Vanilla

Saw: Two Years

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."