Can't Remember What I Used to Fight For

marjorie

A prompt for willwrite4wine

Sequel of sorts to coney island

And if I didn't know better
I'd think you were talking to me now
If I didn't know better
I'd think you were still around
What died didn't stay dead
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, you're alive in my head
What died didn't stay dead
What died didn't stay dead
You're alive, so alive

I was wrong, Stefani thought. Admittedly, it occured in a haze brought upon by lack of sleep from the events of the previous week, so her musings might have well been a weird delirium of some sort. It was closing in on two in the morning and she couldn't be sure if her revelation was brilliant or all the poetry she'd found in it would be completely lost once she'd had a sip or two of really good coffee and took up Bradley's offer of laying down while they navigated the changing of the guards.

She was a master at trusting her instincts. It was a point of pride for her, all things considered. So, when she made the album, she was determined that it would heal her father's hurts in some way. Not to take away his pain, because she knew it would be virtually impossible but maybe, to ease it in some way, to settle something in his heart that hadn't been right since he lost Joanne.

But she was mistaken. Sorely so. For a very long time, the way her plan had so greatly backfired had broken her down, strained an already sometimes tumultuous relationship.

There was nothing that would mend a wound that deep. She eventually grasped reality, though it wasn't an instantaneous dawning.

There was no concrete understanding of what wasn't going to heal him until someone came along who did.

Jiovanna Charlotte Cooper. All six pounds, nine ounces of her. The instant Joe had locked eyes on his granddaughter, the second he held her, she could see his heart, right there on his sleeve.

Her pregnancy had been rough; morning sickness for months, flare ups, especially as her body expanded, bouts of anxiety and fear and doubt. As they'd anticipated might be the case, it took nearly a year to conceive and with her health history, they both worried if her body was strong enough to sustain life.

Her parents were over the moon, though Joe, in his own way, expressed concern...was she eating enough, getting the sleep she needed, maybe she was taking on too much. It seemed as though everytime she saw him, he had something to say and with the insane amount of hormones flooding through her body at any given time, along with constantly being both hungry and exhausted and sore, it took plenty of self-control not to snap. Luckily, her husband was always there to jump in and she'd be eternally grateful.

Their little one had come bursting into the world on an early April morning, the sun just having risen over the horizon after a long twelve hours of labor, making her debut with lungs that rivaled her mother's and Stefani, who had already been head over heels for months, was totally enamored with the tiny little person she'd carried. The upturned nose, the rosebud mouth, tufts of brown hair, and the bluest eyes she had ever seen, perfectly matching Bradley and Lea's.

They'd spoken for ages about honoring his father with her name in some fashion and it was Bradley's idea to include Joanne in that tribute, too, to carry on her legacy.

"And my dad," she told him, surprising herself. "It's important to me."

They kept quiet for the duration of the pregnancy, calling their miracle Baby Cooper and only revealing her name in person as family and friends came to visit the hospital and later on, their home.