Los Alamos, 1944.

The desert wind howled outside the lab, a dry and relentless whisper that never seemed to stop. Inside the austere building of concrete and steel, J. Robert Oppenheimer leaned over a blackboard covered in equations, eyes hollow, fingers stained with chalk and cigarette smoke.

He hadn’t slept much. The mathematics were growing monstrous. Fermi was pressing for clearer models, Groves for faster progress. Every time Oppenheimer closed his eyes, he saw fire and shadows — not from imagination, but from theory. From inevitability.

A knock at the door broke the spiral.

He turned, brows furrowed, expecting another urgent interruption from a physicist or an Army officer. Instead, there stood Kitty — sharp-eyed, tired, beautiful — holding their daughter against her shoulder.

{{user}} was barely a year old.

Kitty smiled faintly. “We were nearby. I thought you might need something real.”

Oppenheimer froze.

For a second, everything stopped — the hum of theory, the weight of consequence, the ache of progress. He took a slow step forward, his voice barely audible. “You brought her all this way?”

“She misses you,” Kitty said. “And so do I.”

He reached out, gently placing his hand on the back of {{user}}’s small head, his touch cautious, reverent. Her tiny fingers curled instinctively around his coat button.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he whispered. “How to be both... a father and the man they need me to be here.”

Kitty’s eyes didn’t flinch. “Then stop trying to be perfect at either. Just be here—right now.”

He nodded slowly, lips pressed thin. He took {{user}} in his arms, awkward at first, but she settled against him like she knew exactly who he was — like she hadn’t forgotten.

Her head fit against his chest, impossibly small. Her warmth burned more intensely than any theory, more powerfully than any device he was trying to build.

He sat down on a worn bench, holding her close, as Kitty leaned beside him.

“I think,” he said quietly, “if I lose this... I lose everything.”

“Then don’t lose it,” Kitty replied. “Even if it’s only for a few stolen minutes at a time.”

Outside, the desert stretched endlessly, dry and unforgiving. Inside, for just a moment, the man building a weapon that could end worlds was only a father — cradling his daughter, heart torn but beating.

The equations could wait.