Anna loved her time with Cole. Currently, he was telling her about his friends. She loved that he had actually made friends. He had struggled with that growing up. The kids on the base had beaten him up every chance they got, resulting in many trips to the urgent care on base and the hospital that was five minutes outside the gate, and Cole had more or less given up on making friends by the time they moved to Ninjago City. The way Cole talked about them, she thought she knew the other ninja personally. She wished she could meet them and thank them for being Cole's friends. Cole told her about how Jay and Nya were supposed to get married in a couple of weeks, and he was Jay's best man. She was thankful that he was comfortable talking to her about pretty much anything. There was a time long ago when she thought he might never like her. Back then, she and Lou didn't think Morgen leaving would affect Cole the way it did. They didn't know it would lead to a fear of abandonment that never fully went away. She wished she had seen the signs and hadn't written it off as typical kid behavior.

Cole was not happy with the idea of getting a new mother. Even though Anna was always around, Cole wasn't that close with her, but as soon as Lou tried to explain that Anna would soon live with them and things were going to change, his attitude towards her changed. The daycare workers told Lou Cole was acting up more than usual and was starting to negatively influence the other children. He started avoiding Anna when she came over. If she tried to take him out and do stuff with him, he would throw a temper tantrum. She didn't fully blame him. After all, he was only three years old and didn't know any other way to express himself.

What Lou and Anna didn't know was that the daycare workers and some of the other parents would talk about Cole in front of him like he wasn't there. They didn't realize that while he played, he heard every single word they were saying. They said horrible things about Lou and Anna, they speculated where his real mother was, and they joked about why she left. He heard the gossip. Some of the other kids said Lou would forget about Cole once he and Anna married and had children of their own. One parent even asked Cole if he knew Anna wasn't his real mother.

Things got worse when they started packing up the house to move. Cole became extremely clingy to Lou and mean to Anna. A week or so before the wedding, Cole was being a brat, so Lou sent him to his room. After five or so minutes, Lou went up to talk to him. Anna followed a few minutes later and overheard some of their talk.

"Where's my real mommy?" Cole asked for the first time.

"She left when you were a baby," Lou explained, clearly not expecting that question for another few years.

"Why?"

"I'll explain when you're older." Lou glanced up and caught Anna's eye. She sighed, knowing she had a long road ahead of her to win Cole's trust.

The ceremony went off without a hitch. The reception started off really fun. The photographers went around and got some shots of the new family, there was a pasta bar for food, and of course, the dancing. The father-daughter dance was beautiful, and Anna took Cole to the back of the reception hall, away from anything fragile, and spun him around during the four-minute long mother-son dance. He loved it, and she was glad she got him to smile, but she had to rest for a few minutes before her and Lou's first dance.

A couple of hours into the reception, though, Cole became extremely bored. He ran around, looking for something to do. To make things worse, some of his older cousins were tormenting him. Zach, Cole's seven-year-old cousin, was the worst. Cole tried to walk away, but Zach just followed him. When Lou and Anna were cutting the cake, Zach pushed Cole down. Cole tripped over a power cord for one of the cameras and landed on a shattered glass someone had dropped earlier. Silently, and without shedding a tear, Cole walked over to his dad and tugged on Lou's pants leg.

"Zach pushed me," Cole said, holding out his hand that had a three-inch shard of glass sticking out of his palm. Lou tried to wrap Cole's hand while Anna quickly changed, but Cole jerked his hand away when Lou touched the glass. Cole didn't make a sound the whole ride to the ER, and he didn't cry when the nurse gave him something to numb his arm. He did scream at the top of his lungs, though, when the doctor tried to pull the glass out before he was fully numb. A few hours later, Cole was dropped off at Lou's father's house, and after a tearful goodbye, Lou and Anna got a late start on their honeymoon.

Two months after the wedding, Cole was still acting up. He was starting to calm down some, but he was perpetually grumpy. He hadn't adjusted to the move well, evidenced by the fact he clung to Lou. On top of that, the kids in the playgroup Lou and Anna put him in refused to play with him when they weren't picking on him. The mothers did nothing since they were too busy gossiping. Lou and Anna wondered if Cole would ever make friends.

Anna was shocked when she found out she was pregnant. She and Lou hadn't really been trying, and she had hoped to wait a year or two when she was closer to retirement. She had already decided that twelve years of service were enough, and when this set of four years were up, she would not reenlist. When her pregnancy was confirmed, she was placed on modified assignment, which she hated. Nevertheless, she decided to make the most of the situation and enjoyed an extra day and a half at home each week with Cole. He liked not going to the playgroup as often.

One night, when Anna was about eight weeks, she woke up to a stabbing pain in her abdomen. She adjusted her position, but it didn't go away. She knew something wasn't right. She had to practically shove Lou out of the bed to wake him up. There was blood all over her side of the bed. Lou got a neighbor to watch Cole while they went to the hospital.

Cole was confused when Lou and Anna weren't in their room. He always went into their room when "Reveille" played at six, and they were always in there. Except for today. He went downstairs and saw his neighbor asleep on the couch. He watched her from the stairs until she woke up. She tried to engage him, but he refused to play along. She was eventually able to get him to sit down to breakfast with the promise of chocolate chip pancakes with extra chocolate chips on the side. After breakfast, he stood on the couch and stared out the window. Around one in the afternoon, Benny, Lou's older brother, came by to pick up Cole.

"Uncle Benny! Where's Daddy and Anna?" Cole asked as he opened the door.

"They're at the hospital. Go get dressed and I'll take you to see them."

Cole ran upstairs to get dressed and Benny followed. He grabbed some extra clothes for Cole and put them in a bag. Once Cole was ready, Benny loaded him up into one of the car seats in his wife's car and drove to the hospital. Anna was asleep in the bed, and Lou was reading a book when they entered.

"Daddy!" Cole ran over and climbed up in Lou's lap.

"Shh. We don't want to wake Anna up," Lou whispered.

"What happened?" Benny asked.

"Anna… She… she had a miscarriage last night. Something went wrong, though. They don't know why, but she kept hemorrhaging. It got so bad, to save her life, they did an emergency hysterectomy," Lou sighed. Outside of her superiors and doctors, no one knew about the pregnancy yet. He dreaded the thought of having to tell friends and family about it when they found out she was in the hospital.

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"I… I would not be surprised if she-who-shall-not-be-named was somehow involved."

"How?"

"I don't know," Lou admitted.

Benny took Cole home with him, despite Cole's pleas, whining, and tantrum. Anna went home a few days later, but Lou begged Benny to keep Cole for the rest of the week. When Cole did finally return home, he had bruises, cuts, and a black eye from his many fights with Zach.

Lou returned to work the following Monday. Anna's parents were there to help out, and he had warned Cole to be gentle around Anna, so he felt comfortable leaving them alone for a few hours.

Anna felt numb. She hadn't known how much she wanted a child of her own, and now she would never get the chance. She couldn't cry, she was out of tears, so she ended up staring blankly at the wall. Cole came in to see if she was still sad, and she let him watch TV in her bedroom, something not normally allowed. As she watched him watch TV, she didn't understand how Morgen was able to walk away from her child the way she did. She wondered if Morgen regretted her decision, if she ever yearned to know Cole. Anna gently pulled Cole closer so she could snuggle with him. She felt better holding him.

"When will Daddy be back?" Cole asked.

"At dinnertime. He always comes back, so do I. We will never leave you forever, Cole. We love you," Anna whispered, stroking his hair. Cole didn't say anything.

While Anna was home recovering, Cole behaved pretty well. He sat on the bed with her and watched a lot of TV. He occasionally brought her books to read to him. She heard all of the adventures of Evan, the giant, invisible termite that lived under Cole's bed. After several weeks, she was ready to return to work. Cole held her hand tight as they walked up to the house where the playgroup was. He asked to stay home, but Anna told him he was too young to stay home alone.

"Will you come back?" Cole asked.

"Always."