Just a quick Oneshot about Evenlyn in the corner store and some past information and thoughts on her sons.

Disclaimer: I do not own Four Brothers or its characters, nor do I claim any rights to them. Just borrowing them for some fun.

My Boys Won't

"You know, he's a good kid. He just needs an older brother." Evelyn smiled at Samir thinking of her own four boys.

It had been years since they were all home together but she knew that no matter where they were or what they were doing, they had each other and it made a difference for them. She could still remember the days she had brought each of them home.

Jeremiah had come first, he had been in the foster care system his entire life, having a mother who had gotten pregnant and decided to give the child up the next day. Being born a child of a cocaine addict didn't help matters, but doctors were surprised at how little he had suffered from it. The social worker on the case had guessed she had cut back during the pregnancy. He lucked out with that, but it seemed that was all the luck his first seven years would bring him.

Jeremiah would get picked on and beaten up by the older kids in foster care and then his first placement home hadn't gone well. They had two teenage boys who thought it was okay to let Jerry join them on their midnight runs for a local dealer. He picked up on their talent for dealing and sneaking around and started to sell himself, learning all the tricks that come with handling illegal business. He got caught when he tried to sell to an undercover narcotic cop. The older boys were sent to juvy, but Evelyn had been given the case and decided to take him in and set him straight.

Evelyn had not planned on keeping Jeremiah forever, but a year later when she came across another case, who was more of a handful than Jerry, the idea of permanent adoption entered in her mind.

Bobby fought like a navy man and had the mouth to match. It was slightly surprising to Evelyn that someone so young could actually match wits with adults, let alone policemen. They tended to pick him up for things they couldn't prove he did just because they didn't like the way he backed talked to them. It would have been funny to Evelyn if that were his only problem.

His aggression was out of control, he fought with bullies in his school and picked fights with just about anyone he could. His files were incomplete, having some bad caseworkers too lazy to care about doing their job properly and his earlier records were completely gone having burned with the other files in the storeroom in an office fire caused by an electrical short. No one even knew where this kid came from.

She was known for her tough-but-fair approach on problem kids, and so her boss had the kid sent to her office. His first act had been to jump in the chair in front of her and prop his mud-covered shoes on her neatly kept desk.

It had always been a battle of wills with Bobby. He had a strong heart and she could tell he wasn't as bad a person as he tried to let on. It was just a matter of breaking through his rough and tough demeanor.

When she read in his files about how he would not only beat up on people who attacked him, but people who picked on the kids he played hockey with and his fellow foster siblings, she knew he would be a perfect addition in her growing home.

At the time she had been housing two other kids besides Jerry, twin sisters whose parents had been murdered in a drive-by gang shooting. Because of the family's life style it was difficult to find any family members so for the time being the girls were staying with Evelyn and Jerry.

It took months before Bobby and Jerry warmed up to one another. Evelyn managed to get them to bond by signing them both up for Hockey lessons with the local youth program. Bobby loved every second on the ice, but Jerry enjoined watching Bobby deliver the smack down to the other kids more than he did playing the game himself.

Bobby was two years older than Jerry and took his big brother role to the extreme. They would fight with each other all the time, but never seriously hurt or injured the other. As soon as someone else tried to pick on Jerry, Bobby was all over them punching and kicking in any place he could.

At the end of the first year with Bobby, Evelyn adopted them both. They had become the two Mercer brothers and just one month later little Angel with his arm in a cast entered into their home and lives forever. His back-story was just as big a mystery as Bobby's had been. Police literally found the kid in a back alley eating out of the garbage. He had no shoes and wouldn't tell them where he was from. There was no record of him in the system so they treated him like a missing child for a while but after six months, it became clear that there was no one out looking for him.

His first social worker assigned him to a group home for boys and he ended up fighting three other boys, one of whom broke his wrist in the struggle to strangle him. Angel was handed over to Evelyn after that, since he blamed the other woman for his misfortune and he wasn't polite to anyone. He was used to looking out for himself and nobody else.

Bobby and Jeremiah got him to open up and learn to look out for and respect others by beating it into him, literally. Angel took to them quickly and learned from them both, becoming a much smarter fighter than Bobby, even if he wasn't as strong. He learned to brawl from Bobby and he learned to think things out from Jeremiah. What he learned on his own was to play up his position as the youngest and cutest of the three of them. He was very popular among the girls at their school and in their neighborhood. Even the older girls gave him more attention. It didn't bother Angel one bit.

Angel officially became a Mercer at the age of eight. It would be a few more years before Jack arrived into their lives. Jack, Evelyn's hardest and most heart breaking case. She wasn't sure how he would make it in her home at the beginning, given his past history of being abused.

When he came he was a small, underfed, sexually abused and scared nine year old boy. Bobby was fifteen, Jeremiah thirteen, and Angel eleven. To say they intimidated him would be an understatement.

His past made him the hardest one to open up and get comfortable with living with them. Evelyn is still amazed at how well he learned to trust not only her, but his brothers. He had been their little project as soon as he went to bed on his first night. She had stayed awake in her room knitting intending to keep an ear out for Jack, but instead she had gotten a nice eardrop to her other sons conversation from down stairs. They were making plans, all aware that handling Jack required special attention. The boys view of special was drastically different from Evelyn's.

She had gotten up and interrupted when they started talking about stealing him from his bed at night and throwing a pillowcase over his head until they got him outside for a midnight game of Mercer Hockey.

That night those boys got a rude awakening to just how much life could have been worse for them. Bobby took it the hardest since he had been physically abused himself and around more kids with the problems Jack had in foster care. Evelyn remembered the look in his eyes that night, it had scared her then because she didn't think a child's face should be able to look like that, but then her boys weren't children when it came to their experience with the world.

Jack still had his issues, but with three older brothers who kept him feeling safe and smiling, even when he came home with a bloody nose from hockey practice, he managed to come out of his shell enough to live a somewhat normal life.

She was proud of him for pursuing his dream of a rock star. She has made plans to visit him if he doesn't come back home for Christmas.

She'll fight her fear of heights and flying to see him play in his club in New York, just to see his face when he sees her in the crowd. Maybe she'll ask Jerry if he'll come with her. Angel would still be on assignment doing things Marines do, and Bobby, well she had no clue what Bobby was up to. All she knew was that he wasn't dead or in jail. She knew she'd be the one phone call if the first, and would have gotten a phone call if the second.

Bobby wouldn't be home for Christmas, she knew that, but it was still nice to think about the idea of him driving his beat up car up her drive and walking in acting like he just stepped out for some fresh air and never left. She loved him for that, it meant he thought of her home as his home, and that was all she had ever wanted from all of them when she took them in. All her boys did, she knew that, Bobby just showed it more than the others.

"So let's take a look at these Thanksgiving birds." she says over her shoulder to Samir.

She knew it would just be her for dinner, but she always made a large dinner just in case, plus it meant some nice meals for the street kids who came by on Sundays. She found herself looking forward to the weekends more, now that her kids were gone and the house was always empty. She enjoyed the noise and commotion of her hungry guests, she only wish she could do more for them.

"Oh, nice. Nice and plump." she observed.

The door opened and the bells rang alerting to a new customer. It was too late for a regular shopper. Evelyn turned around to see the two masked men dressed all in black, holding guns.

"Yo, Osama! Osama! Get behind the register! Now!"

She couldn't help being scared. A lifetime of dealing with the scum of the earth and what they did to their kids and she was scared of two men with guns. It wasn't as if she'd never been exposed to them, but this…this just didn't feel right.

She couldn't help but think of how her boys would react if they were with her now. Jerry would pull her down and tell her to just stay calm and give them whatever they ask for. Jack would remain quiet reacting to his brothers and their actions, but staying near her. Angel and Bobby would go on the offensive. Bobby would whip out his gun and shoot first, ask questions later. Maybe he'd just run and tackle them, it would depend on how he feels and how long since his last fist fight. Angel would pull his out and then confront them, giving them a chance to just walk out the way they came before they were taken out by him and his brothers.

" Did you hear what he said?" "Move! Move!"

" Please! Take it. Please." "Shut up, man. Come on."

That's good Samir, let them take the money, it isn't worth your life.

" I want no trouble." "Shut the fuck up."

"Take it all." "Shut up!"

" I just came to the country." "Don't you move."

Why are they taking so long to grab the money? Having stopped many a thief in her age and time Evelyn was a little surprised at how drawn out this seemed to be. Maybe it is just the adrenaline, it probably is only taking a moment or so, my perception of this is just distorted.

" Do not move!" " I want no trouble, sir. Take it all."

Good Samir, let them know you aren't a threat. Come on just take the money and leave, that's all you want.

" This is America, homeboy. Black people don't get what they want in this country. Why should you?"

"Please!-"

The gunshot scared her more than she realized, she hadn't expected it. Why would they shoot him after they got the money? It didn't make any sense to her. Now she was in danger, she knew they had heard her.

The first shooter rounded the corner of the isle and faced her, staring her down from head to toe to head again. He kept his weapon fixed on her, hand steady.

She backed away trying to tell him he didn't need to do this.

The other man joined them.

" Come on man, let's do this and go."

So it wasn't just a robbery then, well that was their choice, but she couldn't help but feel sorry for them.

"May God forgive you," she said to the two men staring them in the eye as the first aimed and fired once, and then again. Evelyn fell silently to the ground.

"Because my boys won't." was the last thought Evelyn Mercer had.