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 68th cycle. Now cycle 69!

"Someday We'll Remember"
(Older) Mike/Tina, Lily at 8
Chang Squared series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

Even though her eighth birthday had come and gone several weeks prior, Lily Chang chose to believe this weekend was a belated present to her, and she was very excited. Her aunt Quinn was coming for a visit.

She wasn't her actual aunt, obviously, but she was one of her parents' greatest friends, and she was always the bearer of fantastic hugs. She was family as far as they were concerned. The same could be said of her uncle and her cousins.

Quinn had met the man who would become her husband a few years after the events that bonded her to Tina and to Mike as a friend. Before that, though Lily was still too young to have heard about all of it, she had been pregnant, and she had delivered a baby girl. It had been a long and difficult period of her life, trying to decide what would be best, both for herself and for the child. Tina knew this; she'd been with her through every step of it, down to that day she had given birth to the girl. She also been with her when she'd decided it would be best to give her up. It had been the hardest decision she'd ever made, and it would be some time afterward before she could move on.

Her life had been forever altered, but that didn't have to be a bad thing. She had gotten through it, and she would rise above. She had quit being a Cheerio, although it was still a point of contention for a while around McKinley, whether or not she'd quit or been kicked off. Regardless of that, she had quit, and she had never returned to the squad. She remained in Glee Club, and with both Tina and Mike there, she didn't feel so alone.

After graduating from McKinley, she had gone on to college, and it was in the last week of her last semester that she met Peter. It wasn't so much a whirlwind romance, but when she realized she did love him, she'd nearly lost him by her own uncertainty. She got him back, and it wouldn't be long that they would be married. From there on, they had three children. The eldest had turned seven within days of Lily's birthday and was named Riley. The second was also a boy, called Sean, was four. Their youngest and the only girl was only a few months old, which made her almost as anxiously awaited as Quinn was to Lily. Her name was Tessa.

As soon as her aunt Quinn had arrived, giving the desired hugs, all Lily wanted was to hold the baby girl. Her mother had given her that look that tended to mean 'watch your manners,' which in this case should have been interpreted as 'don't ignore the others.' So she had played with Riley and Sean for a while. The last time she'd seen Sean he had been a baby, Riley was four, and she was five, so she didn't really know either of them. She didn't know what to do with them, especially when what she really wanted to do was hold little Tessa, but she'd had to find some kind of solution.

Tina had gotten to pick up Tessa before Lily ever did, and there had been a look shared between the two mothers, one they couldn't voice but still existed, undeniable. The little one, with her fine blond hair, looked so much like long-gone older sister, the one Quinn had given up for adoption when she was sixteen. Tina wouldn't have asked, but sometimes she did wonder, if she'd almost been relieved to have boys before, especially with Peter's light brown hair, so she wouldn't have to think about her first daughter. Now here was Tessa, and the thought wouldn't go away.

"Can I hold her now?" Lily called from the living room.

"You might want to let her before she has a panic attack," Mike smirked. Quinn took the girl back from Tina and walked her into the other room.

"Sit," Quinn nodded to the couch with a smile, and Lily scrambled up to do as told. "You remember how to do it?" Quinn asked and the girl nodded. "Alright, let's see then," she carefully rested her daughter in the eight-year-old's arms. As promised, she knew how to hold her, and she smiled, seeing the girl's curious eyes turn up to her. Lily leaned in and placed a kiss on Tessa's forehead.

"You know what she's after, right?" Tina asked Mike as they watched from just outside the living room.

"Subtlety is not something she's familiar with," Mike nodded.

"We're going to have to find a way of letting her down easy," Tina frowned.

"Do we have to though?"

"You're not serious. You'd want to start over? Now?"

"Well at least wait until they've gone back to the hotel," Mike joked and she playfully smacked him. "It wouldn't be the craziest idea. We're still young."

"We've also got careers."

"It can be worked around."

"For you, sure," Tina shook her head.

"Okay, but forget about work for a second. If it's just up to you…"

"We give in to this, she's going to think we'll do anything," Tina looked back to Lily on the couch.

"I'm pretty sure that ship has sailed," he tapped her shoulders. "Putting all that aside, what do you think? If you don't want to, I won't even mention…"

"I don't know," Tina admitted. "I can't say I haven't thought about it… sometimes… I look at Lily, and I think about those first years, when she was little… She's getting so big now."

"What if we just… left it up to chance?" Mike offered, smirking at her ear, and she chuckled.

"Well… we could," she replied, matching his tone. "And if it doesn't work, well…"

"Exactly," he laughed, just as Riley and Sean ran past, to rejoin their mother.

"Guys, hey," Quinn called for her sons to calm down before they got out of control.

"I can watch her until dinner," Lily told Quinn, who smiled at her.

"Yeah, I bet you can. You're a pro." Lily was grinning from ear to ear, and Tina looked up to Mike.

"Yeah, we're screwed."

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!