A/N: Hello, friends! I've been consistently off the map, more often than not, I know. Senior year's making me flip-shit crazy with everything to do, not to mention I'm betaing three (Yes, THREE, I know) other writers. This leaves me with precious little time to research, write, and publish my own works. So in the absence of actual updates, I'll give you a look at what I'm working towards:

I Miss You, Too: I'm officially putting it on a hiatus while I finish it. I thought I would be able to finish it while you all caught up when I was writing it, but after a bunch of craziness, it turns out I cannot finish it. But when I have more time, I promise, I will begin working solely on that. I should finish it sometime around July, and then the publishing will continue.

Am I Too Old For This: Still on hiatus. It's not that I have no idea where to go with it, it's that I have ideas, but have to get to that point.

Learning To Fight Series: Suspended until further notice. I am still working on finding real self-defense moves. Just not very hard.

In the meantime, I have this for you. I was very excited when the website decided to listen to my pleas and put Claire in as a character to write with. I and my friend, Jade Nolan, have put up stories for her and Mac, but we have not had her to post with. I think if you look them up, you'll find quite a few lovely stories, along with this one. I wrote this a few months ago, asked her and Ballettmaus to beta it, and promptly forgot about it. Then I was working on something else last night, remembered this, and finished making edits. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I hope you enjoy it!

Okay, so I've been rambling for long enough now. Sorry about that, I know how many of you hate reading novels before stories. Just thought it might help to hear from me.

Enjoy, as always,

Brii T

A weak cry echoed from the other room. Claire sighed, heaving herself off of the couch she had been resting on and padding down the hall. She didn't want her little boy waking her parents up again.

"It's okay, baby," she soothed him as she got closer and began to turn the knob. "Mommy's here. What's wrong?"

The door swung open, and she gasped. Instead of a crib, changing table, or even a rocking chair, there was nothing in that room. The room was empty. Claire felt the tears begin to fill her eyes, and she began to sob, even as the cries continued…

Claire sat up with a gasp. She was in her bed, her husband lying next to her. No cries came from the other room—they had been a dream, but the tears were real. Drawing her knees to her chest, she curled up and continued to cry, muffling the tears against her legs. There was no baby, and there never had been.

She had given him up at sixteen. He would have been ten years old today. Her sobs grew louder. She knew she had made the right choice—as a teenager, she had been in no condition to be a mother, and her boyfriend at the time had wanted nothing to do with the baby. She couldn't keep him—even though she wanted to, she didn't have the means to raise a child—so she gave him up for adoption to a nice family in Chicago. Oh, she had wanted to see him, but she knew an open adoption would be too hard for her to handle. So she gave him up—a closed adoption—and moved on. Or so she thought. Every year, when his birthday rolled around, her ability to suppress the guilt she carried would fail, and she'd have the same dream, a dream of things she would never have.

"Claire?" Mac said sleepily, moving next to her and interrupting her thoughts. His hand traversed the sheets next to him. When he didn't feel her there, he opened one eye. Slowly he sat up, taking in his wife's form. She raised her head, the streaks from her tears glistening in the light that came through the window. Mac felt a jolt, and he edged closer to her. He had known this was going to happen. It happened every year.

"He's ten today," she said, looking out past the foot of the bed into the deep unknown. "My little boy is ten." Her voice was surprisingly steady.

"I know," Mac said quietly. He put his hand on her side and leaned her against his chest, resting his chin on her head. Her shoulders began to shake, and she clutched Mac's arm desperately to her chest.

"I want my son!" she cried, sobbing ashamedly. "I want him, I never should have given him away; why did I give him away?"

"Sh, Claire, it's okay, it's okay, shh, sh-sh-sh-sh-sh," Mac soothed her. His arms tightened around her, and she turned enough so that she was sobbing into his shoulder instead.

"I don't even know what they named him," she said sadly through her tears a moment later. "He was my baby, and I don't even know his name." she looked at him, desperation etched into every inch of her face. "I want to find him. I want to find him and tell him that I—that I would have given everything to keep him, but that I wanted him to have a better life."

"He'll understand," Mac assured her gently. Claire's eyes opened suddenly.

"He's not going to understand, Mac," she said desperately. "He'll grow up bitter and unhappy, and he'll resent me! I'll find him, and he'll be mad at me because he thinks I don't love him! Oh, Mac, I have to find him, I have to explain!" She tried to loosen Mac's grip around her, but he refused.

"Okay, Claire, okay," Mac said soothingly. "I know you want to find him, baby, I know. But you can't find him yet, he's only ten, and we're not in Chicago. So why don't we wait until morning, and then we can talk about this again?"

"He probably wakes up on his birthday and hates me," Claire muttered, ignoring Mac's words.

"He doesn't hate you."

"That's a lie," Claire blubbered. "What self-respecting kid wouldn't? I'm his mom, I gave him up. He's gonna want to know why, and what can I say, that I was a stupid kid, and his dad didn't want him, and I couldn't have him, so I gave him away? If he didn't hate me before we talked, he would after. I'd hate me. Hell, I do hate me. Not a day goes by where I don't hate myself for giving him up."

"Okay," Mac said firmly. "That's it." Taking her head in his hands, he lay her down gently, stroking her temple with his thumb. His strong arms held him above her, supporting him so that she didn't feel his weight. Looking deep into her tearstained eyes, Mac sighed before saying the words that he had said every time she had woken up with this on her mind before, and would say every time after this.

"Claire, that's enough. Don't say that you hate yourself. I…I know that giving up your baby was hard for you, but think of the good you did. You gave two people a chance they never thought they'd have at parenthood. You gave your baby a better life. You did the right and responsible thing, honey, and as hard as it was for you, it brought so much joy to his adoptive parents, and no one can hate you for that. You loved him, loved him enough to give him away; that's all that matters. When the time comes, you can tell him that. And I'll be right here with you when you do."

Claire looked up at him, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes.

"Do you mean that?" she asked waveringly. The smile that Mac returned was so breathtakingly, heartbreakingly beautiful that Claire began to believe what he said.

"Yes," he said simply.

Claire gave him at last a small, watery smile. "Thank you, Mac. Thank you for helping me with this. I don't know what I'd do without you," she said softly.

"Oh, you'd survive, I suppose," Mac said lightly. He kissed her gently. "Are you going to be okay?"

"Yeah," Claire said softly. "I'll live." She sighed, turning her head to look the out window. "And he'll live, too. He's out there somewhere, living. Because of me. I made the right choice, and gave him a better life than the one I could ever give him."

"Yes, you did, Claire," Mac said. "Can we go back to sleep now?"

Claire stuck her tongue out at him, but she laughed and nodded her head, allowing herself to be pulled back down.

As they curled up together, Mac gently stroking her arm, Claire knew again that she made the right choice. She'd known that all along. Even as she signed the adoption papers and her heart broke, she knew that her choice was the right choice for her and her son.

Sometimes, she thought sleepily as she snuggled closer to Mac, remembering the day she had given her baby away, sometimes, the right choice is the choice we make when our hearts are breaking. Sometimes, the only way to grow is to break so that we can heal.