A/N: A little sad. This 2 part piece deals with a sensitive topic and touches on a somewhat controversial subject matter. This is a Babe piece. Joe is in part 1 and he is a good guy. Part 2 will be Steph and Ranger. I wrote this a while ago as a response to Adalind's challenge: It can't rain all the time. Thoughts and views of the characters in this piece are just one version of how these characters might think or react in this situation and not intended to be considered 'canon'.

Special thanks to Alfonsina.d for her beta skills, unending support and friendship, and a shout out to Cinbru and Kymme.*snort* I'm sensing a theme here…

It Can't Rain All the Time

Joe's POV

Tank let me in to the penthouse apartment. We had exchanged only cursory nods before he led me to the elevator and stoically stood beside me as he escorted me to the seventh floor. He key fobbed the door open for me and I stepped inside. I took in the stark lines of the place my Cupcake had called home for the last six months. I turned to thank Tank for calling me but he had left silently, closing the door behind him.

I had only been up here once before. I haven't returned since she came to live with him. I supposed I had moved on but I needed no reminders of the life she chose to lead without me.

Tank had called an hour ago to let me know his concerns. Stephanie had not shown up for her shift this morning and he had called to make sure she was okay. She told him that she was fine, only sick. But he sensed something was 'off'. He then offered to send Bobby. According to Tank, she seemed to panic. He said she sounded like she had been crying and she told him she just wanted to be alone.

Ranger had been 'in the wind' for three months.

I made my way down the hall and stepped into his bedroom. Their bedroom. I made a point of not looking at the massive bed with its sheets in disarray and the comforter kicked to the floor. It didn't matter that I knew that Manoso hadn't slept in this bed with her for months. I couldn't look.

I approached the bathroom door and could hear her softly keening and from the direction of the sound, she was sitting on the floor with her back to the door.

I cleared my throat and said, "Cupcake? It's me, honey. Are you okay?"

Suddenly she was quiet. Too quiet.

"Go away."

"Sweetheart, you know I'm not going to leave. Everybody is worried about you. Tell me what's wrong."

Nothing but silence from the other side of the door.

I turned around and ran my hands through my hair in frustration. It was when I turned around that I saw it. Blood. A brownish-red stain the size of a dinner plate near the center of the bed. I felt my heart go in my throat.

I've had girlfriends. Hell, I had this girlfriend. I spent enough time with a woman in my life to know that this type of stain was not a result of getting a period in the middle of the night.

I spun around and tried the knob. It was locked. "Cupcake, you have to go to the doctor."

"No."

"Cupcake."

"I said no!"

I heard her scoot away from the door and the sound of crinkling plastic and then quiet again.

"Stephanie…maybe it's not too late. Maybe if you let me take you to the doctor-"

In a bleak voice she said, "It's too late."

"How can you know?"

"Fuck, Joe! God. There's more than just blood, okay? I've talked to the doctor on the phone. Twice. There's nothing they can do," she said as her voice broke.

I slid down the door onto my ass. I felt a jolt as she leaned back heavily against the other side. I put my hand against the door where I imagined her head lay, offering her the comfort I knew she didn't want.

"Cupcake, please let me in?"

Softly, she said, "No."

I swallowed hard. "How far along were you?"

I heard her blow her nose and sniffle a few times. "Fourteen weeks."

"Did he know?"

She choked out, "No."

God, this was hard. "Honey, he'd want to know. He'd want to be here with you."

She let out a mirthless laugh. "No. He didn't want this."

"Cupcake, I'm sure-"

"No, Joe, I'm sure. He didn't want another child." She garbled, "I didn't want a child! I guess I got my wish."

I'd heard enough. I stood up on shaky legs and dug my pocket knife out of my pocket. I didn't have anything on it small enough to pick the lock so I used a medium blade to start taking apart the doorknob.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm coming in."

"No! You can't see this! Please don't," she sobbed.

I heard the other half of the knob clatter on the tiles in the bathroom. "Baby, move away from the door."

She was still for a moment and then I saw a flash of her curls through the hole the knob left as she slid to the side of the door.

I swung the door open. There was a plastic garbage bag on the floor lying open. I could see several rolled up pads in there and pink plastic wrappers. I swung my head to the right and saw Stephanie clad only in a towel. Her hand was between her legs and I glanced down and saw that she was holding a pad there. She wouldn't look up and meet my eyes.

I squatted down in front of her and grazed my knuckles down her pale cheek. A new tear trickled down to follow the path my hand had made.

"Steph."

She didn't look up. "Can you get me a shirt or something? And some panties?"

I stood and made my way to the bedroom. After opening a few drawers, I found one of Ranger's black t-shirts and a pair of utilitarian panties. When I came back into the bathroom, she was standing, clutching her towel and her thighs were clamped together. I laid the items on the counter and stepped back out to give her some privacy.

I made quick work of stripping the sheets and the mattress pad. When I saw that the blood had penetrated through to the mattress, I flipped the whole thing over. I wadded up the sheets and mattress pad and tucked them under other dirty laundry in the hamper in the dressing room. I heaved a sigh and sat on the floor leaning my back against the bed.

The bathroom door opened and Steph stepped out, unsure. She looked like a miserable child all but swallowed up by Manoso's shirt. I held my arms up and said, "Come here."

She sniffed and lowered herself into my lap, curling up with her nose in my neck. I rubbed soothing circles on her back. "You're going to be okay."

She whispered into my neck, "I'm not. It's all my fault."

I laid a kiss on the top of her head and said, "What makes you say that?"

"I didn't want to be pregnant."

Making sure to keep my voice completely lacking of any judgment, I said, "Did you have an abortion?"

She wiped her face and shook her head. "I thought I could. I thought about it. Ranger wouldn't want a baby. I didn't want a baby. But in the end, I just couldn't."

I kept rubbing circles on her back and willed her to continue.

"I can't contact Ranger when he's on a mission, so I decided I would just wait until he got home to tell him…show him. And if he didn't want us in his life…"

"He would."

She shook her head.

"Steph, he would."

She finally looked up at me, her face bleak and her eyes rimmed in red. "But in the beginning, I wished the baby away." She wiped at her face again and sobbed, "I wished my baby away!"

I held her as she cried, murmuring, "No you didn't. You didn't. It's okay. It's not your fault."

Once she had calmed again, I pulled her face up and forced her to look in my eyes. "Listen to me. This is not your fault. You wanted that baby. Maybe you didn't know it at first, but you wanted that baby. Manoso would have wanted that baby."

"I don't-"

"I do. You need to be honest with him when he gets back. You need to tell him everything you told me."

She interrupted, "But the way his life is-"

"He loves you. He wants what you want. He will adapt, adjust."

"I just screw everything up."

"That's ridiculous."

"Joe, how can you say that? I screwed up your life for three years. I've screwed up his life. He's had to make all of these concessions for me."

"Cupcake, you didn't screw up my life. I wouldn't trade what we shared for anything. You just let me go. One day, I'm going to meet the person I'm meant to be with, and I wouldn't have met her if you hadn't let me go.

"And Manoso wouldn't make any changes in his life unless he wanted to. He loves you. How can you doubt that?"

She shrugged. "Cupcake, I know you're sad right now. You'll probably always be sad when you think of this. But you're life will get better again. It will."

"How can you know?"

"It can't rain all the time."

~End Part 1

A/N: Stay tuned. Ranger is in part two. If you haven't checked out my profile page recently, please check it out now… after you review. *wink* I have updated, and it now has a link for those of you who were wondering about the progress of my book. There's also news regarding Lester and Xander…they won't leave me alone!