Epilogue

The teens sat in the passenger side of a truck, watched over by Wordy, who'd been nearly incandescent with parental rage and panic when he found out the pair had snuck out of school to find their uncle. He'd already done the first chewing out, informing them of what, exactly, could have happened if they'd been caught by any gangs or, worse, by Kevin and Tyler themselves. Spike had been right in there with him, acidly interjecting what Team One had suspected upon finding out they were missing: that they and Greg had all been kidnapped by the same person or persons, with nothing good coming out of the encounter.

Jules had a different target and she stood over him as he sat on an ambulance stretcher, breathing in pure oxygen. Sam hauled a still struggling Kevin past, the arrested man fighting to get loose and calling Haley's name as he was dragged along. Jules started in on her boss, indignant. "So you say to yourself, 'I can handle this alone, no problem. I'm a smart guy. I'm Sergeant Greg Parker of the SRU.' " Greg lowered the mask to respond and she pushed it back up. "Keep it on. Breathe. You think, 'I can just talk my way out of this. I can, I can talk bullets right back up the barrel 'cause that's the kind of genius I am.' "

"Jules…" Greg protested, lowering the mask.

She overrode him again. "You could have died. Died. And all because, because you want to protect this girl from something you didn't think she should know? What?"

Now he gestured for her to stop, his eyes going hard. "You think I'd do that to the kids?" he demanded. "They need me, a lot more than Haley does these days." He shook his head, wincing as that jostled his head wound. "I did tell her, Jules; I did tell them." She froze, staring. "I knew it wouldn't work; I knew Kevin thought I'd done it and nothing I said would convince him otherwise. I knew he was planning to kill me, regardless of anything else that happened. But I couldn't be one hundred percent sure and, well, what did I have to lose?" Jules swallowed hard. "So, yeah, Jules, I told them the truth." Around them, the team's attention had landed on the pair with laser-like focus, all of them, to a man, stunned that their boss had told Haley and Kevin the truth and the pair hadn't believed him.

Greg sighed, his attention landing on his nipotes. "When they left, I kept trying to get free, but that gas had me out pretty quick." Jules sucked in another breath, grimacing. "Woke up with mio nipotes there. And, much as I hate to admit it, Jules, we're not gonna win with them." Jules turned to look as well; the kids looked utterly unrepentant as they sat there, back in their street clothes. "They know they can interfere; they know we can't really stop them or keep them out of this. Maybe I was just kidding myself that I could keep them from interfering after the first couple of times."

"They're kids," Jules protested.

Her boss nodded agreement. "I know that, Jules; you know that, the team knows that, and, at the end of the day, they know it too. But they don't care, Jules. They don't care if one of us is on the line…even if they only think we're on the line."

"They could get killed," Jules whispered, fear clenching her heart. The rest of the eavesdropping team winced at her words.

"I'm not saying we just buckle under," Greg pointed out quietly. "They're in big trouble and they know it; I'm sure the next three months without their books and games will be interesting…along with the self-defense classes I'm going to schedule as many days a week as I can get away with."

Jules smirked, getting her boss's plan. "Force them to learn how to fight without their magic," she mused, "They learn at least the basics and get punished." She didn't think they'd resent the lessons because they were being punished; the kids tended to accept their punishments as simply part of the price for interfering. Which really should have been the adults' first clue that the punishments weren't working to deter the behavior. "And when they do interfere?" she asked.

Her boss sighed, considering for a moment. "Keep trying, I guess. Keep punishing them, not letting them skate without consequences." He paused, thinking hard, then nodded to himself. "This might help too." So saying, he limped off the stretcher and went to his nipotes. Leaning down, he said to them most of what Jules would have said to him. "You two have no right going around giving up your lives, trying to save me. Not if you don't have to." He paused, looking around at his team. "I'm not the only one who needs you."

~ Fin

Author note: I do apologize for the short chapter today, but I've decided that epilogues will have their own days to shine, instead of lumping two chapters together on the same day and confusing those readers who jump to the last chapter and thus miss the penultimate chapter.

I hope, in spite of the dearth of reviews on the last few chapters, that ya'll enjoyed. Our next story, "Saving Simmons", will kick off October 23rd, 2017, right here in the main Flashpoint archive.