The time had come. The moment everyone had been waiting for had finally arrived. And it really wasn't what most of them had been expecting at all. Liv had gone into labor early that morning - practically on time, virtually unheard of for a first time pregnancy - and despite the tendency to panic that prevailed among the entire Storm family, had been turned away from the hospital for getting there too soon. So Johnny, Fliss, Alexei, Maria, and Bella had all had front row seats while Liv endured hours of contractions while somehow attempting to give them a slightly normal day.

The time had come, however, to go back to the hospital, and this time, Lucy had arrived to take charge of their little household while Johnny and Liv were absent. She was currently leaning in the hallway of the brownstone the Storms had only settled in a week before, grinning as the adults took their leave of the children.

Of all the Storm children, it was Alexei who clung to Liv the most in the last moments before Johnny was to whisk her away to the hospital to give birth. "Mama," he said, his arms wrapped as far around her pregnant waist as was physically possible to give her a hug. "I will miss you," he admitted, trying to be brave, but he was just a little boy, after all, who clearly adored his mother.

"Oh, sweetheart ..." Liv hugged her little boy close, ignoring the ache in her back as she bent to kiss his hair. "I'll miss you, too. But everything is going to be fine, and you'll have lots of fun with Auntie Lucy here. And just think," she added, looking around at her little family, smiling at the sight of Maria hugging Johnny's leg as he tried to get to the door, "when you wake up in the morning, you'll have a little brother or sister."

They had already been over this before, and she had assured him that no matter whether his new sibling was a brother or sister, she'd still love him just the same. "Yes, Mama," he admitted, wiping the tears from his face. He was as excited as any of them, but the idea of her leaving him for even a few days was heartwrenching. "I will be good for Aunt Lucy, I promise."

Johnny set the overnight bag he'd had slung over one shoulder on the floor so that he could bend down to hug the little girl. "I'll be back once the baby is born, and you all can come visit Mama and the baby in the hospital. Promise," he told her hugging her close. "Be good for Aunt Lucy," he said. "And help take care of your brother," he whispered in her ear, for good measure, knowing Alexei was having the hardest time with separating from them.

Maria nodded, clinging to her father a moment longer. She knew Alexei was struggling with letting Liv go, even for the time it would take to bring their new sibling into the world, and to be honest, she wasn't that happy about it herself. But she trusted that the adults knew what they were doing. She kissed Johnny's cheek, hugging him tight once more before retreating to cuddle into Lucy's side.

"Go on, you two, you need to get moving," Lucy reminded her sister and brother-in-law with a warm smile. "You don't want to have the baby in the back of the car, do you?"

"Don't say things like that," Fliss complained, rolling her eyes. The teenager was lingering in the door to the kitchen, not wanting to get in the way, but just as anxious as the others in her own way. It was a wonder Lucas had any feeling left in his fingers at all, given her grip on him.

Lucas watched the scene silently, his fingers gripped tightly in Fliss'. Though he was not one of their children, he had bonded with Liv and Johnny in his own way and was full of nervous excitement as any of them. He was still struggling to sort out his own place in this little family, but for now, it was enough that he was there.

"We'd better go, Liv," Johnny urged gently as he picked up the overnight bag and slung it back over his shoulder. He took Lucy's warning seriously and wasn't really looking forward to birthing his own child in the backseat of the car. "I promise I'll call as soon as I know anything," he told the gathered group.

Breathing carefully through another contraction, Liv gently unwound Alexei from her bump and gave him into Lucy's capable hands, touching her hand gently to Fliss' cheek. "No keggers," she said with a faint smile, and to her relief, Fliss snorted with laughter, rolling her eyes.

"No dropping the baby," the teen countered.

"Good girl," Liv smiled, looking to Lucas. "Take care of them for me?"

"I will do my best," Lucas replied, straightening a little, feeling a swell of pride at being singled out as the "man of the house", at least, while Johnny was away. To his credit, Alexei felt no jealousy that it was Lucas and not himself who was given that role, though that might change in the years to come.

"Stop moping! We're having a baby, not going to a funeral!" Johnny teased with a grin as he edged toward the door. Thankfully, Maria had finally let go or he wouldn't have made it that far.

Laughing, Liv turned toward the door. "All right, I'm coming." Her hand brushed over Alexei's hair as she passed him and Lucy, the twins sharing a smile as the Storm parents finally made it out through the door. "Well, that took longer than I thought it would," she chuckled, a little out of breath but otherwise fine, for the moment.

"Maybe we should have waited 'til they were sleeping," Johnny remarked, though babies had a way of coming at the most unexpected and inconvenient times, it seemed. He offered her an arm to steer her toward the car, moving as slowly and patiently as was necessary. They had come a long way since that first date, when Lucy had coerced Liv to pretend to be her, just to spite him. They had both done a lot of growing up since then and when Johnny thought back, it almost seemed like another lifetime.

She smiled, leaning on him gratefully as they headed for the sidewalk. "I don't think the baby is going to wait much longer," she admitted with a smile. "It's bad enough we've been waiting most of the day, I just hope we're not going to be doing this all night, too." She touched a kiss to his shoulder. "I'm glad you're here."

"Of course, I'm here. Where else would I be?" he asked, taking this all rather calmly and like an adult, which was a little unusual of itself, but someone had to stay calm, if only for Liv's sake. He got the car door opened for her and waited for her to get in before helping her with the safety belt.

She laughed softly as he put her into the car. "I didn't mean I was expecting you to run away the second it got serious," she told him, squeezing his hand. "Just that I'm glad you're here, always." Labor, it seemed, was turning his soft-hearted wife sentimental.

"I will always be here for you," he assured her, touching a kiss to her cheek with a soft smile before carefully fastening the seatbelt around her and tossing the overnight bag in the back seat.

"I am very glad to know that, too," she grinned, leaning back in the seat as he closed her door. Her hand rubbed over her bump reassuringly, though quite who she was comforting - herself or the baby - was anyone's guess. She'd expected to be in a terrible panic when the moment came, but somehow she and Johnny were incredibly calm. Much better than when Lucy had gone into labor, anyway.

"I really need to push," his wife whimpered, trying to lever herself up, in spite of the seatbelt around her waist. "Stop the car!" Despite herself, she did reach out, and let out a truly alarmed squeal when she felt herself crowning. For the first time since they'd met, Johnny got to hear his sweet-tempered wife swear like a blue-balled sailor. "I'm crowning!"

Johnny pulled the car aside, careening up over the curb and back down as he brought the car to a sudden stop and threw it into park. "Did you hear that' She wants to push!" he told the dispatcher, holding the phone toward Liv so that the person on the other end got an earful of Liv's colorful language. It was clear they were both on the verge of panic. "What do you mean, keep calm"! My wife is having a baby in the front seat of the car!" He paused a moment to listen again. "Okay, okay. I know." He glanced at Liv, a hand reaching for the bag, before looking over his shoulder at the back seat. "Yeah ....Okay. What about clean towels and hot water?" In the movies, they were always going on about needing clean towels and hot water. "Where are we?" he echoed, looking out the window to see what street they were on and giving the dispatcher a rough idea of where they were parked.

Liv yelped as the car jerked to a halt, her face already red with the effort of not pushing and not crying. At some point, she was going to have to give in on one, or both, of those points, but right now, she was winning, sort of. Her hand scrambled for the belt to get it off her, needing to be able to move at least a little. She should have known something like this would happen. Nothing ever went entirely smoothly, no matter how well they coped with it.

"Okay, all right," he said to the phone, frustrated with the fact that he was mostly talking to a stranger and not to his wife. "She wants to talk to you," he told her, handing her the phone. In the meantime, he turned off the car, the keys still in the ignition, snagged the overnight bag and got out of the car to get the back seat ready for childbirth - which was a ridiculous idea, when he really thought about it, but might prove a necessary one.

Nodding swiftly, Liv took the phone in one shaking hand, holding it to her ear. "H-hello?" Just hearing the calm, no-nonsense voice on the other end of the line was enough to help her get a grip on her tears, glad they had someone who knew what to do on hand, even if they were in a call center on the other side of the city. "No, I ....We went to the hospital this morning and they sent us home, and in the car just now my water broke, and I can feel a head!" Listening as she watched Johnny moving about, she bit her lip through another contraction, trying her hardest not to push. "O-okay ....thank you ..." She flailed the phone in Johnny's direction, twisting to open her own door.

Johnny was there to help her in an instant, but the phone somehow landed on the floor of the back seat, a muffled voice on the other end saying, "Hello' Hello! Is anyone there?" Johnny ignored the phone so that he could maneuver his wife to the back seat, his expression concerned, but so far, not giving in to panic. "It's gonna be okay, Livvie. I'm right here, and the ambulance is on the way," he assured her gently, as he took her about the waist to help her into the back seat.

She needed all the help she could get, acutely aware that their baby was determined to be born, with or without their intervention. "Why is it happening so fast?" she sniffled, genuinely upset that she'd been so good and done everything right for the last nine months, only to have this happen now. Easing onto the backseat, she kicked her sodden panties away, and let Johnny get his first look at their child. It wasn't the prettiest view, but hey, at least it had hair.

"I don't know," he replied with a frown, wishing they'd kept her at the hospital earlier in the day and unsure why they'd sent her home until to endure this. He was afraid if the EMTs didn't get here soon, it was going to be up to him to deliver their child, and he wasn't sure he could do it on his own. A thousand things could go wrong, and he wouldn't know what to do. They just had to get here! "Remember what we learned in classes" Babies are unpredictable, and every birth experience is different," he quoted from rote. He heard the voice coming from the phone somewhere nearby, but he was too busy with Liv to search for it at the moment. "Oh, my God, Livvie! I can see the baby's head!" he said, excitement replacing the panic, as she spread her legs and let him get his first peek of their child."Hang on! Let me find the phone!" he told her, scrambling for the thing and putting it on speaker so he didn't have to hold it to his ear while doing what he was told.

As settled as she was going to get on the backseat, Liv groaned, letting her head fall back against the far window. "Please can I push now?" she asked plaintively, desperate to get this over with now it had been made absolutely clear that there was no way they were getting to the hospital.

"Yes, I think so. I can see the baby's head," he told both Liv and the woman on the other end of the phone. He remembered from classes that once the mother was crowning, it was time to start pushing the baby out. "Okay, take a deep breath, Liv, and then push as hard as you can!" he told her, partly repeating what the dispatcher was telling him and partly acting on what he'd learned in birthing classes.

So she did. In the middle of a side street, in the middle of New York City, Liv pushed as hard as she could, swallowing every groan of pain and frustration to put her whole focus into giving birth. She was barely aware of the dispatcher's disembodied voice on the phone, entirely absorbed in safely delivering her baby into its father's hands. If this didn't prove how much she loved and trusted Johnny, then nothing would.

"Keep going, Liv! The baby is coming out!" he told her, his voice full of encouragement and excitement, the panic easing at the knowledge that they were about to welcome their child into the world and meet him or her for the very first time. He took hold of her hand for a moment, letting her squeeze his hand as much as she wanted, his heat radiating into her as he leaned close. His free hand gently stroked her belly, as if to soothe her and coax the baby out. "Come on, sweetheart. Just a little bit more."

Panting, she gripped his hand for a brief moment, managing a grimace of a smile for his excitement before the urge to push returned in force. Fingers digging hard into the fabric of the seats below her, she let her head fall back once again and pushed as though her life depended on it, gasping as she felt something tear in the passage of a head and body that really shouldn't have been that big, should it?

Well, there had been no time for preparation and even if there had, he wouldn't have known how to go about it. Someone at the hospital was likely to get an earful from him later about sending her home too soon, but for now, all his focus was on Liv and the baby. He let go of her hand and shifted to place his hands on the inside of her thighs, very gently supporting the baby's head and neck as it passed through the birth canal and into his waiting arms. A siren could be heard in the distance, slowly making their way toward them, but too late to help with the birth.

One last push, and the baby was free, squealing indignantly at the feel of cold air on her skin as she flailed in Johnny's hands. Liv all but collapsed back against the door behind her, gasping for breath as she listened to their daughter informing the whole world that this birth nonsense was a bad idea, and she'd quite like to go back inside now, please.

Johnny had run out of clean towels, but that was the least of his problems at the moment. "Oh, my God, Liv," Johnny said, his voice quiet and wavering with emotion. "It's a girl. We have a baby girl," he said, his voice breaking on a sob as he cradled their daughter close, wrapping her in one of the towels he'd procured from the bag. He knew there was one more thing he had to do to complete the separation between uterus and child, but he lacked a sharp knife or scissors. Thankfully, Johnny was not without resources of his own. The child hardly required much clothing, so long as she lay in the warmth of her father's arms. He raised his free hand, turning his flame on and severing the cord between mother and child before extinguishing that flame. "She's beautiful, Liv," he whispered, unaware of the tears that were streaming down his face. "And she's got her aunt's lungs!" he added with a chuckle.

The staff at the hospital were ready for them when they arrived, those careful checks performed within a few minutes of their arrival to pronounce mother and daughter disgustingly healthy. The tear Liv had been certain was enormous actually turned out to be nothing more than a tiny split, not even requiring stitches, and within a couple of hours, the little family were settled in a private room on the antenatal ward.

Liv was just finishing up having a shower, leaving Johnny to discover the joys of feeding a hungry little mouth that had been attempting to suckle him through his shirt for a good twenty minutes. She chuckled as she shuffled back to the bed, combing her damp hair. "You two look very cute there, you know."

Johnny had been enjoying the quiet moment spent with his new daughter while Liv showered and got herself feeling human again. He'd had a little practice with Jamie and all the Granger babies at the Grove and wasn't a stranger to bottles or diapers, though their own children were well past that. He'd found after Emily was born that he was a natural with babies, who seemed to enjoy the warmth that radiated from the Human Torch, like a human electric blanket. He had even been humming a little to her a little while he fed her, lulling her into a state of calm and serenity. He smiled over at Liv as she rejoined them. "Of course we do. She's her father's daughter, you know."

"Should I be looking forward to flaming diapers, then?" she teased him fondly, easing onto the bed with a quiet sigh. "Well, we did it. Maybe not the way we planned to, but we did it." She laughed softly, braiding her damp hair away from her face. "How long did Lucy laugh when you told her what happened?"

He chuckled at her remark, though it wasn't an entirely ridiculous question. "Let's hope not, just yet." Two firestarters in the same household was plenty, he thought. "You did it, Livvie," he reminded her, not for the first or likely, the last time. "Not long once I reminded her how she'd brought Jamie into the world," Johnny replied with a snicker.

"At least she did it in a bed," Liv giggled, curling up comfortably against the pillows. "And I maintain that we did it. You caught her, after all." Now that Bess was washed and dressed, she'd turned out to be quite a pretty little newborn, something Liv was inordinately proud of. "How did the kids take it?" she asked Johnny quietly. They'd reached the hospital by around half past eight in the evening, and they both knew their children would take advantage of Lucy to stay up late. "Are they excited about coming in to visit?"

Johnny smiled at the memory of that conversation. "There was too much screaming and shouting for me to tell, but I think they were excited," he told her, gently lifting the small one to a shoulder to get a burp out of her. "They wanted to know everything, but I told them they had to be good for Aunt Lucy and wait until tomorrow."

"And you'll be home in the morning to have breakfast with them and tell them the whole story in gory detail, no doubt," she smiled. Exhausting though the whole process had been, having a shower had definitely revived her spirits. "I'm sorry I swore at you earlier. I really don't like using language like that, but it felt appropriate."

"Not too gory, I hope," he mirrored her smile. He shrugged at her apology, careful not to jostle the little bundle on his shoulder. "I didn't take it personally. I know you were in a lot of pain. I was just worried I wouldn't be able to help." He paused a moment, needing to make an apology of his own. "I'm sorry, too, Liv. I should have checked the traffic report before we left. I could have called for an escort or something. I just wasn't expecting it to happen that fast." He didn't want to think about how badly things could have gone, thankful they hadn't.

"Sweetheart, we couldn't possibly have known how quickly it would go once we got to the stage they told us to wait for," she smiled at him affectionately. "We'll know for next time. And besides, I'm the stubborn one who refused helicopters, remember" Tony is going to have a field day with that one."

"Tony doesn't have to know," he countered. Johnny was still not the biggest fan of Tony Stark, though he had come to grips with the fact that he was part of the family. He had a point, though - why did Tony have to know everything" As far as Johnny was concerned, he had to earn his place in the family.

"Johnny ....he's my brother," Liv reminded him softly. "We're all he has when it comes to family, and I know things aren't easy, or comfortable, between all of us. But it will never be comfortable unless we make a little effort. I'm not proposing to tell him every detail and invite him to babysit. He deserves to know he's an uncle again."

"I didn't say not to tell him, Liv. I'm just saying he doesn't need to know all the details." It was going to take Johnny some time to warm up to Tony Stark - more time than it took Steve, it seemed. "On the other hand, you can tell Pepper anything you want," he added with a grin. He liked Pepper, but then again, who didn't' "So, are we sticking with Elizabeth Margaret?" he asked, changing the subject as he finally got a tiny burp out of their little lady.

Her smile gentled, glad they hadn't argued on that point. Tony was going to be a sore point until things warmed up between him and his sisters, and until he admitted openly that he had sisters, that wasn't going to happen. Johnny's question made her pause. She would have loved to have called their daughter Margaret Elizabeth, to have another Peggy in the family, but she knew it would hurt her family to use that beloved name every single day. She nodded agreeably. "I think Bess suits her," she said softly, "and she was always going to be named after Peggy."

"What do you think, little lady?" Johnny said, as he turned his head to the baby snuggled contentedly against his shoulder. "Would you like to be called Bess?" he asked her, though he knew she wouldn't and couldn't reply.

All he got for his efforts was a milk bubble blown into his ear, but it was a start. Liv giggled. "She's going to be a character, I can tell," she predicted teasingly. "We should call Jon and Vicki, tell them we're going to need some help until we all get settled back home again."

"Mmm, I guess," he replied, though he seemed perfectly content to sit there with his daughter in his arms for as long as they'd let him. There wasn't much point in calling any of the other Grangers, as news would spread like wildfire across Maple Grove as soon as Jon and Vicki had word, but he didn't much want to think about Rhy'Din right now. "Can it wait until later" I kind of want to keep it in the family for one night," he told her, knowing there would be a bevy of visitors and well wishers and people wanting to ooohhh and aaahhhh over the littlest Storm soon enough.

She laughed, tucking the blanket over her legs. "I'm not planning on telling anyone else until our children have met their little sister at the very soonest," she promised him. "It'll be a few days before we go back to Rhy'Din, anyway. You look exhausted, love." Never mind what she'd been doing all day, Liv just couldn't stop herself from trying to look after the people she loved.

"It's a good kind of tired, Liv," he said, stifling a yawn before getting up and moving over to the bed so he could settle down beside her and let her have a better look at their daughter. "You don't think the kids will be jealous, do you?" he asked, worriedly.

She wriggled over so they could both get comfortable and share in the gentle cuddle with little Bess. "Of course they'll be a little jealous, love," she told him. "All children get a little jealous when a new baby comes along. But I don't intend for any of them to start thinking that we love them any less. And to be honest, we have so many babysitters we can trust, we'll be able to have evenings without the baby, or evenings with Alexei and Bess, or Maria and Bess. We'll work something out."

"Alexei and Bess or Maria and Bess?" he echoed, laughing a little. "I don't think you could force those two apart if you had a crowbar. Fliss and Lucas, either," he added, for good measure. He knew what she was trying to say, though - that they'd make sure each of their children was given the attention they craved and deserved. "Did you ever think we'd end up here" It's still a little hard to believe, isn't it?"