12-18M
For SylvanHeather, who told me about her girls every time I shared a Rory fic. She is dearly missed.
Read on AO3
Read on FF.net
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“Hey, Barry just called me down to the lab,” Sara called.
She heard Leonard mumble a response and followed his voice into their bedroom to see that he was sitting on their bed with a book, his legs outstretched and their one-year old daughter Rory sitting at his side chewing on a teething ring.
“I’m gonna head out. Rory needs to get put down for a nap in a second,” Sara said, tossing a light blue footed sleep suit towards him. Leonard glanced briefly at the pajamas as they hit the pillow next to him and nodded, then did a double-take. He picked up the pajamas, holding them up with an odd look on his face.
“What’s up?” Sara asked.
“Whose are these?”
“Huh?”
“Are these new?”
“Uh…kind of? Felicity left us a bag of Tommy and Mara’s old stuff last time they visited,” Sara replied. Leonard continued to look at the pajama suit suspiciously, long enough for Sara to raise her eyebrows and ask, “Everything okay?”
“This…is too big.”
“No…” Sara replied, “It’s 12 to 18 months.”
“This is for, like, toddlers. Rory’s not…she’s little still.”
“She’s fourteen months, my love.”
“Yeah, but…”
“You dressed her this morning. What’s she wearing now?”
Sara leaned in to see that Rory was wearing a yellow and white onesie with ruffled sleeves, her white diaper sticking out from the little leg holes.
“Babe,” she chuckled, “I bought that onesie a long time ago. It’s six to nine months.”
“It fits her fine,” Leonard replied, although his expression was a little wary, “That won’t fit her.”
“Len, I promise it fits her,” Sara said, but Leonard made no move to change Rory into the pajamas. She rolled her eyes, “Oh — at least try it. If it really is too big you can put her into whatever pajamas you want. We still have her newborn clothes if you wanted that.”
She snickered as Leonard feigned a glare in her direction. With a stubborn look on his face, he finally stood and laid Rory on their bed. As he started changing her into the pajamas, his expression morphed into one of surprise and, frankly, a little bit of distress.
“See,” Sara said, holding back a laugh as Leonard finished closing the last snap on the pajama suit.
“Jesus Christ,” Leonard said, his voice low.
He lifted Rory up into his arms, and placed a long kiss on her chubby cheek.
“No more growing,” he told her quietly, “All done.”
“Sorry, Len,” Sara said with a small, sympathetic smile.
“Such is life,” he replied, then looked back to Rory, “Give Mommy a kiss goodbye?”
Rory let out a belly-laugh as she gave Sara a wet, clumsy, open-mouth kiss on her cheek.
“Bye, baby,” Sara said with a smile, smoothing a hand over Rory’s wispy, blonde hair before kissing the top of her head.
“Be safe,” Leonard said, looking at Sara with a serious expression.
“I will,” she replied, “Always.”
Sara walked out the door into the hallway, and just as she was about to round the corner and head for the stairs, she looked back into the bedroom. She couldn’t help the smile that crept onto her face as she saw Leonard holding Rory close to his chest, swaying back and forth and planting soft kisses on the top of her head.
Though she may tease him about it, Sara understood Leonard’s reaction to Rory and her new pajamas. It was bittersweet to see her get bigger and bigger every day and to know that soon she would no longer just be their baby, but rather a whole person with her own impact to make on the world, but she also knew, as Leonard had said, such is life.
Sara was always in awe of the life she and her husband had built for themselves. The people they had been when Rip’s mission to defeat Vandal Savage had first begun many years ago were wildly different from who they are now. They had both worked their asses off to become these versions of themselves, people who they were proud to be. More than that, Sara was so proud of who Rory was becoming and believed so strongly in the parental unit she and Leonard were forging every day.
More than any heroic or legendary deed, more than vigilantism or villainy, more than anything either of their alter-egos had done, Rory was their legacy, and it was a legacy she would fiercely protect for as long as her days would allow.
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Anyways this is several days late, but it was my take on Day 4 of @captaincanary-week (prompt was “What’s next?”). I have half-written prompts for a few other days that hopefully I’ll get out tomorrow but I’ve been swamped so we’ll see!
