(no subject)

[takecourage]

Mostly, what she does is stare. She holds Edie in her arms and she feeds her or she sleeps and she just...stares at her. Mostly, she's trying to figure out how something so utterly perfect can have come from her. Danny, she can believe it of, but her? What she do to deserve something like this. A few days after Edie is born, Alex lets Danny start texting people, letting them know that they can come and visit, if they want to. She installs herself in the sunroom with Edie wrapped in a blanket in her arms and she rocks, slowly, and she feels, for the first time in her life, like she's something entirely new.

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[takecourage]

She'd almost been dozing and, when he speaks, she lifts her head, a sudden smile on her face. Edie stirs in her arms, kicking against her blanket for a moment and Alex tucks it in a little tighter around her.

"Hey, Hop," she says. "Danny let you in, huh?"

[something_incredible]

"Yeah," he says. "I got the text that I was clear to come visit."

From his place in the doorway, he holds up the gift bag. "Brought her somethin'. Beverly wrapped it, though, I'm crap at stuff like that. She was giving me shit for not actually wrapping the gift properly inside the bag."

Mostly she had just been laughing at him, but he likes that. Being laughed at by a kid who used to not laugh all that much feels pretty nice.

[takecourage]

"You're clear to visit," she says, shifting in the chair. She smiles at the gift. "You didn't have to bring her anything. She's got more stuff than someone this small needs already." In her arms, Edie makes a soft, snuffling sound and Alex shifts her weight. "You want to come meet her?"

[something_incredible]

"Kinda think that's the point of a baby, isn't it? Give 'em a bunch of stuff they don't even understand." Hopper comes closer, sets the bag down where Alex can reach it when she wants to unwrap it, then leans closer.

"Shit," he says in a soft voice. "She's so damn small."

[takecourage]

"Yeah, well, she hurt like a bitch coming out so I'm glad she's not any bigger," says Alex, with a rueful smile. "Edith Estrella Stern, meet Jim Hopper. Hop, meet Edie."

[something_incredible]

"Yeah, that's what Diane said, too," Hopper answers, the words coming almost absently. He doesn't talk much about Diane and he talks even less about Sara.

"Hey, kid," he says down to the little girl in Alex's arms. "Can't believe you kicked your mom's ass like that on the way out. Aren't you little girls supposed to be sweet?"

[takecourage]

"Where would she have got sweet from, Hop?" says Alex, smiling, stroking her hand over the downy top of Edie's head. "Maybe from her daddy, but her mom's a stone cold snake."

[something_incredible]

"Maybe she'll get lucky and won't have your shitty attitude," Hopper jokes, knowing Alex won't take offense to it. Knowing he doesn't think she has a shitty attitude at all, knowing he actually kind of loves her, thinks of her as his own kid in a lot of ways.

"How're you feeling?" he asks as he sits beside Alex, careful not to jostle anyone.

[takecourage]

"From your lips to God's ears," says Alex, smirking when she says it. "I'm sure Danny would be grateful, anyway. She shifts when he lowers himself onto the sofa beside them. "Sore? But I'm taking something for it. Magnus hooked me up before he left, so I'm not breaking any rules. Tired, but Danny is helping out tonnes." She looks down at the little bundle in her arms. "Better than I thought I would. I thought I'd be terrified the whole time, but now she's here? We're just sort of figuring it out."

[something_incredible]

"Yeah, that's pretty much how it goes," Hopper agrees. He remembers those first few days after Diane and Sara had come home, how all the fear he'd been carrying seemed to dissipate and instead he had just done what needed to be done. He'd gotten up in the night to get the baby, bringing her to Diane or feeding her from a bottle himself. He'd fetched things for his wife when she'd still felt too sore to move around much.

They'd figured it out. Mostly everyone does.

[takecourage]

"I didn't..." She frowns, thinking through what she's about to say. "I didn't expect to love her this much," she says. "And then they gave her to me, and it just...felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like it all just clicked into place."

[something_incredible]

Hopper nods, unable to say anything at first. He and Diane had wanted Sara, had spent the entire pregnancy waiting for her, wishing for her, and even still, the first time he'd held his daughter in his arms, the feeling he'd had was bigger than just love.

Even now, he doesn't think he can explain it.

"Yeah," he says after a moment, then clears his throat. "I get that."

[takecourage]

Alex shifts Edie's weight in her arms and she stirs, her little mouth working for a moment, legs squirming. Alex looks up at him. "Do you want to hold her?"

[something_incredible]

"Ah, I dunno," Hopper answers, frowning faintly. He feels like an asshole, saying it, but there's that hard, dark put in his stomach that tells him not to touch the baby. Not to get that awful luck he has all over him onto any part of her, not to let the gravity of the black hole he's always been touch her for even a second.

"Haven't held a baby since Sara," he admits in a quiet voice. "I dunno if I should."

[takecourage]

"You don't have to if you don't want to, Hop," says Alex, shifting her little girl's weight in her arms, leaning in to him for a moment so that their shoulders touch. "I'm just saying that you can. If you want. You're stuck with her like you're stuck with me. Whatever happens."

[something_incredible]

"Not that I don't want to," he says. This is an uncomfortable conversation at the best of times, but it's made harder still by the baby. By the knowledge that he could just fuck up her life by being involved.

"Just... everything I touch," he says, not looking at either of them. "It goes to shit. Don't wanna do that to her."

[takecourage]

"We're doing okay so far, aren't we?" she says, eyebrows raised. "And those girls of yours, too." She looks down at Edie's little face. "Look, Hop. I know how you feel. I used to be...I am that person too, okay? I'm not someone good things happen to."

But here she is.

[something_incredible]

Hopper wants to point out that his kid died. Something he did or didn't do made that happen, he's still sure of it. What happened to Sara is his fault, it's always been his fault, and nothing will change that.

He can't put any of that on Alex, though. He won't.

"Yeah, well, I guess you're a slightly less shit person than I am," he jokes.

[takecourage]

"You don't know the half of it, Hop," she says. And it's true - he doesn't. Nobody but Danny does, really. Danny and all of her ghosts. "The way I get through it is that I remind myself that, sometimes, second chances happen, even when you don't really deserve them."

[something_incredible]

It's not the reality of second chances Hopper struggles with, but the rest of what she's said. The deserving of them. He knows he's had a second chance, a third one even, here in Darrow with Beverly and Eleven, and sometimes even those idiot boys who seem to need him every now and then. But he doesn't deserve them and they deserve better than him.

He just smiles and leans in to get a better look at the baby. "Pretty good second chance," he says.

[takecourage]

"Yeah, she'll do, won't she," says Alex, skimming her hand over the soft down of Edie's dark hair. With her eyes closed like this, all Alex can see in her facial features is Danny. She thinks of that as a blessing. "You're going to be the closest thing she's got to a grandparent, you know."

[something_incredible]

"Christ, way to make me feel old," Hopper answers, even though he's not overly bothered by it. "I'm only forty-five, give a guy a break."

But that's old enough to be a grandfather, he realizes. Sara would be sixteen if she had lived, which is still way too young to have a kid in Hopper's opinion, but it would definitely be possible.

[takecourage]

"You gotta make a family where you find it, right?" says Alex, eyebrow raised, shifting as he leans in so that he can see Edie's face more clearly. "I grew up with my grandma around - I know how important it is when you're little. And you're the closest thing I've got to a dad, Hop, so..." She shrugs and then gives him a crooked smile. "Guess it's up to you."

[something_incredible]

Hopper smiles a little and gives Alex a nudge with his elbow. "I guess I can do that," he says with a heavy sigh, as if it's a huge deal. As if it isn't something he absolutely loves, despite feeling old.

"Guess I'll have to get Bev and El over here to meet her sometime soon, huh?" he asks. "If they're gonna be her aunts."

[takecourage]

"Guess she can't have too many aunts," says Alex, looking down at the little face. "Maybe I'd have turned out different if Mira hadn't been trying to keep on the straight and narrow on her own." She traces the tip of one finger against Edie's chubby cheek. "Hopefully you're not going to be the kid I deserve, huh, little girl?"