A/N: Hey guys, so the other night I made the mistake of watching a bunch of angsty Rizzles fanvideos where one of the women dies, and that made me think of the recent episode where Jane said she wanted Maura to take care of her baby if anything happened to her. I found it interesting that she didn't mention Casey in this scenario at all (convenient move by the writers, I guess), and this entered my head. It may not be entirely sound, but it wouldn't go away.

This is a one-shot. There will be no continuation. Also, it is non-Rizzles. If the thought of that does not appeal to you, read no further.

He knew he was supposed to stay in the guest house. Maura had told him to sit tight, to maybe watch TV with grandma. And Mom had always, always said to do whatever Maura told him. But grandma had fallen asleep earlier than usual, due to excessive tiredness that came from the exhaustion that came from grief, but he didn't know that and didn't question the reasons why. All he knew from past experience was that grandma didn't easily wake up after she'd nodded off, and it was with his mother's penchant for sneaking around that the slipped out of the guest house.

On some dim register it occurred to him that he'd never actually seen his father and Maura together. It had never seemed odd to him before, and he still struggled to see it as anything more than coincidence that whenever his dad visited, Maura had a function she had to attend or a conference to speak at or an autopsy to oversee. Dad's visits were never very long anyway, but Conner had never assumed that was Casey's choice.

"Daddy's very important in the army, buddy. They need him over there."

That was Mom always said whenever Conner asked why Dad wasn't around more often. There was nothing that seemed to profound or particularly thought-out about the response, but years later Conner would still remember the wording of it and wonder whether his mother had meant to imply that because the army needed him, she and Conner did not.

But at the moment he was four weeks shy of his eighth birthday and he had snuck onto the back porch of Maura's house, his second home, hearing her raised voice for the first time in his life.

"…and you are insufferable! I can't believe your nerve!"

"I'm sorry this is coming so soon after…everything, Maura, I am. Obviously I should've waited to email you until I was back in Afghanis—"

"Oh, for the love of God!"

Conner snuck a peek in through the window and saw Maura give his father, dressed in full uniform, a shove on his highly decorated chest.

"You're even worse than Jane! You'd sooner throw yourself on a bomb than try facing a real conversation with a person face-to-face, you goddam coward!"

Eyes wide, Conner looked on as Maura made to shove his father again, but this time Casey grabbed her wrist before she could make contact. He held his grip for what felt like an achingly long time to the young boy, before finally shoving Maura's arm away hard.

"Do not disrespect or dismiss my job again," he said quietly. "I don't need medals to tell me I'm a brave man, Maura. My record speaks for itself."

"You're an idiot is what you are," Maura said, spite cutting its way through every word. "You may be an excellent soldier, Casey, but that's not relevant here. That's not relevant now. You think a five-sentence email is enough to drop a bomb like this?! I guess I shouldn't be surprised! Oh God, I'm such an idiot, of course I shouldn't be surprised! Isn't that always your preferred mode of communication for matters of so much importance? I suppose we should be grateful you didn't just up and take Conner in the middle of the night!"

The boy took a sharp breath, fear now seeping into his confusion. What was his father planning, exactly?

"Maura, you're—"

"'Gee, babe, I'm a selfish jackass who made a horrible mistake in thinking I could sacrifice something for you. How about you give up all ties to everything fulfilling in your life to follow me around?'"

"You don't get to lecture me on Jane Rizzoli!" Casey shouted. "You may have been friends, but that does not mean you understand—or understood—our relationship!"

"Oh, I think I understood it just fine, and furthermore, I understood it a hell of a lot sooner and better and more clearly than Jane ever did!"

"You're getting hysterical, calm—"

"YES, I AM GETTING HYSTERICAL!" Maura screamed, and that got Casey's attention more than anything else had. She was red in the face and her voice was already hoarse and large tears felt as though they were on the verge of permanently blurring her vision, impervious to her attempts to blink them away. "I have spent almost a decade being calm, keeping quiet, and that has been the biggest disservice I could have ever done to the person who means more to me than anything else in the world! I hated this power you had over her, I hated how you completely ruined her every time you deigned to get in contact with her and I hated you every second that she spent wondering what she'd done wrong when you spent months ignoring her! And I hated her for always letting you waltz right back in!"

"For God's sake, you don't know what you're talking about," Casey said through his teeth, and Conner was startled to glance through the window once again and see that he was crying as well. "I was going through some hard stuff."

"And you don't think Jane had been through hell, too? You don't think she at least deserved one of your loquacious emails explaining that you were going through some 'hard stuff' and would rather not speak to her, rather than leaving her in suspense and treating her like your own personal doormat?"

Casey's voice got slightly louder, more defensive, like it had just come to full attention. "I wanted to marry her, I loved her."

"You loved the idea of her," Maura hissed. "I loved her."

"Yeah, well she didn't love you back, Maura, I'm sorry."

Conner did not know the details. But he could tell that his father's "sorry" was not a sincere one.

The boy would grow up never knowing what Jane had confided, a little tipsily, in Casey several years ago: that Maura had made a move on her. That they had even kissed before Jane had to call it off, in all honesty expressing that she could not conceive of a relationship with Maura that delved into romance—but by no stretch of the imagination was this to mean that she valued or needed Maura's friendship any less. Maura's heartache had been profound, and it had taken her longer than she'd have cared to admit to overcome it, but on the other side of it she and Jane were still strong friends. She had found pleasure in relationships with other people, and after a point, did not feel uncomfortable discussing her dating life with Jane, who was eager to listen and advise. She was still closer to Conner than even his uncles or their wives. She was still Jane's confidant.

"You're wrong," Maura said softly after an extremely long silence. "Jane loved me very much." She took a deep breath to try and calm herself down, even as she saw Casey's expression turn confused, maybe even frightened, perhaps wondering whether the grief of delivering the eulogy at Jane's funeral earlier that day had warped her mind or memory. "Let me rephrase that. You're right in that she did not love me as a lover. But you are wrong in saying she did not love me."

"What. What're you saying, you… did you have some sort of arrangement, some sort of no strings attached…?"

A pitying laugh cut him off. "Are you really that stupid, Casey? Are you not hearing me? Jane and I had a bond that you and she never had. Yes you've had sex with her and I never did, and at one point in my life, I would have been extremely jealous thinking about that fact. But I'm not now. If anything, I feel sorry for you. I'm sorry that you didn't know how to be emotionally intimate with her. I'm sorry that you screwed up everything to cover your own selfish ass. But that's your problem to deal with. It isn't mine. Jane was my best friend, and I love her. I love her boy."

"Our boy."

"Oh, now he belongs to you, too?"

"It was Jane's idea to raise him alone—"

"To raise him without you. That's a whole world of difference, Lieutenant-Colonel."

This launched them into another loaded silence before Casey finally said through his teeth, "Be that as it may. I am his father."

"Biologically speaking, yes."

"So in the eyes of the law, I am his father. I never signed away my parental rights, Maura. You realize that, don't you?"

"I do. But do you realize that if you were to just up and move Conner to go stay with your girlfriend—"

"My wife."

"Oh excuse me, your wife in Virginia, you are entirely disrespecting his mother and her wishes?"

"Look, Jane told me what she said to you. I'm sure it was a very precious bonding moment for the two of you."

The condescension in his tone was strong enough that Maura almost slapped him. Part of her was also annoyed that Jane had talked to Casey about it without involving her, but it was Jane's right to have that conversation with him. Still that didn't at all excuse Casey's dismissal of what had been one of the more emotional exchanges Jane and Maura had ever had.

"Look, um…if something ever happens to me—you know, something serious? I would want you to have the baby. Would you be willing to do that?"

The fact that Jane had been completely serious, that she wasn't exaggerating or trying to be funny, had struck Maura so hard that she couldn't quite speak for a moment. She could still remember that exquisite shock at being asked such a thing. "I would be honored." And the smile that response had engendered. Maura would have been willing to do something so much more just to see that smile.

"Let's review," Casey said, his voice bringing Maura out of her reverie. "Did you adopt Conner?"

"No."

"Then you have no legal claim on him."

"So you think that means this conversation is over?" Maura challenged him. "Is that all Conner is to you? An obligation? And is that all your relationship is about to you, red tape?"

"You wanna know what Jane respected? The law. She would back me up on this."

Maura was seething. "You…you are full of shit!" she cried. "Full of it! And what I can't believe is that I actually think you believe yourself! And it scares me that you clearly aren't thinking all this through! You want to take Conner away from the only home he's ever known, and his family! You're not just taking him away from me, Casey, you're taking him from his friends and his uncles and cousins, and from Angela and your mother besides! All so what, he can Skype you from Virginia with your wife? Who, by the way, turned Jane down twice when she offered to drive Conner over to meet her? Does that really seem like a sound plan to you, Lieutenant-Colonel?"

"He is my son. You have no claim on him. Look, Maura." Casey made the effort to make his tone gentler, to show he didn't have any ill will towards her. "I can appreciate what you're trying to do here. I can understand that… that you feel my son is the strongest connection you have left to Jane. But he isn't her."

"I am aware of that, thank you. I don't see Conner as property belonging to you, and I don't see him as some—some keepsake to remember my best friend by. I don't need him for that. I have years' worth of experiences with Jane to remember her by. I have years' worth of meaningful conversations, of working together, of going on trips and staying up too late and getting through trauma and joy with Jane that I will remember her by for the rest of my life," Maura said heavily, and Conner could tell by her halted speech that the tears had returned. "I meant what I said when I told Jane I'd be honored to take care of her child if something happened to her. And I said that on faith of my friendship with her. But I love Conner independently of Jane. I love him and enjoy spending time with him and taking care of him than I ever thought I would for a child, frankly. I am not saying I'd be a perfect caregiver, but I do know that I've done well in our relationship so far. And I know that I don't trust your track record."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not a man of your word, Lieutenant-Colonel Jones. Oh when it comes to your career, certainly. But not when it comes to this family. I had to watch Jane get dragged along by you. I saw her at her most pathetic because of you. And I'm not just going to stand by and let you do the same thing to her son."

"Our son," Casey reminded her.

"Why now, Casey? Hm? Why is that ownership suddenly so important to you now? If you wanted more of a role in his life, you could have asked for it any time you wanted."

"That's bull, and we both know it. Jane wanted to be a single parent. She's not here anymore. That makes him my responsibility. And that's what parenthood is, Maura, it's a responsibility. Jane didn't want a baby, but look at her, she did the right thing and had him and that's that! I'm just doing the same."

"It is not the same! I want Conner, and I will do right by him! We both know you aren't—"

"Blood is thicker than water, Dr. Isles."

"Oh. No, Lieutenant-Colonel. You don't get to pull that line on me. Are you familiar with the origin of that phrase? It was coined in the 1490s by John Lygates as saying 'the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.' Now true enough, I never went through a blood covenant with Jane or Conner—although she did kill a demon for me, once." (Casey's gaze had been fixed anywhere but Maura's face, but it involuntarily flicked to her eyes at the mention of Hoyt.) "Do you see my point? I don't know if this is pride or stubbornness or grief, but you had better think long and hard about trying to take this boy away from us."

"Us."

"The Rizzoli family and me. Take the legality issue away and see what it leaves you with: taking a boy you barely know away from a village of people who adore him. A village of people who, by the way, would continue to respect Jane's wish that you see and talk to him. I don't know what you're afraid of Casey, but I wouldn't keep you and Conner from having a relationship. That's not how Jane would have wanted it, and I respect that."

There followed the longest silence yet. Conner stole another glance to see whether Maura or Casey had actually left the room, thus ending the conversation, but they were both still there in the same places they had been before: about five feet apart.

"I'm sorry," Casey finally said. "I didn't mean to upset you. This whole thing has just got me very, very uh… out of sorts. I haven't been thinking straight. I hope you can appreciate that." (There was no verbal response.) "Obviously I handled this wrong by thinking you'd understand with just an email—"

"You're damn right."

"I know you think I haven't got any emotions, or that I can't express them well or something like that. But I do have them, and they're very strong right now. They're keeping me from thinking clearly, and I'm guessing you're going through something similar."

"Speak for yourself."

Casey sighed heavily, muttering "Goddam it, Maura" under his breath before raising his voice a little. "I'm just asking for a chance to think all this through when I'm not sitting in the shadow of—of today. Is it so outrageous to request that?"

"I want your word that you will call me to talk this through."

"Oh, I didn't think you'd trust that."

"Well, think of it as me giving you a chance to earn my trust."

On that note, Casey extended his hand for Maura to shake, but she did not unfold her arms to take it. Casey nodded to himself before walking out the door, promising to call her to talk this through. Conner was rooted to his spot on the porch, knowing he would be in a tremendous amount of trouble for going against Maura's instructions to stay in the guest house (were he to get caught), and was about to sneak back to it before he heard a loud sob.

Maura had cried her way through her eulogy, cried through the rest of the funeral, and been red-eyed at the burial and reception. She had had tears in her eyes that evening when she'd firmly told Conner to stay in the guest house, and just now he had seen her crying as she told off Casey. But the sobs coming out of her at this moment were hair-raisingly different. He had no context to try describing it, but for Maura, this was the most physically painful crying she had ever done. It was almost hard to breathe as the sobs felt scraped from the inside of her chest. Each attempt to draw breath brought with it a stabbing sensation that only made her weep harder, and she wished more fervently than she had ever wished for anything that Jane was there to embrace her.

But that's stupid, you're stupid, it's because she's gone that you're like this in the first place!

The back door creaked open, and Maura barely heard it over the sound of her own crying. She straightened up but was unsuccessful in quieting her sobs. She'd thought it would be Angela, and did not immediately know what to do when instead she saw Conner in tears on the porch. After the initial surprise of seeing him there, Maura was able to gesture for him to come closer, barely managing to utter the words "Come here."

She was sitting on the couch, and he flew to her side. Maura's arms instantly wrapped around him as he wailed onto her shoulder. Now more than ever Maura tried to stifle her tears, to be the strong grown-up and someone Conner could feel was in control and okay, but being alone with him as he cried like this made that impossible. They sat there together for almost two full minutes, letting out the rest of the grief that had been stored in them that day.

"Deep…deep breaths, remember?" Maura finally said. "Can we try that together, Conner?" Her first attempt was shoddy, but the more she did it, the less shaky they became. "Can you do it? One… there you go, two… three…"

"I—I'm s-sorry," he choked. "I w-wanted to come in and tell you a—a joke, but I'm too …I can't. I'm sorry, I wanted to cheer you up."

"You're here," Maura said, squeezing him a little harder. "That's enough to cheer me up."

"Is the Lieutenant-Colonel gonna take me away?"

Maura had never heard Conner refer to his father this way, but she wasn't about to question it. And as much as she hated jumping to conclusions, she couldn't help feeling this meant Conner had overheard the rather loud and heated conversation she and Casey had just had.

"Conner, you know I can't tell a lie, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Then I'll tell you this: no matter what happens, no matter where the Lieutenant-Colonel says he wants you to live, nothing and nobody is going to take you away from me. I'm always going to be here for you, buddy. Always, even if that means we don't live in the same state anymore. I'm going to be here for you."

"Because th-that's what mom would want?"

"Because it's what I want, too. Unless you'd rather I stay away?"

"No!" Conner almost yelled, holding her tighter. "No, no, no, no!"

"Okay then," Maura whispered, kissing his forehead. "Okay. Don't worry, sweetheart. Don't worry. I'm not leaving you."

A/N: Thank you for reading. ~End.