Awe (takes place after The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)

"Ada Fowler Cooper, I am your father."

Sheldon had moved to a strange state even beyond exhaustion. He sat in the rocking chair, the afternoon sun peeking around the edges of the blind, lending the hospital room a magical glow. Amy was sound asleep, snoring loudly, her face still swollen, dark circles ringing her eyes. Watching her sleep like that was intensely gratifying, to know she could finally have the peace and quiet she needed to recover, after so much activity and pain.

There was a brief knock at the door, and then someone new loudly entered, pushing the clear bassinet in front of her. Sheldon got up quickly and met them.

"Shhh, be quiet, Amy's asleep," he admonished the stranger. He looked down at his daughter (my daughter!), watching her tiny face pinch and squish as she made grunt-like noises.

"Sorry, but someone's hungry. And hungry babies don't wait." In spite of the firm rebuttal of the words, they were softened with what Sheldon instantly recognized as a Texas twang. He looked up, chastised and surprised. As though to prove the stranger's words correct, Ada (my daughter!) intensified the noises she was making, not full cries yet, but something between a cry and a gasp for air.

Amy was awake, sitting up, almost instantaneously. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, honey. She's just hungry." This new woman picked up the baby, with an effortlessness Sheldon envied, and carried her over to Amy. "I'm Barb, your lactation consultant, and I'm here to help. Now, you've haven't done this yet, right?"

At that moment, Ada started to cry, truly cry.

"No," Amy shook her head, "I tried right after she was born, but I couldn't get it. I think I was too fatigued." There was no denying the disappointment in her voice.

"No regret here. With babies, you don't have time for regrets. Only forward momentum from now on. We'll keeping working 'til we get this right." Even Sheldon, still standing at the foot of Amy's bed, felt the soothing authority in Barb's voice.

He sighed softly and shifted his weight, looking down at his shoes. He felt so peripheral and pointless. He didn't know if he should watch or look away. As Barb instructed Amy, he felt lost, looking at each object in the room in turn. This felt like yet another ritual in the secret world of women, a world he did not understand but had witnessed the edges of so many times in the last few months, and he wondered if his presence was an intrusion. Should he leave? Not for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, or even the hundredth time, he felt utterly useless.

About to turn away, he heard Amy. "Sheldon! Look, Sheldon!" He looked at her, beckoned by the unabashed joy in her voice. "She's doing it! We're doing it!"

If he thought Amy was never so beautiful as she was in those moments after their daughter was born, he was wrong again. He knew it was a trick of the lighting in the room, but Amy seemed to glow, the light ringing her head, the light making her rings hanging on the chain around her neck sparkle, sitting on the bed, holding and feeding her baby.

"Come on over, Daddy. There's room for three." Barb waved her arm at him.

He hesitated, still wondering if Amy would want to share this private act with him. Then Amy looked up at him and smiled. "Yes, come sit by us."

Tentatively, he sat on the bed next to her, and his scientific curiosity took over. He watched this most basic of human interactions with awe. Relaxing, he put his arm around Amy's back. She leaned slightly into him.

"Look at you, you're a pro at this already!" Barb said. "I'll leave you now. You know how to burp when you're done, right?"

"Yes. But how will I know when she's done?" Amy asked with a note of panic.

"You'll just know."

"Wait! One more thing. Will you take our picture? Sheldon, give her your phone."

"A picture! Amy, you're not decent!" He looked at her, one side of her gown lowered to her waist, her breast exposed.

"It's for me, for us. I'm not going to put it on Facebook. And you can't really see anything, anyway. Please."

He sighed but passed his phone over to Barb. Anything for Amy.

"First family photo? Smile!" Barb said.

Sheldon leaned in closer, looked up at the phone, and found himself smiling.

The afternoon was fading into evening, and Sheldon was rocking again, this time, for the first time, holding his daughter. He had been so frightened to do it before, but now he no longer understood why. It felt so natural, once Amy insisted he take her when her own food had arrived.

It had been so easy not to hold her at first. Amy, of course, didn't want to let go and he didn't want her to either. He actually thought it was cruel when Ada was taken away so soon, to be weighed and measured. Even when they gave her back, complete with a hat, Amy wanted to try to nurse, so he left to tell Leonard and Penny, napping against each other in the waiting room, and there were phone calls and then there was a newborn check in the nursery and and and and . . .

Realizing his life was probably going to be a never-ending series of ands from now on, he looked over at Amy, snoring again. To think that twenty-four hours prior he had been studying flash cards that turned out to be almost futile. There was no studying possible for something like this.

He had been worried, at first, when he took the warm bundle in his arms, not that he would drop her (this surprised him, he had worried about that for months), but if he was betraying Amy in some fashion. Wasn't it unfair to love someone so much, so soon, when it had taken him years to learn to love Amy properly, the way she deserved to be loved? But the look Amy had given him when he finally settled in the chair caused those worries to evaporate. Ada was Amy's, of Amy, nurtured by Amy, a gift from Amy. Amy had created this gift with passion and fatigue and love and, finally, agony. So, he sat and rocked his daughter for over an hour and thought, while Amy dropped quickly back to sleep.

Sheldon thought about at least a thousand things. He looked down at Ada's face, still swollen from her own difficult journey that day, and he brushed his hand along her full head of dark hair and smiled. He sincerely hoped her face would settle into some resemblance of Amy's. Penny had already claimed she looked like him, which he didn't understand at all because the only person she currently resembled was Winston Churchill with a cone head, but that statement disappointed him nonetheless. Amy was so beautiful he wanted her beauty to reflected in everything she touched, everything she created. He also wondered where Ada's life path would lead her, exactly how intelligent she would be, if she would be more drawn to physics or biology. Would she want to gaze out, to expand the universe ever wider, or to gaze in, to understand the unseen depths inside humanity? He didn't really care which branch of science called to her; he just enjoyed imagining a dark-haired little girl giving the same face Amy gave when she was in awe of something.

Awe. That's precisely what it was. And not just awe at Amy, although he knew without a doubt there was no way he could have ever done what she had done a few short hours ago. Not even the usual awe at himself, that Ada was the most perfect baby ever born because she carried his DNA. Not satisfied awe for having survived the crucible of her arrival, because he knew this was just the beginning of another, longer crucible. His awe was directed at the tiny infant in his arms, the wondrous creature he almost could not believe he had had any part in creating. Of all the things he and Amy had set out to do together, this was by far the most triumphant they had ever been. Even though he did not yet see Amy or himself in Ada, he did see a world of possibilities. His heart ached at how blessed he felt at that moment, that Amy loved and trusted him enough to give him this, to think he was ready for this. Here was this small, helpless being, and he and Amy were going to guide her together, show her the world, teach her so many things. It was so much responsibility, but, for once, he wasn't really that frightened. Oh, he knew he probably would be before too long. What was it Tuvok said? "Parenting is so much more overwhelming than one expects." He wondered, not for the first time, how his life had twisted and turned and led him to this magical day, how he had been so fortunate to have the opportunity to create this child, and how fortunate he would be to help form her into her own person.

He also wondered if sleep was something he once dreamed about, but he had to stay awake. Bernadette had texted that she was leaving the airport, and they should be here any minute.

On cue, there was a quiet knock on the door, and Bernadette's blonde head peaked around the corner. She entered on tip-toe, crossed over to Amy and kissed her temple. Amy didn't even stir. Then she came to him - them - and looked down before bending to kiss the baby's forehead. The look she gave Sheldon next worried him that she might kiss him, too, but all she did was smile and pat his arm. Blowing one last kiss toward Amy, she tip-toed out of the room.

Only then did Sheldon meet the other set of eyes, where she had stopped and stood just inside the door. His mother, with tears running down her face. I've never seen so many people cry as I have today. Amy, the baby, Penny, Leonard, me.

Mary Cooper smiled and walked over to him, bending down close to kiss his forehead. A lot of kissing, too. She whispered, "Oh, Shelly. I never thought I'd see this day."

"You've known you were going to see this day for seven months," he whispered back.

"You may be a grown man with a child of your own now, but you are still not allowed to sass your mother."

"Yes, ma'am."

She smiled softly. "You look exhausted. Have you slept?"

"The night before last."

"Well, let me take my grandchild, and you curl up there on that sofa. I won't wake Amy."

Sheldon shook his head. "No, not yet."

"Why not?"

"I need to formally introduce you first. I would be remiss in my duties if I did not." He lifted his daughter up, closer to his mother. "Ada Fowler Cooper, meet your MeeMaw."

Mary Cooper took her granddaughter, another tear on her face (more crying!). Sheldon stood with a weariness beyond anything he could imagine, kissed his mother on the cheek (more kissing!), took eight steps, and was asleep before his face hit the pillow.

AN: Thank you in advance for your reviews!