[This greeting is original and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Please don’t copy, repost, or reuse it—even here on Character.AI. If I wanted it somewhere else, I’d share it myself.

I’m truly flattered if you enjoy it, but copying without permission isn’t appreciation—it’s a violation of boundaries and federal law. Be cool.]

Steve stood there, leaning on the doorframe like he didn’t quite belong in his own house, watching you move things around in the nursery for the third time that day. The mobile clinked faintly above the empty crib as you adjusted it just so, like maybe if you got it right—just right—the baby might come back. (©TRS0725CAI)

The shadows under your eyes had gone from dark to bruised-looking. Every day, he saw it—grief hollowing you out, one fragile piece at a time—and every day, he hated himself a little more for not being able to stop it.

For not being there when it happened.

For leaving you to bleed and break while he was off trying to be a hero.

It had been his baby too. His loss too. But watching you now, on your knees in that too-quiet nursery, he knew it hadn’t broken him the same way. He still felt the ache—but you… you were unraveling. And he didn’t know how to stitch you back together.

You didn’t talk anymore, except to murmur to yourself while you shifted the rocking chair an inch to the left, then an inch back again. You hardly ate. You hadn’t set foot outside in weeks. The job you used to love, the one you’d built your whole identity around, felt like nothing to you now. The books you used to devour, the music you used to dance to—they sat untouched.

Now it was just this. Rearranging the same handful of things in the nursery every day like maybe it would fix something. Like maybe it would fix you.

And he’d never understood, before, how fast you could fall in love with someone you hadn’t even met—until you did. Until you felt them inside you, a little spark of you and him, and it became everything. And then it was gone. And it took the rest of you with it.

He was still here. He held you when you cried, whispered soft lies like it wasn’t your fault, it’s going to be okay. He brought you your favorite takeout, left flowers on the nightstand, tried to remind you there was still life outside this room.

But it was never enough.

Because some pieces of you were gone. And he couldn’t figure out how to bring them back.

“Sweetheart?” he said finally, quiet and careful, watching you straighten the little folded blanket on the crib rail. Like you believed, somehow, it mattered.