A/N: Baby Leroy has finally made his appearance :') after much requests. Here he is at two years old, already being the danger that he is. Hehe.

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Leroy Cox was at the age babies were when they become most prone to killing themselves. With the hand-eye coordination skills he'd somehow inherited from his father and an odd capacity for physicality, the boy was grabbing, reaching, and walking far before the rest of his fellow species were. Naturally, this meant that his period of danger and curiosity had arrived unexpectedly fast—catching Annie severely off guard.

The first time it had happened, she'd seen him playing in the kitchen of all places (having a day earlier, learnt how to break out of his room), reaching for a cast iron pan that had its handle sticking out from the kitchen counter top. He'd grabbed that bit whilst standing on a plastic stool, pulling it towards him without quite understanding just how heavy cast iron could be.

Blinks before the weighted pan would have narrowly missed his fragile infant feet, Annie had caught the falling pan mid-air—pulling off one of those superhuman saves mothers often inherited upon their child's becoming. Leroy could have lost his toes.

Needless to say, the baby lion was not very happy about having his feet saved, as most children tended to be. He'd ground his teeth and growled like a beast, face red and angry the moment his mother had him banned from the kitchen until it was baby-proofed. Admittedly, she hadn't seen this coming: him learning how to deal with the infant-safe door knob she'd had her husband install. Wandering around the house, especially the diner, was a big no no.

Further, her child had always seemed to entertain himself with the cooking channels she'd put on in the baby room, more so than the hand-me-down toy cars donated by distant relatives. It hadn't crossed her mind that he'd one day show an actual interest in, well, a real-life kitchen. After all, weren't those toy kitchen sets mostly marketed towards girls his age?

Even so, she'd decided to give them a go. While Annie sought to obtain an affordable replacement for the cast iron pan Baby Leroy had been so invested in, she soon realized they weren't even nearly enough for a demanding child like him. The boy wasn't anywhere satisfied with two-feet-tall toy kitchens featuring stations without any workspace, tiny plastic stoves or the fake pots and pans that it came with, no. He needed more.

In fact, he'd decided on demonstrating his disinterest very clearing; hiding the kitchen set under the couch—yes, it fit under there—just so that his mother would think it missing and, oh-so-logically allow him to play with real ones instead. Baby lion was very clever, very cunning at a young age. He'd always known exactly how to get things done his way.

And in the midst of all these events, Annie had done the responsible thing of reporting this odd behaviour of Leroy's to her husband, Siegfried, who was really only ever present on weekends because, well, the world was always in need of their celebrity chefs. More so than their families.

"He could have died, Free," she'd said into the receiver, standing some several feet away from her son staring at the TV screen airing the third season of MasterChef. "It was cast iron. We should have done something about the kitchen. Could you maybe install a safety gate between the diner and the kitchen this Sunday afternoon? Just five minutes. I'll have it delivered on Friday evening."

"Like I said, just do away with the diner," came his response over the phone. Casual. Relaxed. "And it's just a pan, Annie. I was playing with knives at three."

"No! No, this isn't normal." Such a response to one's child experiencing a close encounter with death was not something Annie could fathom. "Why are you taking this so lightly?"

"Because he isn't going to die, Ann. Babies don't die so easily... fuck, one would wish they could, I mean—"

She'd hung up on him right then, furious. The sides of her head throbbing like a second heart in her brain, she felt her way to the couch for a moment's rest. Through closed eyes, she could hear the unnecessary yelling and eruptions of vulgar curses characterising little Leroy's favourite show, realizing that this probably wasn't the most children-friendly of programs.

She chanced a peek at her boy with an eye.

While the contestants on the screen had continued to fuss over a dramatic team challenge featuring blue team's raw chicken, her baby lion had resorted to substituting a plastic chopper (part of the toy kitchen set she'd got him) the size of a butter knife with a foam sword he'd got as a birthday present last year. Fortunately for him, the latter was in the actual size of a chopper.

Annie watched her boy chop away at the plastic fruit halves stuck together by Velcro. Only, not the sort of movement kids often mimicked—the samurai cut, sword in both hands sort of thing—Leroy had adopted the proper hand and wrist movement of using a chopper. It almost looked as though he had a real one in his hands.

"No more cooking channels for you, little lion," she grabbed the remote control and switched off the program. Her boy turned over his shoulder to stare.

*

Annie was not aware of how secretly proud her husband was after hearing the news of Leroy's close encounter with death. Siegfried was the quiet sort of person; extroverted only when he was required to, like on national television and live cooking demonstrations. He had Sunday afternoons with his boy—a short span of two to three hours, depending on how long Annie would take to finish her errands, mostly for her diner—and these afternoons, they'd spent in the baby room.

It was their private little thing. Showing the boy around in the kitchen, carrying him in one arm and with the other, demonstrating the act of sautéing. Then it was whisking, and the proper way of seasoning (up high, not down low close to the food) and then knife techniques. Alas, their most recent venture had been flipping food in a pan... which most probably explained Leroy's unintentional reaching for the cast iron that fateful afternoon.

To Siegfried, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

In fact, he'd been so elated that the very Sunday he'd returned, he had instead taught the boy how to defeat the very safety gate he'd installed! And due to a conflict of interest, he'd at once brought the boy away—refusing to allow him too much familiarity with the diner kitchen. Producing his very own knife set, they'd retreated to the baby room and began cutting up some real fruits and vegetables.

Leroy hadn't expressed anything apart from neutral sentiment. Not until his father began talking to him.

"Your mother's very angry about you showing interest in the kitchen," he said to the little lion, who hadn't the most interest in conversations. Most children were able to celebrate the joyous occasion of speaking their first word between 10 to 14 months of age but at two, the boy was as quiet as a candle. Not a single word.

Anxious Annie had been the first to land him a consultation with an expert but the boy had, on the contrary, demonstrated surprising levels of instructional understanding in every test performed. In fact, Leroy's mental capacity for language was far higher than peers his age and handling complex, multi-level sentences and instructions were almost considered easy for him.

And thus, the conclusion they'd arrived at: Leroy simply did not like talking very much.

"Well I'd be angry too," admitted Siegfried, skinning an apple with a fruit knife. The never-ending ribbon of red rather enchanting. "Only because you're interested in that kind of kitchen, I mean. There's all kinds of cooking in the world and... I don't want you to be held back by things of a smaller scale.

"No one wants to be." He held out the fruit knife, handle towards his son. The latter reached for it and grabbed it firmly in his hand, raising it slightly above eye-level and observing the glint of the metal.

His father flashed a smile. "You're not going to tell her I taught you all this, right?"

Little Leroy shook his head, lowering the fruit knife, staring at an apple slice on the cutting board.

"Good. Now follow me, just like this... and lift the back end of your knife... that's it. You're doing great—"

The door.

It swung open with a bang and far, far away in the distance, perhaps downstairs, where the kitchen was, Leroy could hear the whistling of a kettle. The sound was faint. Almost inaudible.

"Ann, you're back... fast." How odd. There was double his voice; an echo of it.

His wife had scoffed, crossing the room in heated strides and removing the knife from Leroy's little hands. She had that chucked into Siegfried's case and altogether snapped shut before kicking it aside. Her husband stood.

"Calm down, Ann. He isn't hurt or anything." Again, the echo.

"Don't talk to me."

The man held onto her arm before she could have a closer look of her son, spinning her around to face him. There was a device in her hand. Something white and circular. "What's that?"

"If you'd spent more time being a parent, maybe you'd know how baby monitors look like."

"You were spying on us," was his conclusion, face hardening. "Annabeth..."

"Wow, your intelligence is unmatched. I guess every parent must be 'spying' on their child, then—"

"You don't trust me? That's what this is? It's been months and the kid's fine. He's picking up way faster than adults could but you wouldn't believe it because you're stuck wanting to believe that he's just your normal little boy—"

"I knew it. Months. I knew it was you, you fucking liar why can't you just let him be and not, I don't know, try every second to turn him more into what you've always wanted to be!"

"What's wrong with that?" He made the first move, shoving her aside and reaching for his set of knives. "Imagine what he could be, training professionally at the age of two. I would've been so much more if I'd come from a better family and you fucking know that."

The woman had fallen on her side, mere feet before her two-year-old who had been staring; eyes following the words that felt, to him, sharper than any blade he's held. The heated, molten core of fury spat sparks and before him was yet another one of those. Those sparks.

"No, Free. Your family loved you just like they should have—rich or poor."

"You don't understand. Our boy could be famous at ten!" The man was going off now, away on the clouds; on the big dreams of his that waltzed above. "Annabeth, you're stealing that away from him right now, like this. He'll grow to hate you—"

"No he'll grow to hate you, for forcing him down a path and risking his life at such a young age—"

"You don't understand what the kid NEEDS—"

"You spend two HOURS with him every WEEK—"

"—BECAUSE YOU'RE STUCK IN THE OLD WAYS—"

"—AND YOU DARE TELL ME, I DON'T UNDERSTAND HIM—"

"—AND CAN'T SEE ANYTHING PAST YOUR FUCKING FAMILY DINER—"

"—WHEN YOU'VE BARELY BEEN—"

"—OR WHAT'S OUT THERE IN THE WORLD."

"—A FATHER TO LEROY."

He felt it rising like a kettle on the stove; heard the sound ringing in his ears like it always would and of course, the molten heat. It was glowing, red, a heinous heat so horrid that he felt like the room was the kettle and this was the kitchen and they were on the stove, ringing and bursting and steaming and it felt so much like he was on—

"Fire."

His first word had been soft and fleeting; a mere flickering. Like the flame of a candle, so effective in its task that in the midst of the chaos and the burning, he'd reduced it all into a single, deadliest flame. The word sounded almost as though it had been created for this very moment. Enunciated perfectly. So smooth on his tongue that it flowed, lava down a hill.

The ringing ceased nearly at once and both Annie and Siegfried had turned to their boy, a fruit knife in his hands and a firm, almost professional grip on the handle. Chests heaved. Words slowed to a stop and what an odd, serene peace seemed to replace the kettle on the stove.

He found himself rather fond of that moment. The silence that came after the sharp whistling of a kettle. And though the burning, licking things that danced and left a charred darkness in its wake never seemed to frighten a boy so young, it was then that he began to see the truth of it all.

That sometimes, small flames were enough.

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A/N: It is an uncomfortable, yet oddly relatable chapter for many of us reading behind our screens. I feel like Leroy's never really been the kind to show how much he was affected by his family's situation, what with him having to end up taking care of himself and his mother and having to be the 'strong one' in spite of all the Wind (hello Flight School readers), and because, well, he's only a candle.

But this short story is meant to say that Leroy chose to be a candle; not because he can't be a bigger flame, because he can, but that sometimes, fires can scare. Like the birthday chapter, Vanilla is scared of fires because he remembers how extremely hot it was, and that he didn't like it at all. But then Leroy asks: 'What about candles?' and this not only relates to, well, him blowing out the candles on his cake but also Leroy's moulding of himself—to become the candle that he believes can solve the problems in his life.

The only sacrifice he has to make is that, by being the candle, he can easily be defeated by the Wind and sometimes, that is our case too. We fight against many currents that, most of the times if not all, never seem to be in our favour. Walking against a wind blowing strong and afraid of it sweeping us off our feet is a constant fear.

Annie and Sigfried begin to argue and are unable to align their thoughts and opinions—separating into left and right, into a completely different worldview where the two are unable to see eye to eye. Leroy's single word is placed in the middle because that's where children often find themselves in an argument between their parents. It is short and effective. It shows the discomfort, pain, hesitance, fear and above all, loneliness in a single line.

Ah, how I missed this writing style. I must find the time to go back to Flight School.

-Cuppie :>