Author's Note: Here it is! Chapter 10. I hope you guys don't hate me too much by the end of this. :-S Anyway, I'll say I'm sorry anyway just in case. Enjoy!

CMA Legal: I don't own The Foster's; I don't own FreeForm; I own the cat sleeping on my lap, though. She's all mine.

Chapter 10

Dinner that evening had been quiet. Callie didn't even want to go downstairs to dinner, but when Lena came in the door to retrieve her, she didn't put up a fight. She just went without comment to the kitchen and thwarted any attempt by anyone to carry on a conversation.

Once dinner was over, Callie cleaned the dishes, dried them, and put them away before heading upstairs to her room. Mariana had made herself scarce to work on homework in the lounge room, giving Callie the privacy she silently asked for.

She sat on her bed, leaning her head against her wall, journal open and forgotten beside her. Her knees were bent, but leaning lazily against the wall. Every few moments, a tear would escape her eye and run down her face. Sitting here, she'd never felt so lonely. She felt disconnected from the people she'd come to think of as her family, even though it was lost to her as to why.

Though, she'd never been hurt like she had that day by this family, and a part of her brain couldn't reason why she was so hurt to begin with. Had they purposely not put her day on the calendar? She doubted it, but it hurt all the same.

Another tear fell.

Her eyes wandered around the room, and despite Mariana's efforts to make space for her, every bit of Callie's presence in the room was confined to the corner where her bed sat.

Suddenly, the room felt confining. She was suffocating and needed some air, so she got up, threw on a pair of flip flops and made her way downstairs. She was grounded, she knew, but in that moment, she needed to breathe.

She journeyed downstairs, tired of the confining silence of the room. It was thirty minutes to lights out, and for that final half hour, she wanted some peace. The quiet upstairs was becoming too loud with everything that wanted to be said. She needed some solace, even if it was only for thirty minutes.

"Now where are you going?" Came a voice from behind her.

So close!

Callie turned around and saw her brother standing at the foot of the stairs with a small glass of milk in his hands.

"I'm just going outside for a little bit."

"Why?"

"Because I need some space."

"Space from what? You've been alone all night except for dinner."

"Yeah, sitting in a room. I just need to get some air. Aside from the porch, I'm not going anywhere."

"You shouldn't even be doing that. Moms grounded you, remember?"

"You know what, Jude?" Callie had had enough.

"What, Callie?"

"I don't need you telling me what to do! You don't want me parenting you; don't parent me."

"Then stop treating my moms like crap!" And there it was – the alienation she'd been feeling for the past few weeks, directly from the mouth of her brother. "You've been acting like a bitch towards them all night!"

"Jude..." A soft voice spoke from behind the boy, but Callie couldn't register which woman it had come from.

"Then tell them, Jude," Callie exploded as she felt tears prick the edges of her eyes. "Tell them how much of a bitch I am! Tell them I'm mean and nasty, and really not what they should want! Tell them to cancel the adoption and just throw me into the nearest group home. Tell your moms, Jude. Tell them they don't need someone like me in their lives! Tell them! While you do that, I'm going to get some air!" She turned around before she could completely lose her composure and tries to pull the door open, but finds it locked. She pounded her fist on the door. "Damn it!"

Callie felt a hand on her back, rubbing gently, before hearing, "No further than the front porch, yes?" Stef reached up and unlocked the door for the girl.

The teenager didn't answer as she pulled the door open and stepped out onto the porch. Now, unlike before the argument with her brother, even the porch was stifling – nearly suffocating. Maybe it was before as well, but it definitely was now.

Feeling the need to move, she glanced back at the front door. She knew she'd be in tons of trouble, but so be it. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and sent a text to both Stef and Lena – "I need to walk." before hitting send and stepping off the porch. She began walking down the street, not sure on where she was going to end up.

*~THE FOSTERS~*

She didn't like the look on Callie's face when she went out on the porch. She saw tears in the girl's eyes, and for Callie to appear that vulnerable was a rarity, and Lena was pretty sure she could pinpoint why. Jude had called them his moms, exclusive to him, not inclusive of his sister. It was the reason why, despite the teenager being grounded, she understood Stef's decision to give Callie that little bit of extra space.

That is, until she went to talk to the girl and found the porch empty. The text she'd received to her phone came a little too late, for she'd already discovered the teenager missing.

"She's not on the porch." It was almost laughable how blunt her wife could be when she was worried. If their sixteen-year-old hadn't disappeared for the fourth time since Saturday, she may have actually laughed. However, all they knew of their child's whereabouts was that she had to walk. It failed to inform either mother where was walking, a cardinal sin in the Adams Foster household. "I told her to stay on the porch."

"Did you expect her to? Really, Stef?" She let out a frustrated sigh; not frustrated at her wife. Rather, frustrated at her daughter. "She's just like you."

"I don't run away from my problems, Lena."

"No, you go on a run, or out to the garage and exercise for a bit. She needed a physical outlet, just like you do sometimes."

"I'm not a sixteen-year-old..."

"I know."

"She can't just..."

"Honey! I know you're worried. I am, too..."

Stef went over to the window again, looking up and down what she could see of the street.

"I can't stay here anymore..."

However, before she could grab her keys, the front door opened, and Lena let out a sigh of relief as Callie walked through.

Stef, on the other hand, rounded on the girl. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Honey!" Lena tried to step in.

"I went for a walk," came Callie's quiet answer.

"Oh, for a walk. How nice." Lena could tell Stef was trying to contain herself. "Did you not hear what I said? Front porch only. Is that not what I said?"

Callie nodded, though Lena noticed it was with some difficulty.

"Was any part of that not clear?"

Callie shook her head, again with a bit of stiff difficulty.

"Callie," Lena cut into her wife's rant, "what's wrong with your neck?"

"N-nothing," Callie answered, her voice a little hoarse. "Just stiff. I turned weird and I think I pulled a muscle."

Lena was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. "Callie, I know something is wrong with your neck. Come over here, please."

Callie backed away slightly. "I just want to go to bed. Can I please just go to bed?"

"No, you may not," Stef answered as Lena approached Callie and began looking at her neck, gently moving her head as Callie winced. "Four times in three days, Callie, Mama and I have found you just gone. I don't like not knowing where my kids are, especially after dark."

"I'm sorry." Callie winced once again and this time, she moved away from Lena. "Stop; it hurts!"

"I'm not trying to hurt you, Callie." Lena backed away slightly, looking at the girl in front of her.

"I already told you. It's just a pulled muscle."

"Watch your tone with us, Young Lady," Stef's tone was stern. "You're in enough trouble without adding an attitude to it."

"Okay, I'm sorry." A tear fell down Callie's cheek. "I'm just tired, and my neck hurts, and I don't want to talk anymore tonight; I just want to go to bed and sleep." She wiped a tear away. "Please, just let me go to bed. Extend my grounding; take my phone; take my computer; no TV ever; make me quit my job; give me manual labor; I don't care. Just please let me go to bed."

"All right," Lena stopped her. "Calm down. Go to bed, but we will be discussing this tomorrow immediately after school, understood?"

Callie nodded as both moms stepped forward and pulled her gently into their arms, trying not to aggravate the girl's neck any further. "We love you, Callie."

"So, so much, Love." Stef kissed Callie's temple. "Please remember that."

"We're so glad you're okay."

Callie smiled as she turned and went slowly up the stairs while the moms locked the door and made their way into the kitchen, Lena a bit slower than her wife. There was something about how Callie was walking that she didn't like, and something kept telling her to go after the teen.

"You're spidey senses are tingling, aren't they?" came her wife's voice softly as Stef wrapped an arm around her wife's waist.

Lena furrowed her brow and smirked at the blonde. "What are you talking about?"

"You. You have that look on your face that you used to get when the kids were hiding something from us, and you were about to catch them in a lie."

"No, what did you call it?"

"Your spidey sense. It's something Jesus used to call your mother's intuition when he was obsessed with Spiderman. He used to always say that your spidey senses were tingling when you got a certain look in your eye," Stef raised a knowing eyebrow, "like you know there's more going on with the teen who just limped upstairs to bed?"

"So, you saw it, too? Did you also see how she was holding her side?" Lena sat down at the kitchen island and watched as Stef nodded and got the makings together to make some tea. "I just wish she would trust us enough to tell us what's going on, you know?"

"I do, Love," Stef poured the hot water into her wife's mug and then some into her own. Joining Lena, she reached across the island and took the woman's hand. "and she will. Aren't you the one always saying to give the kids time – that they'll come to us when they're ready?"

"But not when they're hurt, Stef. She was walking like she was really hurt. Something had to have happened…"

Lena was cut off by a thud on the ceiling followed by Mariana yelling, "Moms!" from the top of the stairs. Both women abandoned their tea and hurried up the stairs where they saw Mariana in the hallway.

"What?!" Stef asked as she went over to check that the girl was all right.

"Callie…" and that was all she could get out before Lena hurried into the room to find Callie sprawled out, face down on the floor, not moving.

"Oh, my God…" Lena knelt beside the girl, turning her unconscious daughter over onto her lap. "Callie, honey? Can you hear me?"

"Mariana, what happened?" Stef asked the shaken Latina.

"I don't know," the girl answered. "I woke up for a minute when she walked in, asked her if she was okay. She said she was fine, but when she turned to go to her bed, she just collapsed."

"Okay, Baby," Stef nodded as she took the girl into her arms. "Go into our room and climb in bed…"

"What's going on?"

"We don't know yet, Love, but Mama and I will take care of it. Your sister will be fine. Just go lie down in our room and try to get some sleep." Stef gently pushed Mariana out the door and towards her room before pulling out her phone and dialing 9-1-1.

Lena turned her attention back to the teen in her arms. "Callie, baby, come on and open your eyes for me. Open your eyes, Honey..." When the brunette didn't move, Lena laid her down on her back and checked to see if she was at least breathing. It was shallow, but the girl was breathing. That was when she saw the bruising around her neck. "Stef…" She looked up when no answer came. "Stef!"

The blonde reappeared in the doorway, hanging up the phone. "The ambulance will be here in five minutes…"

"Look!" Lena pulled Callie's shirt collar down slightly, making the bruising even more visible.

"What the hell?" Stef leaned down, examining the bruise, which seemed to have spread up the girl's neck. Something in particular, however, caught her eye. "These look like…" She placed her hands gently over the bruise. "Oh, my…" she gasped.

"What?" When Stef allowed her emotions to show, Lena knew there was something very wrong.

"They're fingers." Stef sat back and rubbed her hands over her face. "Someone tried to…"

Lena looked into her wife's eyes and caught her meaning. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, trying to stifle the sob that threatened to escape. Instead, the brunette mother leaned down and placed a kiss on the teen's forehead. "Who did this to you, Baby?" she cried softly into the child's ear. "Can you wake up and tell me?"

There was no motion from the girl.

"Moms?" came another voice from the doorway.

Stef looked over and saw Jude standing there.

"Baby," she said softly as she stood, "what are you doing up?"

"I heard the noise. What's going on?" Then, he saw his sister. "Is Callie okay?!" He tried going to her, but found himself restrained by his mother.

"Love…" Stef stopped there, and Lena understood why. She didn't know what to tell him, either. Until the ambulance got there, they were going to do everything they could for the girl, but since she was breathing, albeit barely, there was very little the two could do.

"Is she okay?!"

"We don't know, Bud." Lena found herself answering honestly. She wiped a tear away. She wanted to tell him they knew for sure that Callie would be fine; she wanted to bring him the comfort she was longing for at the moment, but she also knew that Jude wasn't stupid. He could sense a lie almost as well as his mothers could. "We certainly hope so, Jude. God, we hope so."

Jude seemed to accept that in its purest form – the mother trying to be as honest as possible. "I'll, uh, go wait for the ambulance," and he retreated to the stairs.

"Stef…"

"No, Lena."

"Honey, please…"

"No. She's going to be fine." Stef's voice caught. "She has to be fine."

Lena nodded. Yes, Callie had to be fine. Her adoption was in three days. She had to be there for that. Nothing was stopping it this time. Lena was determined...heartbroken, scared, and worried beyond all reason, but determined. Her daughter was going to be adopted; she wasn't losing another one.

Within the next minute, Jude came back upstairs with two men and a woman with a stretcher. They put Callie on the stretcher and began taking her out to the ambulance. It was agreed that Lena would ride with them, Stef following in her SUV once Mike got to the house to be with the kids. Lena kissed her wife briefly, their tears mixing in the desperation of the moment before climbing in beside her daughter.

Author's Note 2: I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! In my defense...I warned you at the beginning...I know, not much of a defense, but so be it.