#; loyalty

"Elena, would you like to hold the baby?" It's a question she never believed she'd hear from her esteemed boss, not least because the life expectancy between them all had, at one time, been next to nothing. Never mind the prospect of spouses and children amongst the ShinRa clan.

Yet here they were, gathered for the greeting of a newborn. Rufus and his glowing wife; young Grayson on his best behaviour. Reno and Rude on the sidelines, having left the latter's own infant with her mother for the day. She isn't used to this odd, traditional picture of family - it is so remarkably foreign, so far removed from death and torture and the healing wounds of the past.

Apprehension is rife as she blinks at her President: he is proud and eager to share his cheer, and she merely stands like a deer in the headlights. "I... yes, of course," she concedes, politely, taking the opportunity to slide into an empty chair before he lowers the bundle into her arms. The child is soft and malleable, a dumpling swathed in cotton, and she's terrified of harming it. So small, with blue eyes, spiky golden lashes. Tiny pink fingers flex and clench. "He's beautiful," she murmurs, mostly because that's what you say about babies, regardless of how alike they all seem. In any case, he comes from good stock - the sentiment will be true in a year or so.

Her attentiveness toward the living doll is more of a learned etiquette based on what she's seen in movies - it can't really be mistaken for introspection, but she isn't surprised when Reno takes a good-humoured swing.

"Ahhh, look. She's thinkin' about one now." He nudges Rude, who does not encourage, just offers a courtesy curl of the mouth.

"I am not," Elena huffs, sharply, flustered by the accusation. She's not coloured by denial, either.

Laughter emerges from the border of the kitchen, followed up with a Solian-tainted timbre: "If 'Lena had a baby she'd lose it somewhere."

The blonde scowls, if only for the assault on her ability to be responsible. In the event of desperation she could play at being maternal, though hopefully such a thing would never come to pass. "...Thank you, Tony."

"Jus' sayin' what no one else will."

"As always," she acknowledged, lifting little Wesley and handing him back to his father. Tony presses a kiss to her cheek by way of penance, to which she reacts with a wry smile and a swipe in his general direction.