Chapter Text
They were triplets, although no one who met them believed that initially. With triplets, two kids are usually identical twins, one fertilised egg cell that split into two, but the third embryo develops separately, as a fraternal third. To their parents great regret, their fraternal third baby had a genetic disorder, and she was born with a set of disabilities that presented itself more and more, while she was growing up.
Storm and Silver were happy babies, curious toddlers, and rambunctious little boys. Sunny was a quiet baby, quite sedentary as a toddler, and when she was around three years old, it became very clear that both her physical and mental development were lagging behind her brothers' significantly. She was small, had poor fine motor skills, and started walking and talking a lot later than the boys. The older the brothers got, the more they started to fuss about their "little" sister. As if they were one person, Storm and Silver were always there when Sunny was sad, held her hand when she was scared during movies, kissed her goodnight at bedtime, picked her back up when she fell. Their parents couldn't have hoped for a better relationship between the three of them.
It had always been difficult for the Campbells to find a babysitter for their triplets, because they were a lot to deal with. Two boys running around and getting up to all kinds of hijinks, and a little girl with developmental issues, who could deal with that? So in the first few years of trying that, they cycled through a rotating cast of babysitters, who all only stayed for either one day, or a handful of weeks, before saying it was too much for them. The result was that all the years when the boys were taking the bus to elementary school, Sunny would be dropped off at a special education and care facility in the morning by her mom Samantha, stay there all day, and be picked up by her dad, Mark, on his way home from work. This meant that the boys had quite a bit of time at home in the afternoons without their sister present, and they used it for typical boy things.
For a few years they were really into cars, there were Hotwheels strewn all over the house. Then they were into Legos and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they would build structures in which bad guys would hide. Then their Turtles action figures would come in and save the day and demolish the structure in the process, so they could start all over again the following day. When they were still a bit older, and their parents deemed them old enough, they both got smartphones, and with only mildly supervised afternoons (their seventeen year old babysitter Leah was mostly chatting with her boyfriend on her own phone) they would spend all that time watching videos on YouTube and TikTok.
In the evenings, when Samantha was cooking dinner in the kitchen, Mark doing some last bits of work in his office, and Sunny was home, by default the boys were her designated supervisors. They were all in on it, too. Colouring books, wooden blocks to build towers, some old Hotwheels, everything was put out for her on the living room floor. They pulled out all the stops to entertain their little sister, and she enjoyed it. But what she loved most, was the loving attention from her brothers. All day she'd been cared for by virtual strangers, because the nurses at the care facility never stayed on too long, and now here she is at home with her two favourite people in the whole wide world, playing with her.
Sunny had very little vocabulary to let the boys know, but that didn't stop her from being grateful. Every time they finished colouring a picture, building a tower, or driving a little Hotwheels car around the couch, she thanked the brother closest to her with a kiss. Silver and Storm always played it off as gross, because at 11, boys aren't supposed to like loving attention like that, right? But they always giggled and hugged her close to them right after. They could never pretend not to like it for very long.
When dinner was ready, either Storm or Silver would set the table, the other still playing with Sunny. Then Mark would come down, lift Sunny into the high chair next to Samantha, and they'd all sit down for dinner. Samantha and Mark would ask the triplets how their days were, Silver and Storm would reply with "fine" or "boring" and leave it at that, and Sunny would point at the boys, saying their names, and say things like "play!" and "love you!" The parents would smile at each other, feeling love swell in their hearts.
After dinner, it was bedtime for Sunny first, the boys helping out with the bedtime routine. Brushing her teeth, dressing her in her Pj's, putting her sippy cup with water next to her bed, and reading her a story. The triplets would sit side by side, Sunny in the middle, the boys each holding a side of the book, reading off the page closest to them, alternating. They did voices for her, playing off of each other with extra jokes, tickling her to make her laugh. And then they would tuck her in, she'd get a kiss from first mom, then dad, then, on both cheeks at the same time, her brothers. And she'd drift off to sleep happily.
As far as the Campbell parents were concerned, they had the perfect family.