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 69th cycle. Now cycle 70!

GLEEKATHON FOURTH ANNIVERSARY CYCLE - It's October again, which means another year of Gleekathon is about to wrap up! At the end of the month it will have been four years since I've started doing my daily stories! As always, I will be celebrating this with a special cycle of stories to touch on my favorite stories I've done throughout the year. There will be two installments each on Thursdays, Saturdays, Mondays, and Wednesdays. The remaining days will feature, as they have in the last several months, new chapters of the latest story in my Doctor Who/Glee crossover series. As far as the anniversary stories go, it will be as I've done before, taking those past stories and either doing a prequel, sequel, POV swap, genre swap, alternate ending, or additional scenes.

This story is a SEQUEL to "Letting a Little Hand Go" a Sylvesters series story originally posted on September 9 2013.

(This is a shift day, which means there will be two stories posted today!)

"Smile On"
Brittany & Sue
Sylvesters series extra
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Brittany sometimes worried that she wasn't seeing everything that was happening around her. She knew she was bound to miss things, and she certainly had, but when it came to her mother she used to think nothing could get by her. The last couple of years had definitely proven her wrong, as much as she hated to admit it. Still she knew there was something on her mother's mind these days, and she hadn't said anything for a while.

When she came home that day though, finding her mother sitting on her own, with that faraway look in her eyes, she decided it had been long enough.

Dropping down next to her on the couch, Brittany reached over and grabbed her mother's hands. "Hi," she smiled.

"Hi," Sue repeated, smiling back. Brittany loved to see her mother's smile, especially when it was directed her, and especially when it wasn't because something bad had happened to someone else.

"Are you okay?" she asked her mother, who sat up.

"Couldn't be better," Sue declared.

"Are you sure? I think you could be better. You look sad," Brittany pointed out. "I don't like seeing you sad." Sue let out a breath, looking down to their joined hands.

"What makes you think I'm sad?"

"I can tell, that's all," Brittany shrugged.

"Brittany, I'm not sad, at least not in the way you think," Sue told her.

"Then in what way?" her daughter asked.

"It's hard to explain."

"Try?" She wasn't going to let this go, not when it involved her mother, so Sue tried to find the right words.

"You know, I've had you all to myself for most of the time you've been alive. No matter what, when the day was over, you were here. My girl, right here," Sue brought their four hands together and Brittany smirked. "But you're growing up now, and you're going to have your own life, like you should… But it still makes me…"

"Different sad?" Brittany guessed, and Sue nodded.

"Different sad, yes."

"I don't have to go, I can stay here."

"But you do have to," Sue insisted. "As much as I don't want it to be true, it is. I won't be doing you any favor, keeping you here, living at home with your mother. You're going to have a great life, I know."

"And I'll come visit you all the time," Brittany vowed.

"You better," Sue gave her a pointed look and she smiled.

"I'm not gone yet though, so I don't want you to be sad, not while we're still together, okay?"

"Okay, I can work with that," Sue agreed, loving and missing her daughter more than she thought possible already.

"Good, come on," Brittany stood, tugging for her mother to follow. Her mother might say she wouldn't be sad for now, but Brittany knew better than to completely trust this. At least for today she would make damn sure her mother had something to smile about.

They'd gone to Breadstix for dinner. It wasn't that special on its own, but to them, like a lot of families in the area, it was bound to hold memories from years and years. It was like home base, safe ground. Even for the Sylvesters, who would spend all those years with this secret of theirs, it had been that for them.

"I think this is the booth," Brittany ducked to look under the table almost as soon as they'd taken their seats. Sue looked around.

"What booth, sit up," she asked her quietly.

"It is, look!" Brittany didn't sit up. "It's still there!" Sue knew the only way to get her daughter to sit up would be for her to do as she was asked. She leaned over, trying to see what she was pointing at. Under the table, she saw a worn but still recognizable sticker of a puppy with floppy ears, holding a blue ball with a yellow star balanced on its head. Despite herself, Sue had a good laugh about this, and as she sat up, she found Brittany grinning from ear to ear.

"If I remember, you had a few more of those stuck to this table by the time we left." They knew they wouldn't find those on the surface in between them anymore, but still their eyes were drawn to look.

"The waitress was really mad," Brittany remembered. "I just wanted to make the table look nice," she shrugged.

She had gotten the small strip of stickers from her teacher when she was seven, a reward she never explained. Brittany was just so glad to have them, so why bother asking? It was a Friday, and as they did sometimes on Fridays back when she was little, they would come here, to Breadstix. Brittany had spotted a burn on the table, from a previous client's cigarette, so to make it better, she had sacrificed one of her stickers. Her mother hadn't noticed, not until the end of the meal, and by then, three more stickers had found their way on to the table beautification project. A fifth one had been put under the table, after Brittany had ducked there to retrieve her shoe, which had slipped from her foot.

Sue had been more upset at the waitress for yelling at Brittany than at Brittany for putting the stickers there, and the girl had been so happy for her mother sticking up for her that Sue never punished her for her table fixing.

"Maybe if we don't say anything, it'll be there for years and years," Brittany told her mother as they sat back up.

"I'm sure it will," Sue told her.

"Maybe… we can come and check once in a while, me and you?" Brittany offered, and Sue wondered if she could see how close she was to crying, understanding the unspoken words she'd just been given.

"I know we will."

THE END

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!