Prompt: Stef and Lena grieve the loss of Frankie together after Lena gets home from the 7th grade camping trip with Jude.
I'm sure it's been done before, but it won't leave my head. I feel like Stef broke down crying in that episode and there was something missing. This takes place between 2:09 and 2:10.
I don't own The Fosters.
This one shot is done in the POV of Lena Adams Foster.
I take requests, so feel free to PM me if you want to see anything.
"I was just calling to say I got your video," you said through a chuckle.
"Oh, I sent it?" Stef asked incredulously.
"Yeah, I called a plumber, he's on the way." You answered.
"Okay thank you," your wife said and that's when you heard her voice.
It sounded like she was crying, you immediately soften your voice, "Hey, you okay?"
You hear her start to cry again, "I miss the baby," you hear her get out. "I didn't even know her and I miss her so much."
Your face turned into a small, sad smile, "I know, me too." You said.
You get home in the afternoon the next day with your youngest in search for your wife. Jude went to find his siblings and you found your wife lying on her back with her arm over her face. You sit next to her and she looked out from under her arm when she felt the bed tip.
She settled her head in your lap and you run your fingers through blonde hair before you leaned down to kiss her.
"Hi," she said to you when you pulled away and rested your forehead on hers.
"Hey," you said softly.
"You're home," she said.
"I am," you replied.
"I missed you," she said.
You leaned down to kiss her forehead, "I missed you too honey." You said running fingers through blonde hair. You know she always relaxed with a scalp massage. You two sat that way for a long time, it was soothing. You had found some solitude in the midst of a bunch of 7th graders. You connected with something out in nature that you couldn't do in the eighth largest city in the United States. You were enjoying the silence massaging your wife's scalp until you heard something you weren't expecting to hear.
Your wife crying.
"Baby," you whispered cradling your wife in your arms, rocking her back and forth.
"I didn't want her at first," she cried. "I - I didn't want-" she cried harder than you had ever seen her usually well-put-together-wife cry.
"Shh, sh." You said with tears in your eyes. "It's okay baby," you soothed and comforted. "It's okay. She knew you loved her. She knew."
You sat there humming as you rocked your wife back and forth as she just cried and as your wife's cries died down, she chuckled, "You know the funny-not-so-funny thing about grieving? You think all that everything is good one moment and then the next moment you're having an emotional breakdown," Stef sat up and propped herself against the pillows, "and for so long you wanted this. A baby and I remember what it was like to be pregnant with B. That connection. It's something every woman should be able to experience if they want it. I can't imagine if I feel this horrible, this sad, I can't imagine what you're feeling."
"Stef," you say. "Honey."
"Because I know if I ever lost Brandon, I know if I ever lost the one thing I feel so connected to in an unromantic way, the love-" Stef quickly stood up, ran her hand through her hair and looked out the window. "The love I have for him. Sure, it's a little more than the twins, Callie, and Jude and sometimes that makes me feel guilty. But that bond we had for nine months when he was in the womb. If I were to ever to have lost him. I don't - I don't know what I would've done."
You looked at your wife as she got out what she had been thinking for the last 24 hours, "And then I think of you," she continued. "I think of how you lost our baby girl and I don't blame you for that. There's nothing that we could've done." She took a deep breath and stares out the window, "And then I think of four of our kids, who have lost so much, and now add onto that a baby sister."
She become fixated on something outside and you come behind her to see what she's staring at. When you look out the window, you see all five of your kids attempting to play a game of football in the backyard. Jesus was trying to teach them, but the girls and Jude were failing to understand; however, they all were having a good time.
"I love our kids, I do," you said, "and I hope they know that I didn't want a baby of my own because I didn't love them."
She turned in your arms and kissed you softly, "If they don't, we'll spend the rest of our lives reassuring them." She said before she kissed you again.
That's all it took for you to start randomly crying and as your wife gets you to the bed to cuddle with you, you realize that this is what you needed.
To be wrapped up in her arms and you knew that no matter what happened, you'd be safe and loved and protected. But right in that moment, what you needed was for both you and your wife to be curled together crying. Grieving together.
And that's what the two of you did.
End
