Title: Forty Weeks

Rating: PG

Characters: Nate Ford, Sophie Devereaux, Team (plus Tara)

Pairing: Nate/Sophie, peripheral Parker/Hardison

Summary: There are an average of forty weeks in a pregnancy. That means the team has at most thirty to prepare for the hardest job they've ever pulled: raising a baby. Sequel to Happy. N/S, but with heavy presence of the team.

Spoilers/Time Period: Set at the end of a hypothetical fifth season, does not dispute canon up through The Morning After Job.

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine. (Except for Ella Ford!)

Author's Note: Here's part six. I'm very sorry for the delay, but to make up for it, this part is twice as long, and probably twice as schmoopy, as the previous chapters. I'm already hard at work on a sequel (or rather, a series of sequels) so be on the look out. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Part 6

13 hours old

Banished to the waiting room to wait for Nate, who he's sure will be along shortly, Eliot pulls out his phone, finds the files, writes two brief emails, and presses send.

Checking her email one last time before she turns in for the night, Maggie finds a curious one from Eliot Spencer's Dr. Sinclair alias. She does the math and realizes what this must be about. She takes a deep breath and steels herself. She has to open it tonight, otherwise she'll never get any sleep.

His message is brief: "Ella Rose Ford. 1/12/13. 1:24pm. Mama and baby are doing great. Just thought you'd want to know. –E."

Below the text is a picture of someone (Parker, she guesses, based on the slim arms and tip of blond ponytail visible) holding a newborn. Baby Ella is swaddled up in a soft, white standard hospital blanket, stripes of blue, green, and pink at her feet, a smattering of dark hair framing a face at utter newborn bliss, tucked in her Aunt Parker's arms.

Ella doesn't look a thing like him, but Maggie can do is think of Sam and cry.

Tara wakes up to the email in Prague. Her message from Eliot is even briefer.

"Her name is Ella. Does it matter if we work again?"

Her picture is of a tired, beaming Sophie cradling the newborn, Nate looking over her shoulder with awe, into Ella's scrunched up little face.

No, Tara decides, for them it doesn't matter; they all have a new priority.

She takes a look at her schedule and makes a note to squeeze in a trip to Boston before summer.

16 hours old

Nate returns to the hospital in the pre-dawn hours to find both of the women who now so utterly control his life fast asleep. He probably should be as well, but he couldn't bring himself to sleep in their empty bed, thinking of the eagerly awaiting nursery.

He scoops Ella out of her bassinet. She sleeps through the transfer, snuggling into his chest as best as her swaddled body will allow. He stares into her perfect face and fights back the nagging dread.

Has the cancer that lurked in her brother's blood already begun to grow inside of her? Is he doomed to lose her too for daring to love again?

An insistent buzzing in his pocket saves him from that line of thought. Shifting Ella to one arm and stepping to the window, Nate answers the phone after a surprised glance at the caller id.

"Maggie?" he greets softly, so as not to wake Sophie.

"Congratulations. Eliot sent me a picture. She's just beautiful, Nate."

"She is," Nate has to agree, staring down at his daughter.

"Ella's a pretty name. After your mother?"

"Yeah. Maggie, it's two a.m. where you are."

"I couldn't sleep."

"I'm..."

"Don't you dare apologize. I was just awake and knew you would be, too. I thought I'd catch you now and congratulate you, while sleep deprivation is still novel and exciting."

"Thanks."

"Sophie's good?"

"Great. Well, as great as can be expected. We made it through the whole process without a single death threat, so I was impressed."

"I've apologized for that." A pause. "Enjoy Ella. She's..."

"A miracle," he breathes.

"Goodnight, Nate," Maggie says. He detects the sadness in her voice, but her warmth and genuine happiness for him overrules it.

"Goodnight."

The line clicks dead.

Little Ella sleeps on as her enamored father studies every perfect feature. She is her mother's daughter, he thinks. She looks nothing like the Eleanor she's named for; his mother was beautiful, but in a typical South Boston way, reddish blonde and freckled with bright blue eyes he'd inherited.

Ella's eyes are indeed newborn blue, but it is already a dark hue. Nate thinks (hopes?) they'll turn brown like Sophie's, not blue like his are, like Sam's and his mother's were.

Nate thinks her nose looks like Sophie's, her pouty infant lips look like Sophie's. Beneath her chubby newborn cheeks, Nate thinks her bone structure looks like Sophie's.

Maybe it's his sleep-deprived, love-addled brain playing tricks on him, that he can only see Sophie whenever he looks at Ella, because he's never loved his wife more than right now, with their daughter nestled safely in his arms. Maybe he thinks she looks so much like her mother because they're so inseparable in his heart and mind. Or maybe, just because Sophie is the most beautiful woman he's ever met.

Eliot had said she looks like Sophie because the grifter's genes are freakishly dominant. Hardison had snickered at the innuendo.

"I'd make the obvious joke, but I don't need that image," the (previously) youngest member of their team had quipped, making Fanny the elephant talk to Ella, snuggled in Parker's arms at the time. "'Sides, we've got a baby in the room; gotta keep it clean."

Back in the present, Ella begins to whimper a little and push at the confines of her swaddling. He pulls her in tighter, whispering soothing words.

"Don't wake your mummy," he orders gently.

Ella settles down for now.

He thinks briefly, looking out at snow-blanketed Boston, about the two people he wishes could've met his unexpected little miracle.

He and Sophie had batted back and forth a million names in the last few months. Many were rejected because they belonged to one of the personas Sophie had laid to rest; others simply couldn't be agreed upon. They kept coming back to Nate's mother, the woman who had sheltered the smallest part of him from Jimmy Ford's cruelty and allowed him to be the man he is today.

But Nate didn't like "Eleanor"; he couldn't imagine a child with even half of Sophie's wild spirit being saddled with such an old name, and the idea of nicknames made Sophie uncomfortable. If they carefully chose a name, Sophie argued, they should use it.

Finally, counting minutes between contractions, one of them (it was all a blur, he couldn't for the life of him remember which) had suggested just Ella. As he'd held their little girl in his arms, minutes old and screaming with life, the name just felt right.

He only wishes her namesake were here to see how utterly perfect, and utterly healthy, Ella is. (Nate had the doctor run a genetic testing panel five times the usual size, just to be sure.) Eleanor Connor Ford would've loved little Ella Rose, a little girl to spoil and pamper. The teachings of her religion told him she was still here somehow, watching over them, taking care of one grandchild and sending another to help patch her son's heart together a little at a time.

He's never in his whole life wanted to believe that more, but he's still angry with God for selfishly taking Sam only for himself.

Sam.

Nate had held him once like this, held him close overlooking a painfully bright LA day and imagined his future, made a million hopes and dreams that were shattered into pieces eight years later.

He still misses Sam as much as he did the day his boy died, but holding Ella makes him feel closer to his first child than ever before. She doesn't fill the gaping hole Sam's death left in his heart, but she has snuggled in next to it, pulling the rest of the pieces back in place, finishing the work Sophie and the team started.

Maggie was right. Sam would be happy. Sam, who had adored the company of Maggie's younger nieces and nephews, would've just relished the idea of a younger sister to play with and make laugh.

Whatever his reservations about heaven, he'll always remind Ella of the basics.

"Your big brother Sam," he whispers as she sleeps, "He's always watching out for you."

Parker, Hardison, and Eliot are astoundingly absent when Nate finally brings Sophie and Ella home.

"We'll give her a proper HQ housewarming tonight. Y'all need time alone. Call if you need us," Eliot tells them on Nate's voicemail.

It's a welcome silence after the clamor of hospital checkout and before the team and Cora demand more viewings of the newborn.

There are, of course, the requisite pink balloons and streamers, the screen displaying "Welcome home, Ella!" in large, bright letters.

Upstairs in the nursery, so far unbeknownst to the exhausted family, on top of the other pictures waiting to be hung on the walls, is a framed snapshot of little Ella's aunt and uncles, Aunt Parker and Uncle Eliot having mummified poor Uncle Alex in pink streamers and someone (probably Aunt Parker) having surreptitiously tied a streamer like a bow around Uncle Eliot's ponytail.

"Not quite as much damage as I was expecting when they told me they were decorating," Nate sighs, lifting Ella's car seat/carrier onto the kitchen table. He grins at the wide-awake infant discovering her brand new surroundings, tickling her tiny sock-clad feet. Her feet kick instinctively at the touch. "Your aunt and uncles are very crazy, Ella."

"They did a lovely job," Sophie says, elephant Fanny clutched to her chest, moved as ever by the younger team members' excitement over Ella's arrival.

She crosses to Nate's side, leaning into him as she sets Fanny on the table beside Ella and joins him in staring at their baby girl. He puts his arm around her waist, a warm hand at her hip.

"Do you think she likes it?" Sophie asks, a smile in her voice.

"Not as much as she's gonna love the nursery you designed for her."

Sophie steps forward to unbuckle Ella, lifting her to her chest. She closes her eyes at the wonderful, now familiar, feeling of her daughter against her, soft and warm, and smelling like baby and...

"Oh. Let's go show her the nursery and try out the changing table."

Nate laughs.

"And then Daddy can make Mummy some lunch if she's up for it."

"That sounds wonderful. He's such a good Daddy," she says conspiratorially, dropping a kiss on Ella's downy crown. "He spoils us."

"Self-preservation," Nate teases, leaning in to kiss Sophie briefly, then brushing a kiss of his own onto Ella's head. "I've got two women to keep happy now."

They eat lunch upstairs in their kitchenette, Ella dozing even as she's frequently handed off between Mummy and Daddy in a move that's becoming more and more natural.

After lunch, Nate gives Ella her bottle in the rocking chair while Sophie slowly putters around the room, straightening and arranging, grateful to be up and about for just a little bit, no matter how sore she is.

"How's she eating?" Sophie asks as Nate stands to give her the chair, never breaking Ella's hold on the bottle.

"Like a champ," he assures her. "Look in the side table drawer."

Sophie's brow wrinkles, leaning over to the small table with the reading lamp on it.

"What did you do?"

Nate laughs, setting Ella's bottle down on the dresser and raising her to his shoulder, gently rubbing her back.

"I went shopping."

She raises an eyebrow as she finds a telltale light blue box nestled among the spare pacifiers and soft plush toys of the side table drawer.

"You did go shopping. My money?" she teases warmly.

"Now, now. I'm pretty sure I took vows saying that was our money.

"To have and to hold each other's ill-gotten fortunes?"

She smiles widely, tenderly cradling the box in her hands.

"Exactly. Open it."

Inside the box is a stunning necklace whose central focus is a sizeable garnet surrounded by tiny diamonds.

For our January girl, the note inside says.

Hormones and exhaustion bring tears, but Sophie smiles through them, meeting his eyes.

"It reminded me of that one you had your eye on in Paris, the second time we were there."

"You mean the one you stopped me from stealing?" she teases.

"Exactly," he grins, still rubbing Ella's back. "I know it's not the nicest piece you won, but I thought..."

"It's beautiful. Exquisite. My second favorite piece of jewelry." She wiggles her left ring finger, 2.5-karat, emerald cut, platinum bound diamond on display.

As she clasps his gift around her throat (it just looks lovely with her sweats), Sophie catches the stupid grin on Nate's face and takes in the little angel snuggled into her husband's shoulder. She wonders again if this is just a dream. Of course, she hopes she could never dream such excruciatingly realistic childbirth, so she should probably be okay. Which means, this is all astoundingly real.

She pushes herself to her feet and presses her lips to Nate's, closing her eyes and enjoying the rightness. She pulls away only to rest her head on his shoulder, opposite Ella. One hand slips around his middle, the other gently caressing Ella's back.

"Thank you," she says, her words muffled by his chest. He smells of sterile hospital and baby wipes and Ella, but underneath it's Nate. She can't remember when (certainly long before now, certainly long before it was appropriate) but she's come to associate that Nate-smell with home and safety.

"You're welcome. I enjoyed picking it out."

"Not just for the necklace. For her. For Ella."

He beams at her briefly, a little teasingly. "Enjoyed the preliminary parts of that, too."

She rolls her eyes. "I'm serious."

He continues to smile at her until an epic belch shakes tiny Ella's frame.

They laugh. Ella looks as self-satisfied as a bleary-eyed one-day-old can.

"Good burp," Nate praises the infant. "C'mon, you shouldn't be on your feet, and we all need some rest before the invasion."

Fingers threaded together, they make it back to the bed, tangling together on top of the covers.

Ella falls asleep with her ear pressed to her daddy's heartbeat. Sophie snuggles into Nate's side, head on his shoulder, staring into Ella's sweet face. Hand holding Ella steady, Nate buries his face in Sophie's hair, fingers trailing lightly up and down her spine.

"Soph?"

"Hm?"

"Am I too old for this?"

She laughs sleepily. "We're too old for this. Sorry, darling," she directs to Ella. "At least we've provided you with an aunt and uncles to play with."

"And babysit."

"Mm, yes. Lots of babysitting," she laughs.

"I love you," Nate says softly. He remembers when those words were the hardest ones to say, when they got caught in his throat, when she seemed millions of miles away and completely untouchable. How far they've come.

"Love you, too," she answers, the tail end caught in a yawn, her fingers gripping the fabric of his shirt.

How far they've come.

Fin

(For now. To be continued in Tea Parties and Con Jobs, a story that will have more plot than "Guess we gotta birth a baby".)