Author's Note: This story would not exist if not for brynnifer, the best prompt giver EVER, and SignedSealedWritten, who lets me pester her with forwarding her everything I'm working on. This is dedicated to MY mom, who I will see tomorrow as I go home for Christmas.
"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."
-~-Vincent Van Gogh-~-
It was supposed to be a simple family vacation.
Fun, even.
A simple retreat from the evils she faced every day.
Nothing in her life was ever simple.
"If I go with you—" JJ's arms trembled slightly from having held them over her head for nearly half-an-hour, "you promise not to hurt anyone else?"
"I don't—" The man who had burst into the small diner pulled at his long shaggy hair, "you'll leave me, just like she did." He gestured to the random woman he had shot who was slowly bleeding out, "They all leave."
"I won't." JJ promised, forcing herself not to look at the diner's other terrified patrons looking to her for salvation. "I won't leave."
"Chere, no!" Will interrupted, shrinking back as he tried to shield the five-year old from the crazed gunman.
There had to be another way.
Spooked, the gunman waved his gun nervously, his finger dangerously close to the trigger as he pointed the weapon towards JJ's family.
"No!" JJ stepped between them, knowing that if her former colleagues were here they would try and tell her something like her resemblance to this UnSub's mother.
It was always the mother.
"I'll go with you." She promised, her voice on the edge of hysteria as she saw the gun directed toward her baby boy. "Just let's go."
"And you won't leave?" The deranged man asked hesitatingly, as if he and JJ were intimate lovers promising to share their love for eternity.
"I won't leave." JJ vowed. "But you have to let me say goodbye to my family."
"You—you cheated on me?" The man whispered.
"No!" JJ assured, glancing back at Henry and Will just to make sure her body was in fact strategically placed between them and the weapon. "It's my family, but I'm leaving with you." She reminded, cursing the way her voice hitched in fear and sadness at the thought of joining this man to go wherever he had planned, "I'm leaving with you."
"Say goodbye and we can go." The man nodded.
"Jayje, you can't do this." Will pled, his arm still bleeding from where he had been shot through the shoulder. "You can't—you can't leave us."
JJ bit her lip, forcing the tears not to fall by sheer will. "I can't—I can't let him hurt anybody else." She brushed away the wetness at her eyes with the back of her hand, "I can't let him hurt either of you."
"Mommy?" Henry asked, his own tears falling though he didn't understand the situation. He could easily pick up on the terror in the air. "Mommy!"
"Sssh, buddy, it's going to be okay." JJ's smile came out more like a grimace as she ruffled her young son's hair. "But—" Her voice caught as the reality of the situation struck her.
She might never see her son again.
"I need you to be strong now." She glanced toward her boyfriend, and saw his tearful nod, knowing that Will would never let the little boy forget his mother. "You can't ever give up."
JJ bit her lip as she looked into her son's eyes, "And when people make you cry and you are afraid of the dark," She shook her head as she forced herself not to think of all the late night terrors she wouldn't be able to comfort—the scraped knees she wouldn't be able to kiss better, "don't forget the light is always there."
"I don't want you to go Mommy." Henry cried, reaching out to her from under Will's protective grasp.
"I know baby, I don't want to go. But I will always protect you." JJ's tears were flowing freely now. "Always."
"It's time to go!" The gunman grabbed JJ by the arm, forcefully ripping her away from her small family. "You promised!"
JJ sniffed, and with one glance back to the man she loved in an attempt to convey everything she couldn't say, she nodded. "Let's go."
"I'm sorry son, if your name is not on the list, I can't allow you in—" An officer stationed outside the hospital stopped the young man with sandy blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
"I'm her son." The boy's voice caught, the near fifteen-year-old's Adam's Apple bobbing nervously. "She's my mom."
The officer's face fell slightly with sympathy. Now that the kid mentioned it, he looked an awful lot like Captain LaMontagne. Looking down at the list, Officer Rankin frowned. "I'm sorry son—"
"Henry." The boy clarified. "Henry LaMontagne."
"I can only let in people who are cleared to come into her room." He sighed apologetically. "But I'm sure if you called your father—"
"She's my mother." Henry insisted, running his hand through his shortly cropped hair. "I have to get clearance to talk to my mother?" He bit his lip, obviously distraught as he looked past the door with a longing the officer had never seen before.
Officer Rankin looked around to make sure he was out of earshot of anyone else. "I'm going to turn my back, and I'm not going to look back for another ten minutes." He looked at the boy seriously to see if he understood. "If the Captain were to find out, I would have taken a small break to go to the bathroom, but in ten minutes, she'll be alone."
Henry nodded gratefully. "She'll be alone." He repeated to show he understood.
The officer turned his back ostentatiously and Henry slipped into the hospital room, pausing as he leaned against the closed door for support.
Was he really ready for this?
His dad had said he'd come with Henry later that day.
But he had to see her.
And he couldn't wait for his father to finish the paperwork to clear his mother's name before he saw her.
He couldn't bear the thought of her being here alone.
Seeing the woman a frail blonde with a swollen black eye and a long scar along her face hooked up to the machines, he almost wondered if this could possibly be the vague wisp that starred in most of his earliest memories. He squared his shoulders and pushed himself forward, slowly stepping toward the bed as if by moving he would destroy the image in front of him until he reached the bedside chair that gave him a closer view.
He grimaced at the sight of the various tubes connected to the woman's body, wincing at the orangeish-red that was slowly spreading along the gauze packed tightly against her stomach.
Could this really be her?
The woman's eyes fluttered open, as if in answer to his question, clear blue eyes matching his own. For an infinitesimally small second, the two eyes held one another, perfect love matched with admiration and longing radiating from both sides.
But the woman reacted first, shrinking back startled by the young man's presence beside her.
"It's okay…Mom." Henry assured, slightly weirded out by how odd the words felt coming out of his mouth. "It's me."
The woman hesitated, pulled from her sudden skittishness by a familiarity she wasn't sure was only in her mind or if it was some oft repeated dream.
"Henry?" The woman whispered, her voice more tired and worn than he remembered.
But at the same time, it was still soft and comforting and full of love.
"Yeah." Henry smiled, "it's me."
She reached her fingers out, carefully tracing her worn fingers along the line of his jaw. As she reached the fresh stubble that signaled his entrance into manhood, her fingers pulled back quickly nervously flinching as if she expected the boy to vanish like he had so many times before.
Henry reached out, and though she flinched away slightly from him, he clasped the hand nearest to him and held it loosely in his own. Who would have thought after nearly ten years his mother would have been able to overpower the paranoid schizophrenic that held her captive and claw her way to freedom from the dank warehouse that had imprisoned her?
She pulled back, her eyes nervously darting around as if terrified that someone might see them together.
"I still remember." Henry choked as he tried to hold back the tears that burned inside of him. Logically, he knew his Godmother would have told him it was okay to cry.
But Henry was no longer a boy.
He was a man.
His mother looked at him with a questioning glance as if she didn't understand at all. Holding her hand close to his own chest, Henry smiled as the burning tears pooled behind his eyes.
"I need you to be strong now." He started, his voice cracking and squeaking from the uncontrolled emotion.
JJ, for her part, snapped toward him, her face contorting with a mixture of love and sadness. Tears flowed unabashed down her eyes as she pulled her hand away from Henry's grasp and reached out to touch him gingerly.
Everybody used to tell him big boys didn't cry, but right now, Henry realized that was a lie.
Because right now, tears were needed. "You can't ever give up." He reminded her, the words he had long ago burned into his mind flowing freely now. He needed her, he needed a mother. And though he had always known that his mother had given her life for his own protection, he needed her.
"And when people make you cry and you are afraid of the dark, don't forget the light is always there." He added, fighting the pools at his eyes that were blurring his vision.
They sat in silence, words inadequate to express the feelings between mother and son that were beyond description.
"I'd better go." Henry apologized, hesitant to leave his mother, but the glance at his watch telling him it had been nearly half an hour. "But Dad and I will be back. I love you."
He saw her smile through her tears and nod her understanding before reluctantly relinquishing her grasp on his hand.
As he stood to leave, he heard his mother clear her voice and he stopped, not wanting the clapping of his shoes to drown out his mother's weak voice. "I love you." She croaked, the three simple words strengthened by the years of sacrifice she had made not only for him, but for every person who walked out of that diner that day.
No, Henry was no longer a boy, but in that moment Henry James LaMontagne learned that real men do cry.
And the little boy who had grown into a man ran back to his mothers arms. But it wasn't weakness or fear of the dark that sent him running back to his mother with tears streaming down his face.
It was love.