Summary: She was an angel, returning to him the son he had lost. He was a cowboy Casanova, riding off into the sunset with her heart in his hand.
Fate and the luck of the Irish would bring them together, love would keep them there.

Disclaimer: Kurt Sutter is the creator of SOA, not me. I just have fun playing in his proverbial sandbox.

CHAPTER FIVE

"There has never been, nor will there ever be, anything quite so special as the love between a mother and son."
-Author Unknown

|Charming, CA|
|MAX|

There is something to be said, thought the youngest Grey sibling to himself, about the love shared between a mother and her son.

He watched as his big sister, his best friend, was seemingly returned to him from death's doorstep the moment her teary-eyed gaze landed on the tiny blond baby held securely in the arms of a biker.
Abel, in return, looked towards his mother the moment she stepped out of the car as if some psychic connection between the two informed him of her arrival. Baby blues widened, and the child reached out towards Eli with chubby fingers and a wide smile.

"MAMA!"
The cry is all Eli needed to move, and she did. She stumbled up the incline from parking lot pavement to park grass, nearly tripped over thin air or her own feet and pinwheeled her arms out in an effort to keep her balance. When stability had returned to her, she resumed her hurried scramble over the park grass to get to the small, blond baby waving a chubby fist in her direction frantically.
The closer she got to Abel, the louder the baby chanted.
"Mama, mama, mama, mama," it was just that, a chant, by the time Eli had finally reached him.

The redhead embraced him then, her baby boy, her son, and for one precious moment, everything was incredibly and gloriously right with the world.
Then, reality came crashing back down.

|ELI|

"Has he not been eating?"
The words were spoken softly, inquisitively; there was no judgment to be found in them.

"No, not really."
These words, spoken in turn and in reply, were gruff, though there was no anger or irritation held within them. The owner of them was simply unhappy with their truth.

Eli looked up, her green eyes drifting from Abel's sweet face to the face of his father, the face of Jackson Teller.
She noticed then, everything that she had overlooked in the rush and wonder of seeing her son again.

Jackson Teller was an attractive man, yes, but that was the last thing on Eli's mind as her eyes searched his and found everything she was looking for.
His stress, his love, his fear; it was all held within his eyes, eyes that Eli knew well thanks to Abel.
And, it was in that moment that it hit her, how new to being a father Jackson Teller really was.

Abel was young when he was kidnapped, just eight months old. Jackson had only gotten eight months with his son, and nearly a month of that time had seen Abel in the hospital.
He had hardly gotten to be a father.
There was some lurking sense of guilt that slowly built within Eli at this revelation because she'd had two years with Abel.
She'd had more time with Abel then his biological father had.
He'd hardly had any time to be Abel's father; she'd had two years to be his mother.

"Having trouble sleeping, little man?"
Eli's attention was diverted from her thoughts to Max as he spoke in a soft, cooing baby-voice to his adopted nephew.
Her eyes went from her brother, who looks at Abel with such adoration, to the baby in question.

Abel had a handful of dried banana snacks clenched in his chubby fists and had finally slowed from his formerly ravenous eating.
His blond curls were tousled, swept by the wind and his mother, and a few strands poked upwards in miniature cowlicks.
But, it's his eyes that she noticed.
The stormy baby blues were dark and tired, shaded crescents hanging below them (below eyes that are carbon copies of his father's).
He looked exhausted.

Right as she thought on that exhaustion, his half-lidded eyes slid closed. His chubby fist, waving enthusiastically in the air, slowed before lowering down to rest beside him in the carrier Eli had placed him, and his head nodded to the side.
It took mere minutes. Then, Abel was out like a light.

The sun began to set, and with it brought a sinking feeling of dread to the three adults sitting at an old wooden picnic table in Charming's only park.

Max was afraid for his sister.
Something horrible would happen if she went back to her former state of oppression. He knew that, with a terrifying certainty.

Eli began to slip once more into darkness because she knew her time was almost up.
She was going to have to leave her son, yet again.

Jax dreaded the ride home, which would no doubt be filled with Abel's heartbreaking cries, and all the nights that would follow.
He feared for his son's health and his own sanity.

|MAX|

"What time do we need to be back?"

Max glanced up, gaze traveling from his nephew to his sister.
Eli watched Abel's still-sleeping form, a gentle adoration in her eyes, but already he could see a veil beginning to fall over her.
He stared for a moment, unsure how to reply.
He didn't need to be back for a while, his club could survive without him for a few days; Eli, on the other hand, couldn't afford to take more time off, regardless of whether or not she was the owner of the parlor."I don't need to head back for a while," Max said hesitantly, eyes downcast so that he didn't have to witness his sister's expression, "But you can't take any more time off, Eli. You haven't been to work in weeks, and it's your parlor."
Cautiously, he looked back up and immediately regretted it.

Eli's grief did strange things to her, Max had come to realize.
When it happened -and he's only seen her grieve like that twice before-, it hit like a freight train. Suddenly, fast, with little to no warning beforehand.
Unlike said freight train, however, it didn't tend to keep moving. It stopped, lingered, stuck around for a while.
And, like a leach, it latched on; seemingly draining the very life from her body.
It lingered, like a dark cloud, a twisted veil.
There was very little anyone can do to lift it.

And, at the moment, that grief reappeared.
It manifested in the slight slump of her shoulders (which would gradually worsen, he knew, if given ample amounts of time and grief) like she was Atlas charged with the weight of the very world on her shoulders; in the strained nature of her smile, in which no dimples could be seen; in the darkening of her eyes, changed from an evershifting-green to a green so dark that they were nearly black, the color of her pain; in the way a hand briefly pressed on her chest, as if to try and ward off some wordless ache, as if to keep together a splintering heart; and it manifested in the look on her face she couldn't quite keep hidden, the look that said she was breaking inside.
A lump formed in Max's throat, and he wondered at her pain, at how much she must have felt. He felt as if he was losing his sister, to her grief; she felt as if she was losing her son, because of her own morals.
Another look at her face, when it shifted to that expression she couldn't quite hide, told him he didn't want to know.

|JAX|

Jax watched, his chest tight with some unnamed emotion, as Elizabeth spoke to her brother.
His anxiety only built when, with a wave of his hand, Max gestured towards him.
Elizabeth's head turned, red hair swaying limply as she moved, and promptly froze upon making eyes contact with him.
Jax held his breath as her eyes drifted from his to Abel's.

Even with the nice amount of space that existed between them, Jax was able to see her eyes fill with tears and her lips form a word; a name.
"Abel."
And then, Abel noticed her.

Jax felt the stiffening of his son's body, and he could practically feel the sudden burst and rush of energy Abel got from knowing that she was there.
"MAMA!"
He wasn't ashamed to admit that he jumped when Abel cried out and the sound pierced the air which had grown supernaturally still.
It seemed to startle Elizabeth too because one minute she was looking at Abel like he was her world and the next she was scrambling toward them.

She stumbled up the minor incline between the parking lot gravel and the park grass, an incline Jax himself had tripped over a time or two, before reaching his side in a flash. She embraced Abel, Jax's existence momentarily going unnoticed.

He pretended not to notice when her shoulders shook as she cried, tear of joy replacing tears of sorrow as she was reunited with Abel.
Then, her body stiffened and she pulled away reluctantly; obviously, she knew better than to completely lose herself in joy with grief lurked just around the corner.

Then, her eyes met his; Jax gave her a small, awkward smile and she returned it with one of her own.
Rather helplessly, he gestured towards the table he had abandoned upon their arrival and she followed behind him as he returned to sit down first, and surprise flickered across her face when, after she had settled, Jax gently placed an excited baby into her arms. Then, he crossed the table until he was diagonal to her and sat down himself.

The first hour and a half of their meeting were spent with Abel occupying the attention spans of his adopted mother and uncle.
He would pat Elizabeth's cheek gently, softly calling her name to get her attention if ever it strayed, and once he had it he would babble at her wildly in his own little language.
She would smile, and Jax would see a light in her eyes that he hadn't before gotten to see in person. She devoted all of her attention to the child when he called for it, talking back to him and nodding as if she understood him.
Maybe, Jax thought, some sense he had yet to discover allowed her to.
Max too found himself pulled into multiple one-sided conversations with his nephew, who would promptly butcher his name ("'Ax, 'Ax!") in order to get his adopted uncles attention before going off on a tangent that none of them actually understood though.
Abel, Jax found, also liked to wave his arms around wildly when he talked; a fact that amused him to no end.

Eventually, the baby got tired of talking.
He patted Elizabeth's cheek to get her attention and, once she had turned to him, whimpered, "Mama, 'ungry."
Jax didn't have a chance to move before Elizabeth already had.
She deftly knelt down, casually balancing a complacent Abel in her arms, and dug through the very baby bag she had once used for him until her fingers came in contact with the cool plastic of a bag. She pulled out the Gerbers crackers and opened them one-handed before grabbing a couple and gently placing them in Abel's chubby hand, her eyes widened when Abel quickly began to shovel the snack into his mouth.

"Has he not been eating?"
Elizabeth turned to him questioningly, her eyes free of judgment, and Jax grimaced.
"No," he admitted gruffly, "Not really."
Lifting a hand wearily, he rubbed at his tired eyes with a sigh; he never noticed the understanding look Elizabeth directed his way.

Time passed and eventually, the sun began to set. A feeling of dread settled in his stomach, and Jax looked away, he dreaded the ride home.
Abel fell asleep, a handful of crackers still clutched in his chubby fist, and without his eager chatter and suddenly happy disposition the reality of their situation hit all of the adults hard.
It was Elizabeth who broached the issue.

"What time do we need to be back by?"
Jax turned his gaze from Abel to Elizabeth, watching as a dark cloud seemed to descend upon her.
Her eyes dulled and drifted down to gaze at the picnic table as her brother replied, "I don't need to head back for a while. But you can't take any more time off, Eli. You haven't been to work in weeks, and it's your parlor."
Jax's curiosity was piqued momentarily before he processed what the younger male had said. Weeks? How bad has Elizabeth's condition been then, truly?

Jax watched as Elizabeth's condition, formerly returning to vibrancy with Abel within eyeshot, began to deteriorate once more.
She couldn't handle the grief, he realized. She couldn't handle losing her son again.
He hesitated, momentarily, wondering if what he was about to say was the right thing to do. Then, he remembered the old grief in his mother's eyes when she had told him that Abel needed his mother. He remembered Abel, all the sleepless nights and the tears; he remembered that phone call with Max, and the fear and pain in the younger's voice as he explained exactly why he thought his sister needed to see Abel one last time, to truly say her goodbyes. And he remembered what he had thought then, the words he hadn't said, "What if she didn't have to?"
Then, once his hesitation faded and he had finished reminiscing, he spoke.

"What if you could? Stay longer, that is."

He waited until Elizabeth met his eyes, momentarily ignoring Max who was looking at him with no small amount of trepidation, "What if you didn't have to say goodbye?"
And at that moment, he saw something in Elizabeth's eyes come to life.

Author's Note: Words cannot express how incredibly apologetic I am for being away for so long. I can only say that I didn't plan to be and that I hope I won't be from this point forward, though I make no promises. RL has a way of sneaking up on you, as I'm sure many of you already know.
On another note, words can also not express how absolutely amazing and thankful I am for the love shown to this story. Thank you all, so incredibly much. I love Cowboys and Angels, this is my true brainchild, and I certainly want to do right by it and by all the people who share my love for it.
So, yes, I'm back. Or at least I plan to be. And so are the emotional times, though hopefully, fluff will be on the horizon soon. I can say, however, that from this point forward things are about to get very interesting.
Ciao, lovelies.
Questions? Comments? Review! I love 'em!
-E.S.