A HALF OF THE WHOLE

H/N, obviously. Very decidedly AU, in which Harry and Nikki are together before he goes away, and manage to make it work.

Imagine, in this universe, they were together from just before the beginning of series 15.

Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me, but this might just be my new canon at the moment.

Spoilers: Some big ones, and I will get to the happening of Greater Love eventually.

Sorry you all had to wait so long for the epilogue! I haven't got any internet in my new student house, I'm currently posting this from the Costa Coffee up the road! Thanks for all your feedback, especially those of you that have been there the whole way through, it really is extremely valued!

Epilogue: Just know that I'm already home

Six months pass, as if she hasn't even blinked.

They went to Barcelona for their honeymoon for two weeks, starting a few days after the wedding. They stayed in a tiny hotel on one of the side streets, and they were the only guests that weren't Spanish, and they sat down the side streets and drank Spanish wine and ate olives and traditionally cooked Spanish food and felt local.

It was over a freshly fried seafood paella Nikki brought up the issue that had been on her mind for weeks, since before the wedding, since he'd moved back to London and they'd started to look for a house, and the word 'family' had entered their minds.

"You think we should start thinking about a family, once we find the house?" she had whispered, butterflies suddenly in her stomach, her mouth feeling dry.

Harry didn't respond for a moment, and the fear had started to take root in her gut. She shouldn't have brought it up now, she shouldn't have thrown it at him so unexpectedly like that, they'd only been married six days, for heaven's sake, she should have given him time…

"If you want to, Nikki, I think we should…"

But she hadn't been expecting anything to come of it this quickly. They'd found a house little over a month after they'd got home and started looking again, all that wedding planning behind them. A four bedroomed house with a big garden on the outskirts of Ealing, a reasonable commuting distance from work for both of them, but far enough away to seem more possible to settle in.

And now she's clutching a short plastic pregnancy test in her right hand in the en-suite, and she can't quite understand the plus sign. Because they haven't been really trying, yet, they've been waiting to settle properly in the house, they've been waiting for the time to feel right. And now here it is, the evidence that the time didn't need to feel right, everything didn't need to have been completely planned.

She just keeps staring at it for a time, and then she hears Harry coming through the front door, having been to the local bakery to see what he could find for his mother's birthday tomorrow.

She steps out of the bathroom, the test still in her hand, a sudden confidence she doesn't really recognise slipping over her.

She stands at the top of the stairs, as Harry removes his coat and boots.

"We're going to really have to start being responsible adults now." She murmurs, and he looks up at her, frowning in confusion. She slips down the stairs and presents the pregnancy test to him, unable to quell the smile spreading on her face.

The grin splitting across his is reward enough.

He runs his fingers gently over the bump encasing the walnut – they've started calling baby Cunningham the walnut, ever since at one of the scans they were told that was roughly the size of the baby. The baby's much bigger than a walnut now, but the name seems to have stuck. He's taken to gently running his fingers over the curvature of the bump, these last few months since there's been something palpable there, since there's actually been a bump.

They're both some sort of strange combination of excited like children on Christmas morning, and terrified beyond belief at the responsibility that's soon going to be all theirs. They can't quite put it into words, and they don't need to put it into words with each other. Naively, in a way, neither of them think any other soon-to-be parents can possibly have felt just like this.

"What's your name, Walnut?" Harry whispers, having his fingers dance lightly over her belly. "You're coming home with us in about six weeks. You'll be needing a name then."

They decided not to find out the sex of the baby, though both of them think they saw something that looked remarkably like a penis on the scan. They're both quite a few years out of practice now on pregnancy diagnosis, and they were both promising not to look in too much detail at the ultrasound picture, so neither of them say anything. For now, the Walnut's just a walnut.

"Oliver." Nikki breathes, tilting her slightly to the side, as if considering.

"George."

"I don't like that. It's too… old man…"

Harry chuckles, and she realises with a jolt she's given him an excuse to behave like a child and turn this all into one huge joke, right now.

"Albert. Brian." He punctuates the increasingly ridiculous names with kisses up over her belly, between her breasts, and up her throat. "Colin. Kenneth. Wilfred. Edwin. Ethelred…" his mouth connects with hers after Ethelred, his tongue dancing against hers, the heat rising suddenly in her belly, despite being past the stage in her pregnancy where her hormones were driving them both to exhaustion in bed at night (and sometimes in the afternoon, a fair few times first thing in the morning, and even one time in the kitchen).

He pulls away from her then, a wide, bordering on ridiculous grin across his face.

"I've got it." He announces triumphantly, kissing her briefly, then returning to barely an inch away. "Harold. Harry for short."

She swats him playfully before pulling him back to her.

It's a week after that that she starts bleeding, and she tries for a few moments to shout for Harry from the bathroom, but nothing seems to want to come out of her mouth. It's like fear's silencing her. It's not until he asks her if she's alright she manages something.

"Come in here." She breathes, and he comes barging through the door, and she watches the fear descending on his face as he sees what's happening.

There's so much blood he calls an ambulance.

As they're loading her in, telling Harry he's done exactly the right thing in ringing them, in that sickening yet comforting patronising manner paramedics seem to have, regardless of what you know.

"Nikki Cunningham, 41. 35 weeks pregnant, no previous abnormalities. Sudden significant blood loss."

The words might as well be in another language. She can't really hear them. She takes Harry's hand as the ambulance speeds towards the hospital, and she thinks about everything she's already lost, especially in these last few years, and everything she might be about to lose. Suddenly, this baby is everything. Despite being a person she's never really met yet, despite not even having a name beyond Walnut, despite not definitely being a boy, this baby's everything. So much more than anything else she's ever lost.

She can't breathe.

There's a doctor saying something to her about a great loss of blood, dangerous circumstances and inducing premature labour, but she doesn't translate. Not really.

She doesn't really realise that everything's happening now until she feels the first contraction, and she's never experienced any pain quite like it.

She's been pushing for hours. The doctors have told him he doesn't need to be worried, the bleeding's stopped and they've found a foetal heart rate after the induction of labour, but of course he can't help worrying.

She's screaming and cursing and squeezing the life out of his hand, and he's pressing kisses to her forehead and shouting encouraging things and trying not to think too hard about how scared he is.

He has a moment, in those seconds, when he suddenly seems distant from the situation, almost like he's looking down on it, if only for a moment.

Nikki's his wife, she's having his baby (probably his son, though he's not telling anyone he saw anything), and he doesn't think, in that moment, he could be happier.

He never thought they'd really get here. He supposes the only person that did was Leo.

Her fingers grip around his hand again, and he can't even think. She's pushing the head out, and he's almost a father.

In a hot, slippery rush, it's all over. The midwives are fanning around suddenly, and someone's saying "it's a boy" (though they both knew that already, really) and for a long, horrible moment, there's silence.

And then the harsh wails of a newborn fill the air, and she can't help the tears that are sliding down her cheeks. A midwife brings the baby over, tucked in a blue blanket, and he's tiny, with a feathery sprinkling of blond hair.

"You can have a quick hold if you want, love. But then we need to get him up to an incubator, at least for a few nights. He's very small." The midwife passes Nikki the baby casually, as if she does it every day. As if she holds something that precious every day.

"Joshua." Nikki breathes at the tiny little human in her arms, and it sounds perfect, like it's always been the name of this miniature person, like there never needed to be any discussion at all.

"Joshua Leo." Harry returns, a slight choke in his voice, a slight lump in his throat.

Nikki can only nod in response, pressing her lips to the little baby's head.

"He's perfect." She looks up at Harry through tear filled eyes. "He's ours."

Then the midwife's taking Joshua off them and promising she'll report back with exactly which incubator he's in once she's placed him, but telling them both they ought to get some rest – they're not going to get much these next few weeks, next few months, next few years.

Nikki's loathe to let him out of her eyesight, that completely surreal person that grew inside her, is exactly half her and half Harry, and has starting filling a hole she didn't even know she had. But they both know he needs a little extra help, he's in good hands, so they watch the midwife carry him away, almost mournfully.

She starts crying when he's gone, tiny, overwhelmed tears, and Harry puts his arms around her and lets her bury her head in his shoulders, lets her tears soak through the fabric.

"We made a tiny little human being." He breathes, as if he can't quite wrap his head around it.

"We did." She whispers, and leans her forehead against his. "Thank you." She kisses him lightly. "You'd better go and ring your Mum. And if you could let Jack know…"

He kisses her again, briefly. "Alright. Try and get some sleep, Nikki. You're tired."

"More than you'll ever know." She laughs, curling a finger through his hair. "Go on. I'll see you when I wake."

When he returns to the little room, she's sound asleep in her bed. His mother was hardly understandable, she'd been so full of excitement, and Jack had tried to hide it, but Harry's pretty sure he had a lump in his throat, from the tone of his voice.

As he presses a kiss to his wife's head and settles into the arm chair beside her bed, he looks up at the clock. Somewhere between the induction, the hours of labour and their brief tearful meeting, the time's made its way to 2:45. It's been September 15th for nearly three hours. Strangely enough, Joshua Leo Cunningham is always going to share a birthday with Leo Dalton.

That's got to mean something.

FINIS

That's a wrap! Hope you enjoyed the epilogue and liked how I ended it! (I couldn't find Leo's birthday anywhere, I did look, so please excuse me if I missed something and got it wrong)

To those of you who have reviewed, however many times along the way, thank you so much for your feedback! It means a lot, and never fails to make me smile! You've been (as usual) a brilliant bunch!

Sorry for the lengthy wait you had to endure waiting for the epilogue, blame new student housing and a disorganised roommate not sorting out the internet in time for our move in!

Go on, leave one last review! You know you want to! (I might be able to be persuaded to post occasional oneshots on their family in this canon, if you're all nice)