Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 77th cycle. Now cycle 78!

"Step Eighty-One, Fold Away"
(Older) Brittany/Santana, Kurt/Jude (OC), Harry (OC)
Paper Heart series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Ten Years Later

This time around, the moment had not been nearly so hectic. Nevertheless, they were so stressed that, by the time they'd all made it into the car, most of them had to stop and regroup themselves.

"Shouldn't we be driving?" Harry asked. At twelve years old, sometimes he could sound like one of the most responsible ones around, but then he'd been that way for several years, which made it as good as second nature for his family to run with it.

"We should, and we are," Jude assured him as he turned the key, starting off up the street a few seconds later. He looked to Kurt in the passenger side seat, while his husband was busy staring into the backseat.

"Do you need anything?" he asked.

"I'm good, thanks," Santana told him.

"I wasn't asking you," he pointed out, and Santana gave something halfway between a glare and an apology. "Brittany?"

"I'm okay," she promised, holding her wife's hand on one side, and her son's on the other. "Are we there yet?" she asked, well aware of the answer.

This day had been in the making for two years already, right around the time where they had left their first and much beloved apartment to relocate into the house they now called home. It had started with a conversation between Kurt and Jude, who had been contemplating the thought of a new child, they'd believed, by themselves alone. But Kurt had been thinking about it, and so had Jude, and now that they knew this, there was so much more to think about.

This had in turn become a new option: they were ready to perhaps adopt, or use a surrogate, only they had to remember their family's dynamics, which was that they were two couples living together. Bringing in a new child would not only affect them, it would also affect Brittany and Santana. So then the other choice had come about. They had one child, born out of Kurt and Brittany's one night together, all those years ago, so why not keep it in the family? They weren't suggesting for the two of them to have sex again until they could get Brittany pregnant, but they could accomplish that same goal artificially.

It had been crazy enough of an idea that, before they could allow themselves to think about it much longer, they had to put it out there for the girls to consider, too. So they'd told Brittany and Santana, expecting them to turn the possibility down from the moment it was given to them.

But they hadn't turned it down. They were on board. They'd been dreaming of a baby, too.

Then the discussion had really started. Would they bring together Santana and Jude, so that they might have a child that shared their blood? They had considered it for a short while, but then they had decided that wasn't the way they would go. They had the chance to give Harry a full sibling, with the same mother and father, and they believed it would be the kind of special bond they would appreciate in later years. Besides, they were all still young, and what was to say that later on they wouldn't take the other route, or that they wouldn't eventually adopt?

It had been a very stressful time, waiting to see if it would take. They had been doing well enough over the years, but they knew how costly it was, and they couldn't keep trying if it failed. They had waited over a year before going through with it, and that wait had paid off. Brittany had become pregnant, and now all these months later, the new baby was on its way.

Their families would not arrive until the next day, but back in Ohio, while the five – soon to be six – of them headed for the hospital, they were packing and about to leave. Burt was demanding regular updates, and as he didn't expect to make it in time for the birth, he had requested a picture of his granddaughter once she was finally among them.

After the hours of labor, when the girl would make her entrance into the world, she would be welcomed into a family as loving as it was large. She would have her mothers and fathers and her brother already around her, but it wouldn't end there. Though they were far away, she would have grandfathers and grandmothers, more than she could keep count of, and aunts and uncles, some by blood, others by marriage, and so many more who would have earned the title in the honorary fashion close friends did. 'Aunt Rachel,' for instance, would be the first one – as she was the nearest – to join them at the hospital, waiting for the baby's arrival.

Her name would be Adeline, but they would call her Linny. Like her brother, she would carry the family names of Hummel and Pierce, but where Harry's middle name had brought together those his grandfathers, Robert and Burt, to make Roburt, Linny's middle name would pay homage to the mother and father who shared none of her blood and all of their love. It had taken longer than they cared to remember, but finally they had taken some liberties and morphed Santana and Jude into Sadie. And that was their daughter's name, Adeline Sadie Hummel Pierce.

Little Linny was born with those same eyes her brother had gotten from their mother, and while Harry's hair was nearer to their father's coloring, the fuzz on the girl's head was the warm blond of their mother.

"I can do it," Harry had taken the phone, pointing for Kurt, and the others, to group around Brittany, who had his baby sister in her arms. He took the picture, and he sent it to his grandfather Burt.

"Now you," Kurt had smiled, and when he'd gone to sit with his mother, Harry had been given his new sister to hold.

Looking at them together, it felt as though they were the book ends to their long journey. Life would carry on, with more challenges, more changes, but in this moment here it did feel as though a loop had been brought to completion. The boy, with his curls, with Brittany's eyes and Kurt's smile, had been improbable, a surprise, the biggest challenge in their lives. He had been unplanned. Linny had been as planned as anyone could be, and that made her a promise, from all of them to one another, the promise that after all they'd been through, they were right where they wanted to be, right where they would always want to be. The family they had become through Harry had allowed for Linny to exist. Every step, every fold, had brought them to this day, and to her.

THE END

A/N: Last installment in the series!

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!