So this is way shorter than the other one. Not that that one is long...
This one takes place during/after Riding the Lightning, the episode where the team goes to a prison to visit a couple sentenced to death. They've been sentenced because of the murders of 12 girls/women. Sarah Jean, the wife, only admitted to killing her own son, Riley. Jacob kind of admitted to the others, if I remember correctly.
Gideon suspects that Sarah Jean is innocent, and it's a race against time to prove it.
Enjoy!
Sarah Jean had reminded him of all the innocent people in the world – the people who were forced into their position, who had been the victim of someone much more brutal.
His emotions had gone haywire during the investigation, everything whirling in his head, finding no place to stay. But then he had seen her on the camera, and something in him changed. He needed to keep it together for her. He owed her the truth, even if it was one she already knew.
His speculations had gone everywhere, addressing almost everything he had noticed in her behaviour. But, being a trained profiler, he knew speculations wouldn't get him anywhere. He needed solid information, a profile and the tech girl's help.
He admired Sarah Jean, for sticking up for her son, for protecting him even in that last hour after Jacob had died. He admired her for her strength and her composure that she kept during those tough moments.
He hadn't cried at the execution, knowing the last face she'd see shouldn't be one with tears on it. He knew that even if he had wanted to cry, he simply couldn't. His tears were something that rarely came out – in fact, he couldn't remember the last time he had actually cried.
His feelings during the execution were everything at once – sadness for the lost cause, anger at the way she had been a victim, happiness that she finally found peace.
It had been the happiness that had kept him from breaking down. She was content with going like this. He would never be able to fully understand Sarah Jean, but he could at least respect her for the decisions she'd made and how she'd stuck by them.
At her son's concert, though, he had felt the tears gliding down his cheeks. They weren't for his mother, but for her son. For a boy who would never know his true parents and what a great mother his could've been – if only her life hadn't been destroyed by Jacob.
If only… It seemed like those words crept up a lot in his mind. He knew it was no use dwelling on what could have happened: it hadn't happened, and that is what mattered.
But he couldn't shake the thoughts off of him. Sarah Jean would have been a good mother – loving and caring. In the two years she had been with him, she'd treated him like a mother would treat her son. He had seen it in her eyes and his own intuition told him the rest. She had loved her son, maybe because he was the one sane thing in her insane world. Someone she would keep fighting for.
He would never know just how much she had fought.
I realized my mistake when I re-read - Sarah Jean HAD been a mother for those two years. Changed my fic a little bit.
But what do you think? Please tell me!
