It was unexpected, unplanned in a way that had terrified Michael, like freezing water soaking him to the bone and a slap to the face.

Pregnancy.

You and him weren't unofficial per se, more on the relationship side than on the 'I want nothing to do with you after tonight' one, but he had still been unable to grasp entirely the concept of the very thing he had sought and yearned for all his life and the same one that he was unaccustomed to. Love was something he was slowly touching, like a star he wasn't supposed to touch but once he did, it burned at first touch, making him tempted to let go had he not knew he wouldn't get the chance to hold it again.

But pregnancy was another different thing he hadn't been willing to explore even if planned. And it had been everything but planned.

He was confronted: past, present and future. The past that had forged him into what he was now, the present who doubted of the circumstances and the future that told him he'd be stepping in the same path his absent mother had once traveled into and possibly condemning the innocent the same someone else had condemned him before he could utter a word.

And his decision was taken in the moment, he'd stay. It was forced at first, mainly out of the necessity born inside him to not make the same mistakes someone else did, to not repeat the history and be better. But that hadn't erased the fact that he hadn't been comfortable with the decision, not when he had felt like he was walking on eggshells, when he had felt and been so lost on what to do and when the future haunted him at night with all kinds of possibilities.

The birth changed it all. Whether by divine intervention or simply by the way things happened. The moment he held his baby girl in his arms for the first time, with trembling hands and frantically trying to push the newborn back to the nurse, something changed in him. She had his eyes, and a quiet and soft giggle like she knew she was safe.

He wasn't the best father ever, granted, he barely knew how to parent and he hadn't had the best example either — mostly avoiding what his own father had done, because if he knew something for sure was that he didn't wanted to end like his father as a father to her own daughter —, but he was there, trying everyday and making sure his daughter felt loved and appreciated, the way she was, because there was no way Michael didn't loved his daughter even if he hadn't planned any of this.