Last chapter. Enjoy!!!

Lilly's senses came back to her slowly, gradually. The first sense to come back was her sense of smell. It was too clean, too…sterile for her to be at Miley's grandma's house. No, all she could smell was freshly washed sheets and something chemical. Something that didn't belong in the natural world.

The sense of taste was the next sense that came back to her. Her tongue was dry and it tasted like…like chemicals. Gross and disgusting. Like when you went to the orthodontist and glued your braces on your teeth and accidentally got the glue on your tongue and you can't get the taste off for the next three hours.

Then she could suddenly hear. Beeping machines, worried voices, crying.

Her eyes fluttered open and she was staring, surprisingly, straight forward. She was propped up on pillows and there were several people in her hospital room, most of which she didn't recognize. One she did recognize.

"Miley?" she rasped.

The brunette turned to her, her eyes wide, red, and puffy, like she had been crying. Then everything came back to her. The pain. Stumbling into the hallway and sliding down the wall and to the floor. Miley kneeling in front of her and asking what was wrong. Ruthie saying that the baby was coming too early. The sound of sirens. Paramedics telling her that they were going to take care of her. The delivery. God, the delivery.

"Miley," she whimpered.

"Oh, Lilly," Miley whispered, rushing to her bedside and wrapping her arms around her shoulders, pulling her closer. And, for once, she wasn't telling her that it was going to be okay. For once, she was crying with Lilly. The two girls' pain was one and the same, combined to take them to a whole different, higher, level.

"What happened?" Lilly whispered through her tears.

"The…the baby came prematurely," Miley said quietly, pulling away from Lilly so they could see each other. "It was a miscarriage. The doctors said that there was no way that this could have been prevented and that there were no obvious causes for the baby's death. They said it was a…a…spontaneous miscarriage. There was nothing you could have done, Lilly. It isn't your fault."

Tears were streaming down Miley's face and Lilly reached out with her hand, wiping them away with her fingers. The brunette watched her with wide eyes. Lilly stroked Miley's cheek softly. "We haven't come up with a name," she whispered.

"A name," Miley said, dumbfounded.

"A name," Lilly repeated.

They were both quiet. The whole room was quiet. The whole world was quiet. It was like the world was holding its breath as the two girls thought of the perfect name for the infant who would never take her first breath, the toddler who would never take her first step, the child who would never speak her first word, the little girl who would never ride her first bicycle, the daughter who would never cling to her mom as she headed to her first day of the school.

"Destiny," Lilly whispered.

"Destiny Hope," Miley whispered back.

"Destiny Hope Stewart," Lilly said, looking at the doctors with tear-filled eyes. "She'll have the last name of Miley. Her name will be Destiny Hope Stewart."

Lilly looked into Miley's eyes and for the first time in a long time, she knew that she was safe and she was cared for. Even though she was far away from the house she grew up in, far from the city she loved so much, far from the woman who had raised her and scorned her, far from the places she knew so well, she felt safe.

Thinking back on everything that happened, her fight with Miley, running away to the city for a day, getting raped., finding out that she was pregnant, discovering that Miley loved her, attempting to commit suicide, starting to date Miley, telling Oliver that they were together, getting rejected by her mother for being gay, rejecting Miley's proposal, going through the miscarriage, she found that all these trials and tribulations she had endured actually strengthened her, made her stronger.

And, at that moment, Lilly didn't need a reason.

Wow. That's all I've got to say about this. Wow. It's been an incredible experience actually FINISHING one of my longer stories. I have so many unfinished stories that I can't even count them, and this is an incredible achievement for me. I am definitely proud of this. :)

Yes, I know that you all hate me for leaving the story here. The good thing is, I'm going to be writing a sequel. The bad thing is…it's not going to be for a while. What I'm going to do is take a break from this, maybe for a month or two, finish Remembering Miley, and post another story multi-chap story I've been working through on the side. I have about six chapters of that right now, which means that I could update weekly.

And I know I'm posting this right after I posted the last chapter, so I don't have any reviewers to thank yet. THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU DON'T HAVE TO REVIEW!!! Please, please, please, please, please review. I know that it means a lot to me, and, whenever you get the chance, review any of the stories you read, because the authors really appreciate it.

Thank you all so much for being so loyal to this story and sticking with it even when I've sort of let it trail off at times. I promise that I will definitely be writing a sequel (someone write a reminder to me in two months), but in the meantime, I will be posting other stories. Be sure to check those out and, most importantly, REVIEW!!!! :)

Once again, thank you all, and happy holidays!!!

AThousandTimesMore

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