Chapter Text
Rosalyn Theodora Shaw is born just days after your first mission as Seven’s XO wraps up.
This time is so different from Elliott’s birth. This time, you give birth on the Titan, which feels right. You’re not in a busy hospital with seven bajillion nurses running in and out. It’s just you, Ohk, Liam, and the best pain blocker patch you think humanity has ever manufactured.
“Do you want to catch her, Liam?” Ohk asks when the moment of birth is close, and Liam looks at Ohk with as much panic as if she’d just asked him to perform brain surgery. “I’ll be right here to help,” Ohk says. Liam swallows his hesitation and gloves up.
You can’t feel when the baby actually emerges, but you hear Liam suck in a breath, and you see him drop into the “concentration mode” he used as a captain when he had to react quickly to something urgent. A couple of pushes later, and an infuriated little squeal pierces the calm. “Oh my god,” Liam murmurs in awe.
Rosalyn looks tiny in her father’s huge hands. Her legs pedal aimlessly and her fists wave, eyes squinched shut in protest of this bright world. Liam looks up at you radiant with amazement and joy.
“She’s perfect,” Ohk declares.
Ohk’s nurse comes to clean and inspect Rosalyn, Ohk turns her attention to examining you, and Liam rushes back to the chair at the head of your bed, snapping his gloves off. He sits down and leans in close, petting your hair. “Are you okay?”
“Of course.” You can’t take your eyes off the beautiful baby. “I’m fantastic.”
“What do you need?”
“Just her, and you.” You stretch up to kiss him, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this moment. Then the nurse approaches with your newly-clean infant and lays her on your chest.
As happened when Elliott was born, Liam is stricken with immediate, hopeless adoration of the little rosebud mouth and wrinkly skin, the tiny eyes that open to regard you curiously. You and he both gasp. Rosalyn, like Elliott, has Liam’s eyes.
The two of you have decided to forego visitors for the first day so you can soak in all the new-baby moments. You know from experience how quickly they’ll pass. With your bed propped up to a seated position, and Liam in the chair next to you, you spend Rosalyn’s first hours talking quietly to her and feeding her and just staring at her. Neither of you can get enough of holding her.
Liam takes Rosalyn’s first diaper change, since you aren’t ready to stand up yet. Afterwards, he proves that his swaddling skills haven’t gone rusty since Elliott.
“Just as pretty as her mama,” Liam says as he looks down into her little face during the swaddling process. He lifts Rosalyn carefully. She looks like a burrito in that blanket. Her tiny brows furrow and she makes a dainty fussing noise. Liam bounces his arms oh-so-gently until she dozes off again.
“You’ve still got the touch,” you say, drinking in the sight of this tall, broad man holding an infant. You are smitten with him all over again. “She’s definitely going to be a daddy’s girl.”
Liam feathers some kisses over Rosalyn’s fuzzy little head. “Nah, you love Mommy, don’t you sweetie? Everybody loves Mommy, because Mommy is the best.” He hands the burrito back to you, and when you’ve got her, he eases his tall frame right down onto the bed beside you. He lowers an arm over your shoulders and shifts to his side, conforming himself against your body. You sigh contentedly and turn your face toward him.
“Thank you for giving us our children,” he whispers.
“Thank you for being their father.”
“Can I hold you for a while?”
You snuggle happily into his arms, still cuddling Rosalyn. You feel as if the three of you are in a cozy cocoon. The realities of life will come soon enough, but not now. Not here.
“When our kids grow up, they’ll be as incredible as you are,” Liam says.
But you secretly hope that Rosalyn and Elliott will get their character and courage from their father. If they do, they’ll be unstoppable.
6 Months Later
The lift doors open onto the engine room. You breeze through, toward the nacelle panel. “Commodore Shaw!” you shout sternly. God, you will never get tired of saying that! The other engineers see you coming and fall back from the place where your husband is working.
The commodore slides out from under the control panel and catches himself with one heel. He’s the only one in the room not in uniform—he’s wearing a sweaty T-shirt and cargo pants. “Well, well. If it isn’t the XO, down here to meddle.” He raises a brow. “Tell the captain that the engines will be ready right when I said they will.” And he slides himself back under the panel, the sassy man!
“According to the captain,” you look at your PADD, “the engines are about 20 minutes late to come online.”
“No, I said they would be repaired 20 minutes ago. Coming online is another thing.”
“We really can’t afford to be sitting in space right now. We’re already behind schedule.”
“We could be sitting in space even longer if I don’t check these nacelles before we fire everything up. If they had anything to do with the shutdown, they could fry the system all over again.” He finally slides out again and pulls himself off the roller. You give him a hand. “God, I remember when I could just jump up from those things like a young buck,” he says, stretching his stiff legs.
“That’s about the time you originally started this repair job, right?” you say.
“Watch that tone, commander,” he says with a hint of teasing. “I still technically outrank you.”
The engineering crew are used to your weird flirting by now. They’re a fresh-faced bunch who treat your husband the way your husband treats Geordi La Forge.
“Alright, let’s give it some juice,” Liam says to the crew in general.
When the deep purr of the engine fills the room, Liam grins at you and taps your PADD. “Two minutes earlier than my original estimate of total time to completion,” he says.
You pretend to glower. “You win this round, Shaw.”
“That’s right, Shaw.” He pulls you in for a hug and quick kiss. “Tell Seven we’re ready to go.”
You hit your badge and deliver the message. Liam whips off his sweaty shirt, right there in front of everybody, and dons a fresh one.
“What are you doing with your afternoon?” you say.
“Holodeck 3,” he says, adjusting the shirt. “Dinosaur Adventure.”
“Oh my god, Elliott will love that!”
Speaking of. The lift behind you opens, and Nemma appears with Elliott and Rosalyn. “Daddy!” shouts Elliott.
“Hi buddy!” Liam gets down on his knee and holds his arms open as Elliott runs full-tilt into them.
You look between Liam and Nemma in surprise. “How on earth did you know what time to have the kids here?”
“I told you, commander.” He grins at you. “The engines were ready right when I said they’d be.”
Cocky bastard, you think with a grin.
Nemma hands Rosalyn off to you and waves bye-bye to Elliott, who is practically dancing with excitement about the adventure ahead. “Ready?” Liam asks him.
“Ready! Dinos! Hi Mama!”
“Hi sweetie!” While Liam fetches the baby carrier wrap from his engineering bag, you kneel down to hug Elliott with the arm that isn’t holding Rosalyn. “Are you going to see T-Rexes today?”
“Yeah. And cera-tas.”
“Triceratops?”
“Yeah.” He’s wearing little hiking boots and some kind of safari hat.
Liam is now wearing the baby carrier and takes Rosalyn from you. “Oh, baby girl, you’re getting heavier,” he says as he lifts her up and in. Rosalyn is excited to be getting in Daddy’s carrier. When she’s settled in, facing front with her back to Liam’s chest, she pumps her legs, signaling that she wants to go, go, go!
“I think our safari leader is ready,” Liam says. “Let’s check the snack pack, Elliott.”
As he and Elliott check off the crucial items—cookies, crackers, juice, dinosaur jelly candies—you stand back and watch your husband. He gives the same serious attention to his son that he gives to his young engineers. He’s a good leader, not because he’s a natural extrovert or even particularly enjoys leadership, but because he cares about the people who depend on him. Over Liam’s shoulder, you see the other engineers watching him as they work. They watch how he treats his kids, just like they watch how he treats his subordinates on the crew, how he handles the engines, how he interacts with the captain. They’re learning a shit-ton from him, and you doubt Liam realizes the full extent of his influence.
You know Liam has agonized over his apparent ‘random’ selection for the escape pod at Wolf. He wonders if Lt. Reyes, the one who chose him, made a mistake. But you don’t think his selection was random. Reyes knew Liam, at least enough for Liam to have a secret crush on her. She’d have seen his character, his integrity, his determination, his courage. She’d have seen the seeds of a self-sacrificial leader planted down there in the engine room of the Constance. You can’t prove it, and you’ll never tell Liam, but you are certain that Lt. Angelica Reyes looked at this beautiful man on that dying ship and thought, “That one. I can’t let that one die. He has things to do.”
“Mama come?”
You blink back tears of emotion that were building in your eyes, snapped out of your thoughts by your son’s voice.
“Mama come to da dinos?” Elliott tries again.
You smile. “Sorry, pumpkin, I have to go back to the bridge. Next time.”
Rosalyn makes a squeal and pumps her legs again. “Time to go,” Liam tells Elliott. He calls some last-minute instructions to the engineering crew as he walks Elliott toward the lift.
“Liam!” you call before they get in.
“Yeah?” He turns toward you, and his face takes your breath away. It’s untroubled and open. He’s glowing with satisfaction from the repairs and enlivened by his kids. For an instant, you see an older version of his academy graduation picture, taken before Wolf.
“Everything okay?” he asks, because you can’t speak. You’ve clean forgotten what you wanted to say.
“Have a good time,” you finally answer.
He winks at you. “Sure will. See you tonight.” He enters the lift, and you watch the doors close on his devastatingly handsome smile.
That same smile greets you when you come home for dinner that night.