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 67th cycle. Now cycle 68!

"Letting a Little Hand Go"
Sue & Brittany
Sylvesters series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

When Brittany was eight, Sue had taken her off on vacation, as she would try and do, from year to year. More often than not, this would be forced to coincide with her going somewhere with the Cheerios for Nationals, so she would have to leave the girl in a hotel room all day and only see her on certain times, especially at night. But that year was not one of those. On that year, they had gone to Disneyland. Brittany had been so excited, Sue could hardly keep her sitting still as they went and got on the plane. There was one ride in particular that Brittany simply couldn't wait to go on, and on the morning after they arrived, they finally went to get in line so they could ride the ride.

They had waited for longer than seemed human, and Sue had been ready to tear someone a new one. Brittany didn't mind it though. She was just so happy about getting to go on the ride that she took the wait, gratefully so. Sue had forced herself to calm down and adopt her daughter's cheerier outlook. Finally, the wait had been over, and Brittany and Sue boarded the ride.

There had been some technical issues, and the ride stopped all of a minute after it had started. Everyone had been forced to leave it until they could repair it. Sue could still remember the look on her daughter's face, that disappointed and confused little glance that asked 'That's it?'

The ride had been fixed and they'd eventually gotten to go, but that was not the part that she was thinking of, it was the build-up, the finally getting to go, and then… That's it. Right now she felt almost exactly as her daughter had done, all those years ago. Only instead of a Disneyland ride, it was their relationship, with their secret as the waiting line, and the revelation as the moment they were allowed through. Now they were riding the ride, and their minute was almost up. The breakdown was just… adulthood, catching up to her little girl.

Before long, Brittany would be done at McKinley, and she would go out there, go to college… maybe… She'd start working, start looking to live on her own, and then the two of them would get split up, just when they were starting to live their normal family life, by their standards at least. Sure, like they'd eventually gotten to ride that ride, they would still be mother and daughter. Not living under the same roof wouldn't change that, and surely they had still been mother and daughter while they had their secret. But they were living together now, and their secret was out. All those things they had kept themselves from experiencing over the years, simple things like being seen in public together, she'd had to force herself not to miss them so much, but now she had them, how was she ever supposed to give them up?

Part of her wanted to be selfish, and oh how easy it would have been to listen to her. She'd spent so many years denying herself the very basic pleasure of showing pride in her daughter, of showing her love for her. She knew how so many of them saw Brittany, and it shamed her to think she had never defended her enough, but she'd known that would only give them away, and at the time that seemed like her only solution. But now they were not hiding anymore, and she could stand up for her, more than she already had. The Cheerios had given her something of an outlet for that, to deal with her daughter's tormentors. She could kick someone off the squad with very little reason, if she believed this was the best way to retaliate, but sometimes she did the opposite. Sometimes she would take on someone, usually if they'd been vying for a spot on the squad for a long time, and once they were hers, she could do with them as she pleased.

That wasn't going to solve anything here, and as much as she wanted to listen to her selfish side, she had to think from the gut, from the place where she kept her power as mother. It wasn't always painless to listen to that gut, but it never let her go down the wrong path. This time, to her dismay, it was saying exactly what she knew needed to happen. Not only did she have to let her go, but she had to help her out the door. Surely an opportunity would come for her at one time or another. Her daughter may not have been the most academically gifted, but she had other talents, that much Sue had nurtured as best she could. If no one saw that about her, then they were damned fools. When that opportunity would come, and Sue had no doubt it would, she could already see her daughter trembling on the path to doubt, to second guessing. She could let a chance go because of fear, because of the same reasons that resided on Sue's selfish side. They'd both been waiting for that ride, not just Sue. If that was the case, then letting her take that step back would have been doing her the worst kind of disservice. Her daughter deserved success, and by her name as a Sylvester, Sue would see that she didn't run away from it but rather straight on toward it.

Until then, until the colorful car came to a grinding halt, they needed to enjoy the ride. Even if it was just for a minute, it would be the best minute anyone had ever lived up to then. No one would ever be able to take that minute away from her. After the disappointment had worn off, all those years ago, Brittany had looked up to her mother with this small smile. Sue was perplexed, after having seen her daughter so broken up about the interruption.

"What are you smiling about?" Sue had asked, tapping the spot between her daughter's eyebrows. Brittany had kept on smiling.

"I got to ride it," she'd said.

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!