A/N:

I wrote this fic somewhere around 8th grade, posted it to a SMK forum around 1-2 years later, and then it was the first fic I uploaded (after copy/pasting) to this site when that one was going to be closing down. It has NOT updated in the 20-ish years since it was written. So I hope you enjoy, but if you read my other work and want to compare the two, keep in mind I was just a kid. Thanks!

-AL (2017)

I DON"T NEED ANYTHING BUT YOU

Yesterday was plain awful

You can say that again

Yesterday was plain awful

But that's / not now / that's then

I don't need anything but you!

~Annie (musical)

"Oh, Mother! Don't forget to pick up milk, bread and eggs tonight on your way home. Honestly, we are out of everything." Amanda King stood in her kitchen, looking in the fridge and calling to her mother, who was upstairs.

"Amanda, darling? What did you say? I can't hear you!"

"I Said, 'Don't Forget To Pick Up Mi-'"

"What?"

Upstairs in Amanda's bedroom, Dorothy West, an attractive older woman with blond hair (it's natural, honest!) and dark blue eyes, was trying to get her youngest grandchild ready for the day, which wasn't easy. The eleven- month-old girl did not want her grandmother to put on her socks. She kept curling her toes and crying "No-no, No-no!" one of her favorite phrases. Amanda rolled her eyes, and made a ham and turkey sandwich for the older of her two sons, Phillip. She put it down on the table next to Jamie's Peanut Butter and Jelly on rye. Ages 14 and 16, and Amanda was still making their sandwiches. Both students at Arlington Memorial High School, the pair would have to hurry if they wanted to beat the 7:45 bell. Jamie hated to miss a minute of school, and had it not been for him Phillip would probably skip homeroom each morning and be in by eight, when first period began. It was already 7:34.

"Boys, hurry up or you're going to be late!" Amanda shouted upstairs over her daughter's wailing.

"Amanda, could you give me a hand, please?" Dotty called, exasperated.

Amanda sighed, and started up the stairs. She was about halfway to the second floor when the boys thundered down, nearly knocking her over.

"Boys!" She called out in a warning tone they recognized from early childhood to mean, Knock it off!

"Sorry!" Phillip replied, hoisting up his book bag and grabbing his car keys. He loved his car, a handsome silver Convertible Amanda's boyfriend had left him in his will.

" .mom," panted Jamie, a little out of breath. He grabbed his books and headed out after his brother. Amanda entered her bedroom, and had to laugh at the site she saw. Her mother was arguing with the baby, and trying to force a sock onto her foot.

"You want to wear this sock," Dotty was telling the baby. "You really, really want to wear this sock."

"Oh, Mother. Really," Amanda chuckled.

"Well! Amanda, she's so much more difficult than you were as a baby. You were a wonderful, pleasant baby. A perfect angel. Of course, you had a mother and a father."

"Mother," said Amanda, in her warning tone.

"I'm sorry Amanda, I don't mean to interfere, but perhaps you should think about dating again, maybe getting married, having a real family."

"When Lee comes back, I will." Amanda tickled her daughter, and slid the sock easily onto her left foot. She slid the other onto the baby's right, and picked her up.

"Let's go get your shoes, perfect angel, then mommy has to go to work."

"No-no, mama. No-no." The baby shook her head, soft brown curls bouncing around her shoulders.

"Yes-yes. Come on, little one," Amanda bounced the baby on her hip just as she had done with Phillip and Jamie.

"Amanda, be realistic," Dotty interjected. "He's not coming back. Even the government has listed him as dead. I'm sorry, Amanda, but that's the truth."

"Mother! I don't want to talk about it. I don't think he's dead, I.I just can't believe that. Maybe he has amnesia, or something. I don't know. But he's stop hounding me, mother!"

"Amanda King, it has been almost two years! Two years since you last saw him!"

"Actually, it has been almost 19 months. A year and a half. That's all. That's all." Dotty could see that her daughter was close to tears. She took the baby from her and placed her in her crib. She held out her arms.

"Come here, Amanda."

Amanda hugged her mother, sobbing. It had been nearly three weeks since she had last allowed herself to cry like this. That time, she had been playing on the floor with the baby. She had gotten up to answer the phone and turned in time to see her daughter walking towards her. She hung up on the telemarketer (great savings on a great vacuum!) and counted seven steps. She was thrilled that her little one had finally mastered the art of walking after weeks upon weeks of standing and falling, and holding on to furniture. But that night, in bed, after everyone else had fallen asleep, she thought about Lee, and everything he had missed.

She had only been about three weeks pregnant when he disappeared while working undercover in Libya. Officials had searched for him, and agents waited for something, anything, that might give them hope that he was still alive. But no such evidence came. No one asked for ransom, or a trade, and no one admitted to having anything to do with his disappearance. Francine had gone with him that time, in Amanda's place, because she hadn't been feeling well. At the time she thought it was the flu; it turned out to be morning sickness.

Francine had been found on the floor of the room that they had been staying in; she had been drugged and beaten. She could remember neither, even under the heaviest truth drugs and an experimental remembrance enhancer that she agreed to try. Amanda has been devastated when she learned that he was missing, and even more so one year later when he was declared dead, and his will was carried out. He'd left almost everything to her and the boys, for which she was grateful, but being no one knew she was really his wife none of his pension money could be given to her, unfortunate because the cost of raising a new baby was high, especially since that baby was the third child in a one parent (and one grandparent) home.

The Agency had been really supportive, which Amanda though was great considering Amanda and Lee always publicly denied the relationship, and they all thought Amanda had just gotten pregnant, not knowing that the couple had actually wed about a year before. She sighed, as her tears began to dry and her crying ceased. After that mission to Libya Lee and Amanda were going to tell everyone of their marriage, and Lee was going to take more of an administrative position. Billy had encouraged him to do so, because he had sensed for some time that Amanda was the one for Lee, the one who could make him settle down.

A married father of three grown children himself, Billy had left the field after his youngest child, Renée, had been hurt at school, and no one was able to reach him because he was working. He found out about her broken collarbone and fractured rib two days later, when he phoned home from France.

"Jeannie told me that Renée had fallen off of the high bar in gymnastics practice, and my heart dropped," he had told Amanda and Lee in his office nineteen months prior, when it was decided that Libya would be the last field assignment for the Scarecrow.

"After that," Melrose had said, "I just couldn't do it anymore. I had to stay close, just in case. It's a good idea for a family man, to be out of the field. You'll see, Lee, someday. Besides, it will be safer for Amanda to assist you the way she used to, doing your reports and surveillance and such. You've made the right choice. Won't Francine be thrilled when I tell her she's my best field agent now? Or wait, maybe I shouldn't. Can't have her head getting even more inflated."

In spite of herself, Amanda chuckled, lost in the memory.

"What's so funny, Amanda?" asked her mother, dragging her back down to Earth. She blinked, realizing that she was in her bedroom with her mother and child, not at the agency with her boss and husband.

"Oh my gosh! Mother, I'm late! Gotta run, see you around four-thirty," she kissed her mother on the cheek, "and we'll discuss dinner. Angel," she picked up the baby, "be good for Grandma, okay?"

"No-no, mama." "Amanda laughed, and kissed the baby one the forehead.

"She's serious, Amanda. Don't laugh, it'll only encourage her." Dotty took the little brown haired girl from Amanda.

"Oh really, mother!" Amanda's voice was light and cheery, a huge turnaround from a few moments before. "She's only a baby. Bye-Bye!"

"Bye-Bye!" Echoed her daughter.