He’s a father now.

For some reason, even as he sits by your bedside holding her, Kyojuro can’t quite believe it.

He also can’t quite believe the fact he made it in time to meet her. Kyojuro had been miles away when his crow delivered the news of his daughter’s soon-to-be arrival. Time had seemed to stop then. The wind wasn’t blowing, what sound he could hear had faded away, and Kyojuro himself felt like he was no longer there before he regained his senses and set off back to where he had been merely hours before.

Kyojuro had somewhat been expecting you to chide him over his tardiness even through your fatigue. Just that morning you had repeated your beliefs that his daughter would come when he least expected it, and he should stay behind just ‘one more day’ to meet her, but he had kissed you and your worries goodbye and set off.

Instead of your ‘I-told-you-so’’s, he had been met with your tears and someone so unbelievably small he briefly thought you were joking about the whole thing.

“I was hoping she’d look more like you,” Kyojuro admits, voice uncharacteristically soft.

Bright eyes, bright hair, loud cries, Kyojuro continues scanning his daughter’s face for the slim hope some part of you pulled through. He finds nothing. She stares back at him with a curiosity he remembers seeing in Senjuro’s eyes when he was born, before yawning loudly and looking away.

Kyojuro knows he has to go back to his mission as soon as possible, enough people have gone missing on that train that he can’t put it off any longer, but he can’t look away from her. He doesn’t even know if you’ve named her yet.