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 56th cycle. Now cycle 57!

"Fear Not, Little Sun"
(Older) Puck, Hannah & Hailey (OCs), Puck/Rachel, Finn/Quinn
Sunshine Girls series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

There had been something of a break in this whole business of telling the girls about their mothers and their days of being the "All-Mighty Sunshine Girls," and Puck had gone into his fathers-in-law's kitchen to get the boys something to drink. He was filling cups when he started to feel a… presence.

"You are becoming more and more like your mother every day, you know?" he turned, finding his younger daughter standing by the island. Already his little Hannah was six years old, and she really was in every way her mother's child.

"Daddy, why did you and Mommy break up?" she asked with a tremor in her voice.

"What? Where did you hear something like that?" he came and picked her up, setting her on the counter so they could be eye to eye.

"She said, before Nora was born," Hannah pointed back to the living room, and now he understood just what break up she meant.

"Oh, that…" he sighed. Looking into his daughter's eyes, he could see how that fact had installed a fear in her heart that she couldn't shake. "We got back together, you know that," he held her hands. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here, you or your brothers. It was a long time ago."

"But…"

"Hannah, I love your mother now, just as much as I did in the very beginning… No, I love her more… because she gave me you, and Micah, and Simon, and Noah. And I'll love her forever, there's nothing that's going to change that. She's stuck with me," he gave his daughter a smile, and it made her laugh. "Do you understand now?" he asked, and she nodded. "No more being scared?" She shook her head.

"But… why did you?"

"It's complicated…" he hoped she would let it go.

"She said she broke up with you," Hannah went on, and after a moment he nodded.

"She did, but…"

"And she said grandpa Hiram and grandpa Leroy didn't like you."

"Now or back then?" he asked, and she laughed.

"Dad, come on," she shook her head, inciting him to stay on topic.

"Okay, look, the thing is you can't blame them. If it had been me, in their place, I probably would have reacted the same way. Maybe if we'd given it more time, it would have blown over, you know?" She frowned – she sort of did, maybe not completely.

He remembered that time, the night, the fight he and Rachel had had, which had ended in her breaking up with him. In the heat of the moment, he had been too upset to stop her. He'd just let her go, when he should have gotten her to stay so they could figure something out. Instead he'd watched her go and they'd spent months miserably staring at each other from across rooms and hallways, ignoring the truth that they both missed each other so much and only wanted to get back together.

He knew that, as much as time had allowed to heal things, and allowed him to understand where Rachel's fathers were coming from on the whole matter, in that instant when she'd told him how they had a problem with her being with the guy who had gotten a girl pregnant, Quinn of all people, he'd been furious. He couldn't get past it because, to him, it was as good as saying that he would be a deadbeat and abandon Quinn and his responsibilities toward their child, and that if he stayed with Rachel he would do the exact same thing. He had already been so intent on showing everyone that he wasn't going to be like his father and that he would do everything in his power to be a good presence and a better influence in his daughter's life. Now hearing how people still saw him as a screw up waiting to happen, it had been too much.

"I have all the respect in the world for your grandfathers," he told her. "They helped make your mother who she is…"

"And you love her forever," she pitched in with a smile, and he gave her forehead a bump with his own.

"That's right," he confirmed. "But also because in all that happened to help your mother and I get back together, the two of them were very important." Hannah sat up.

"They were?" she asked, and he nodded. "Wait, Hailey should be here, she wants to know, too."

"Okay, but just her, alright? I'll only talk to junior Sunshine Girls," he looked her in the eye, and she smiled, running an imaginary zipper across her lips. "Right, go get her," he picked her up off the counter and set her on her feet. She dashed off, and he could hear her hollering for Hailey. "She's becoming more and more like you every day, you know?" he adjusted his previous greeting to Hannah, this time turning to spot his wife in the exact same place Hannah had been a few minutes before.

"That's what I hear," Rachel was all smiles, so he almost didn't have to ask.

"How long have you been standing back there?" he asked, and she shrugged innocently. "Spy," he 'glared' at her and she frowned. "I like spies," he told her, and she came up, holding on to his arm and pressing a kiss to his cheek.

"I'll have that forever, thanks," she told him, and he breathed out, finishing up with the boys' drinks.

"Good, because that's what you're getting," he turned a smile on her.

"You be careful with those eyes, that's how we ended up with Noah the Third back there," she warned him. "I'll take those," she picked up the three cups. "You continue with story time," she told him before walking off.

"You know that view is also how we ended up with Noah," he called after her.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that!" he could hear her call back, and he smiled, just as the girls ran in.

"Okay, we're here," Hannah looked to Hailey, then back to her father. "So tell us what happened."

THE END/TO BE CONTINUED (IN DAY 1200b)

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!