Disclaimer: Friends is not mine.

A/N: Wow! Thanks, everyone, for the great feedback! I'm glad you like Emma as a child (I always worry when writing children, because I don't want to make them come off annoying or bratty, unless I want them to be).

Right now the story is sort of... eh. But I promise it gets better as Emma gets older. I actually like the later chapters more than the beginning ones.

Oh, and this story fits into the universes I created with 'Everything's Changed' and 'Birthday Video'. Just to let you know.

XXX

Rachel's heart nearly stopped when she pulled up to the elementary school to pick up Emma one day in late spring and saw her daughter with a large bandage over her hand. The first-grader waved good-bye to her friends and entered the car like nothing was wrong, however.

"Hi Jen," Emma greeted her one-year-old sister, who was strapped into a car seat in the back. "Hi Mommy."

"Hey, Emma," Rachel replied, pulling out of the pick-up line in a daze. "Uh, how was school?"

"Fine," her daughter answered, making faces at the baby.

"So what happened to your hand?" Rachel asked as casually as possible, doing her best not to panic.

Emma shifted uncomfortably in her seat in the back, which her mother noticed out of the corner of her eye. "James Brolly pushed me down," she said in a small voice.

Rachel's foot hovered over the brake, ready to turn right around and head back to the school to give a piece of her mind to this James Brolly's mother. "What?"

"It isn't bad," Emma assured her mom. "I was on the swing and he wanted to get on and so I told him to wait his turn and when I got off I let Krissy use it next and James got mad at me and pushed me and I fell over and scraped my hand and then I got up and kicked him and then the teacher came and made us sit at the wall for the rest of recess and wrote notes for us to give to our moms and dads."

Rachel blinked. "You got into a fight?"

Emma shrugged. "I guess so." Her eyes watered a little. "Are you mad?"

Stopping at a red light, Rachel turned towards the back momentarily, so she could watch her oldest daughter. "No, sweetie, I'm just… surprised. You usually don't do things like this."

"I didn't mean to!" Emma defended in a loud voice, nearly hysterical. She was then silent the rest of the ride home.

As they pulled into the driveway, Rachel was still trying to process. Her little girl had gotten into a fight? A real, hands-on fist-fight? She'd never gotten into a fight before, with anybody. Rachel was still resisting the urge to find out where this James Brolly lived, march over there, and ask his parents why their son is such a bully.

Emma ran straight into the house once the car was parked in the driveway. Rachel sighed and got Jen out of her carseat and headed inside. Ross was sitting in the living room, playing with some blocks while some sort of dinosaur documentary droned on in the background. Three-year-old Sean was asleep on the couch, his dark hair the only thing sticking out from under a blanket.

Rachel cleared her throat, and Ross looked up, then quickly stood. "Uh, I was just helping him finish… with the blocks…" He then noticed that their son was napping on the couch.

"Never mind that, Ross," Rachel said as she placed Jen in the playpen situated in the living room. "Our daughter got into a fight today."

"Wh-what? Is she okay?" Ross questioned, slightly frantic.

"She cut her hand and kicked a kid and now she's up in her room sulking." Rachel placed her hands on her hips, not sure of what to do with herself.

"She kicked a kid?" Ross seemed to be attempting to wrap his mind around the situation. "But she's so… she doesn't do that kind of stuff."

"I know," Rachel agreed. "And her teacher sent home a note for her to give to us."

Ross plopped down onto the easy chair. "Oh, boy," he said. "Why would she get into a fight in the first place?"

"Apparently, this James kid pushed her down, and she retaliated."

"I'm guessing this isn't the time to be proud that our daughter can hold her own against a boy?" Ross asked.

Rachel shook her head. "No." She sighed. "I'm gonna go talk to her."

"Okay."

Making her way up the stairs and down the second floor hallway, Rachel considered the whole matter. She'd gotten into fights before, with her sisters, the most recent one having been Thanksgiving a few years prior. It was a mistake, and a petty reason to be mean in the first place, and Rachel had recognized that. Now she just needed to help her daughter see that fighting was most definitely not the answer.

"Emma?" she asked cautiously, lightly knocking on the girl's door. When no answer came, she opened the door and entered. "Em?"

Emma was lying on her bed, flipping through a book of stickers. Rachel sat down on the end of her bed. "Sweetie, why did you kick James?"

"Because he pushed me," her daughter responded, still looking at the stickers. "He's always mean to me."

"You mean he's done things to you before?" Rachel questioned.

"Yes. He's a big bully, and everyone was scared of him, so I decided to kick him."

"Okay," Rachel said slowly, "But honey, fighting doesn't solve anything. If someone is mean to you, you don't want to be mean back. I mean, you should stand up for yourself, but you shouldn't resort to violence." Feeling very wise at the moment, Rachel watched as Emma put down the book of stickers and sat up.

"Why are kids mean?" she enquired honestly.

"Because," Rachel began, letting out a long breath and thinking. "Because sometimes it makes people feel better to pick on other kids."

"Oh," Emma said, accepting the reason. "So now that I kicked James, is he gonna be nice to me?"

"Maybe," Rachel shrugged. "There's going to be a lot of people in the future who are mean to other people for what seems like no reason; it happens every day. But you just be the great girl you are, and you'll be fine."

Emma shifted a little, and then came closer to her mother so she was leaning against her. "Okay."

Rachel put her arm around Emma. "Good."

They stayed in that position for a while, until Emma asked casually, "So does this mean you don't hafta see the note from my teacher?" The question just proved to Rachel that this girl was most definitely her daughter.

"You're so not getting off that easy."

And so the next time Emma came home with a note from the teacher, this time saying she'd put glue onto the seat of a girl she didn't like, Rachel wasn't as surprised. It wasn't her first 'retaliation'.

(Though technically it was more of a battle of pranks, and Rachel found the glue-on-the-seat quite clever.)

But still. Emma's first fight. Couldn't they have avoided this one all together?

XXX