Author's Note: Okay so…I'm giving you warning now: This one is ridiculously sappy. Like saccharine sweet. I just love the relationship between these two. But this one is slightly longer than the first one (yay!) but I believe at least 2 or 3 of the others that will follow will be a good deal longer than this (fingers crossed). I'm still playing around with ideas for the others in this series. The next one I already have planned out will be Adam; I have ideas for ones with Mariana, Connor, and I believe Brandon. I'm still not quite sure what to do with Stef. We'll see what happens. Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!

Lena hated being in the hospital. Absolutely hated. It.

It was always such an inconvenience. She had a family to take care of. Work to do. Though, most of the kids were living away from home now. Still, she could never lose that innate feeling that she needed to be available if they needed her.

She threw her head back in frustration. The whole thing was stupid, really. A freak accident. She was setting up for Anchor Beach's annual prom when she fell off a ladder while trying to hang decorations. She had tried to catch herself on a nearby table and ended up rupturing her spleen.

Now she was here. In a hospital bed having just woken up from surgery, her entire family worried about her.

She had told Stef to not call the kids as she didn't want to worry them. Naturally, her wife had called them all anyway. Lena got on the phone herself and told Brandon and Jesus that they did not have to fly all the way from New York and Colorado. However, Mariana and Callie both insisted on coming in from LA.

And then there was the little sleeping being curled into her side.

Well, to be fair, Jude wasn't exactly "little" anymore. He was still thin, but he had only kept growing through high school and now stood well above the rest of his family at 6'3".

Jude was 19 now and the only one of the five kids who was still living at home. Worried his grades, particularly his math scores, wouldn't be good enough to get into college, he was currently enrolled at the local community college with plans to hopefully transfer afterwards.

Lena smiled, stroking her son's hair as she recalled Jude telling her and Stef the other reason he didn't want to go off to college yet.

He wasn't ready to leave home. As he had put it, there were 12 years he didn't get to spend in their house. With his moms. 7 years more than Mariana and Jesus. He just wanted to be able to spend more time with his moms before he officially left the nest.

Jude shifted in his sleep but remained dead to the world. He had stayed through the whole procedure. Even after his sisters had left to crash at the house for the night, he stayed, pacing the waiting room before collapsing into one of the chairs. Stef had tried her best to get him to go home and get some rest, but she knew it was fruitless. She knew Jude loved her with all his heart, remembered hearing about how he had walked home in the dark when he heard she had been shot because he was so worried, but she knew the bond between her youngest child and her wife was something special.

From the moment he had arrived at their house, Jude and Lena had just clicked on a sort of unspoken level. And their connection had only grown over the years. Lena continued to play with his hair as she recalled different moments she had spent with her youngest. Helping him study for tests, him giving her advice on how to deal with her brother all those years ago, Jude always offering to help her, whether it was in the kitchen, at school, or otherwise. She remembered the fierce, innate need to protect him she felt when she had quit her job after what happened with his 7th grade camping trip. He was her baby. She needed to protect him. Her hand stilled at that thought.

He was her baby.

She had missed out on having a biological child when they lost Frankie, but it took her all these years to see what was right in front of her.

Jude was Stef's son, but he was her baby. He was hers to protect and nurture and help grow and develop.

She couldn't keep the smile from her face as she finally saw the obvious.

"Mama?" she heard a groggy voice ask. She watched her son sit up slowly as he looked at her with concern in his eyes. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine, baby," she replied with a grin. "I'm fine."

P.S.: I don't remember if it was ever said where Jesus' boarding school was. For some reason I remember hearing Colorado, but please correct me if I'm wrong. In this, Brandon is getting his MFA at NYU, Jesus got a wrestling scholarship to a college in Colorado, and Mariana and Callie are at USC. Callie for social work and Mariana for dance and computer science.