Baby Age AU! It's a little different from my usual style, but I wanted to experiment and write this quick little word vomit vignette anyway. If it's incoherent, blame my mind running a bit too fast while I was writing it.

A/N: This is the sort of kind of "Prequel" to another story I will be uploading soon :) You'll see!

Rated K for Kickbutt AU Sad Stuff

Disclaimer: I do not own BATB characters and only like putting them in crazy situations.

Sophie watched dejectedly as the rain continued to fall in front of her. She had on her Pooh bookbag and was standing on the porch of the kindergarten under the large hood watching as parents and children splashed away together, laughing and rushing to get back to their homes. She kept watching and waiting quietly, hoping that maybe her mother would finally show up to pick her up.

"Sophie? What are you doing outside? Get back inside before you catch a cold."

"I can't. I'm waiting for Mommy."

The two kindergarten teachers glanced at each other in worry before going to Sophie and stooping next to her, gently wrapping their arms around her shoulders.

"Why are you waiting for your mommy, Sophie? Tony, your older brother, is going to pick you up from now on, remember?"

Sophie stayed silent, watching the falling rain impassively, waiting to see her Mom rounding the corner in her pajamas with crazy hair and bunny slippers on her feet. She would come. No matter what anyone said or thought.

"Mommy is coming to get me." she said stubbornly, sitting down on the little porch, watching the rain.

"Alright Sophie." One of the teachers said softly, glancing at her colleague with a sigh. "Stay right here. We'll be right back, okay hun? Let me go call your brother."

They both stood and rushed off back inside in the school. Sophie didn't care where they were going. She was going to wait however long it took for Mommy. Any minute now, she was going to come running down the sidewalk like always and apologize for being so late to pick her up. Any minute now, she'd come to get her little princess and pick her up and carry her on her back and take her to get ice cream without any of her stupid, annoying brothers. Like always, it would be their little secret. Sophie knew she was coming. Any minute now.

Mommy would come.

She always did.

The door to the kindergarten opened and someone walked out and stood next to her. It was the little boy with the two missing front teeth, bright green eyes, and curly, out of control hair who Sophie didn't like. He was always making fun of her hand me down pants and her G. I. Joes. Just the other day, he had taken her graham crackers and pulled on her ponytail. So she pinched him until he cried, and she had gotten in trouble with the teachers.

"Why are you sitting outside?" he poked her annoyingly. "Everyone else is playing."

"Go away you stinky boy." She said, sniffling softly.

"You go away you smelly girl!" he retorted, angry that she was being mean.

"I was here first!"

"So?!"

"Just go away!" she screamed, her voice breaking and eyes shining with furious, unshed tears.

His teasing smile dropped like a bomb, and he took a giant step back, eyebrows high on his forehead. He hadn't expected her to be crying. Sophie never cried. She was tougher than most of the boys in their class. Even when he saw her break her arm a few months ago, she hadn't cried, just laughed and hopped into her mommy's arms when she came to bring her to the hospital.

"A-are you crying?" he asked, scared.

She sniffled and swiped her arm across her nose, ignoring his question.

"Why are you crying?"

She didn't say anything and hunched over her knees, staring out into the rain that was growing heavier by the second. Turning around, he ran back inside, leaving Sophie once again to solitude. Her head lifted in excitement as a woman rounded the corner, but she ran right past the entrance to the kindergarten. It was just a jogger taking a shortcut to get out of the rain. Sophie settled again, staring out in the distance with soft tears trailing down her cheeks.

Just then, the boy burst out of the doors again, racing to her. Sophie looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes when she saw it was him again.

"Go away…" she sniffled, "Seriously…"

"I don't know why you're crying… but this always helps me feel better."

"It better not be a stupid frog." Sophie growled, remembering the time he had put a slimy frog in her hand, thinking he was so funny.

"It's not a frog…" he opened her palm and put something in there.

She looked at the little object. It was a shining keychain with a dangling purple stone. It glittered and shone every time it caught the light in a different way.

"What is it?"

"My daddy said it's an amasist!"

"An amasist?" Sophie stared at it in confusion. "I've never heard of an amasist before..."

"You hold it and cry to it. My daddy gave it to me. He said whenever I feel sad, I should just cry to it and it will help me feel better!"

"Does it work…?" she asked quietly, still turning it in her hand.

"Uh huh! It always does for me."

"C-can I keep it? Do you need it back?"

"I'm a big boy now! I'm not going to cry anymore. You can have it."

Sophie nodded quietly, before turning around and smiling slightly at him. "That's really nice of you…"

"I-it's not like I l-like you or anything!" he stuttered, his rosy cheeks turning brighter red, "You're still an icky girl!"

And then he ran back inside as fast as he possibly could.

Sophie stared out at the falling rain, still looking out in the distance for Mommy. But every passing adult only brought more disappointment. And each passing woman only made Sophie's little heart ache even more. Her mommy always loved the rain. She loved dancing in it and playing in it and dragging Sophie with her outside to soak in it. She would always say the rain was beautiful because it was so free. Free to fall, free to come and go as it pleased. And that the rainbow that came out at the end was the path to that freedom. And then Mommy would sigh wistfully and stare out into the distance, that far off look coming into her gaze until Sophie wasn't sure her Mommy even was in their world anymore.

It was raining when Mommy left. One minute she was dancing in the rain, the next she was gone. Just like that. No warning. No goodbye, no nothing. She was gone.

Sophie closed her eyes, rocking back and forth, lip quivering.

Mommy was gone.

She wasn't coming back.

Holding the stone against her chest, Sophie curled up into a ball and wailed, her loud sobs and heartwrenching cries wracking her whole body with shudders. She wailed into the stone even when the kindergarten teacher came and hugged her tightly, muttering soothing words. And she wailed into the stone as her brother picked her up, carrying her back to their home.

Sophie never would go back to that kindergarten again. They moved the next week. Eventually, she would forget about it entirely. Except for the lingering memory of that one little boy who gave her the keychain stone. The very stone that would get her through lonely nights without her Mommy. The very stone that always managed to take her pain away when she was heartbroken.

She promised herself that one day, if she ever found him again, she would thank him.