soft material. She is just too beautiful for words.
When he gets back to the temporary delivery room, Dr. Hartland – an old acquaintance of May's, the obstetrician who observed Skye's pregnancy and agreed to come to the base to deliver the baby here – is already tidying up the room – sneaking a little smile at him –, and Skye's reclining in the bed, hair's still a mess, but wearing a clean nightgown and her cheeks a little less flushed. Her face lights up when she sees him – them –, her lips curving into a tired smile.
"Hi, daddy," she says softly, a new kind of love twinkling in her eyes.
He swears his heart skips a beat. Hi, daddy, it echoes in his mind, and… wow. The realization hits him only now: he is a dad now, has been for about half an hour now.
He grins like an idiot.