Archive of Our Own ^beta

"Who is that tall man, Sarah? Is that your papa come home? Is that papa? I think so! Oh, yes! All the way from the colonies! Isn't he fine in his coat? Say 'how d'ye do' to your handsome papa, Sarah."

As his wife murmurs sweetly to the bundle of white silk and pink flesh and red hair in her arms, Major Phillips clears past the lump in his throat.

"Well, then. How dy'e do, little one?" he asks, voice tight, uncertain

At once, the little creature's eyes lock to his, gnawing absently on a pudgy hand as viridian irises memorize the face before her.

His heart stops. Something nameless and shapeless, sad and exuberant and frothing with rage, ices every vein, fills his chest like lead. From a face shaped like her mother's, with the same little mark over her brow, but with dimpled chin, freckles, and flaming red curls much like her father's - from out of that face stares eyes he never thought he would see again.

She makes a little noise and, all at once, everything within him melts, unfurls, hollows out, overflows.

Little hands reach out for his gorget, dazzled by reflection and shine, and he leans close enough to indulge his daughter's naked fascination as she paws sticky hands all over the metal.

He brushes a palm along the small of his wife's back. Lady Phillips sighs, and as she leans into the embrace he smells rosewater and bayberry. Warmth pours all over him, in a way he had been so long without he'd forgotten how it savored, and when he sees the shimmer of tears in his wife's eyes he is unable to stop the heat pricking at his. She looks up at him, then, an entire world of emotion etched in her smile.

"She has your eyes, you know," Lady Phillips says, voice quavering.

He feels it like a shot to the chest. He takes a moment to find his breath once more.

"Her grandmother's," he corrects, drawing a hand up to run a single finger along his daughter's cheek. "She has her grandmother's eyes."