A/N: This is a continuation from last chapter. Hope you guys like it!

But the love you gave me will always live
You'll always be there every time I fall

She couldn't breathe. The walls around her seemed to be closing in, the silence of the lab she was in seemed to be getting louder and louder and the stares her teacher was giving her seemed to be stricter and stricter. Lucy swallowed, closed her eyes and counted to ten, and quickly scribbled down her answer to the final question. Relieved and desperate to get out of the lab, she hurriedly cleared away her items and handed in her paper to her teacher before dashing out of the classroom and to her dorm room.

It was getting to her. The stress of exams in college was getting to her and Lucy had never felt so weak and stupid. How could she have thought she was strong and clever enough to get through this? Sighing, Lucy put her head in her hands as she sat down on her bed. She laid there for a few moments before grabbing the picture of her parents and her on her bedside table. Determination pulsed through Lucy's veins and the twenty-year-old grabbed her car keys.

It was nightfall when she finally reached her hometown and Lucy gave a contented sigh. A smile graced itself upon her face when she witnessed two familiar figures dancing through the curtains. Lucy chuckled as she quietly got out of her car and slipped into her house, trying her best to go unnoticed. As she had suspected, her father had his arms around her mother and the two of them were swaying to the music playing on the stereo.

"You know, for two respected detectives in the NYPD, you too sure are not that alert anymore," Lucy grinned when her parents let go of each other abruptly and stared at her as though they couldn't believe their eyes.

"Lucy!"

Lindsay's welcoming grin couldn't help Lucy feel more at home than she had been for a long time and when she had rushed into her parents' open arms; Lucy closed her eyes and let out her first relaxed and contented sigh in weeks.

xxxxx

"You want to tell your mother what's wrong?"

Lindsay Messer's soft voice penetrated through her thoughts and Lucy turned around to look at her mother. The young adult shrugged.

"College was getting to me so I came home."

A soft smile spread across Lindsay's lips and Lindsay hugged her daughter, instantly giving her comfort.

"So you came home."

And just like that, just being in her mother's arms, in a place she knew she would always call home, Lucy Messer was at peace.

You are to me the greatest love of all
You take my weakness and you make me strong
And I will always love you 'til forever comes

"You said no?"

Lucy squirmed uncomfortably in her seat under her parents' hawk-like eyes, her head facing the top the table as she found it hard to look at them. She felt like she was ten again and she was getting reprimanded by her parents for calling her Papa Mac at 3.33 a.m in the morning just to scare him. Well, that was thirteen years ago but there were still times when Lucy still felt that way and this time was definitely one of them.

"Oh, thank god!"

Lucy's head snapped up so fast, she actually heard the crack in her neck. She massaged her neck gently, shocked at the impact of her fast reaction to her parents' reactions. Danny was taking many breaths of relief as his trademark smirk made its' way back onto his face while Lindsay gave a sigh of exasperation as she shook her head at her husband. Lucy gave her parents a questioning look.

"You are way too young to get married anyway," Danny sighed happily. Lucy mentally rolled her eyes.

"And when would I be old enough to get married?"

"How about never?"

Together, the two Messer women rolled their eyes at the man who was lucky they loved him too damn much to kill him.

xxxxxx

"Luce?"

"Yeah?"

"You alright? You were too calm just now," her mother's gentle and concerned voice brought a small sad smile to her face and Lucy turned from her computer to look at her mother. Who else could have known that she had been trying to hide her real feelings when she announced her rejection to Brian's proposal to her parents?

Lucy half-heartedly gave her mother a shrug. "I thought I loved him. But when he asked me to marry him, I just… I just couldn't picture myself walking down the aisle, starting a family or growing old with him."

Lindsay just sat on the top of her daughter's bed, knowing that if she hugged her daughter like she wanted to do so very much, Lucy would just keep it all in.

"Then you did the right thing, Luce."

Lucy blinked. "Did I? Because I felt so bad and guilty when I said no, Mama. He looked so sad and dejected. Brian's such a nice guy and he's always been the prefect boyfriend."

"Maybe that's why it wouldn't have worked out, Lucy," Lindsay looked at her knowingly. "There is no such thing as a perfect relationship. Every relationship has its ups and downs. I mean, c'mon. You know your father and I have hit some rough spots in our relationships before and after we got married."

Lucy held in her snort. Rough spots in her parents' relationship would be the understatement of the century. With Danny's betrayal to Lindsay before Lucy was born (she'd found out when she was eleven and the topic had came out during one of her parents' very rare arguments. She'd confronted her parents about it a week later and couldn't look at her father for many months after that), the escape of Shane Casey and the danger he had been to her family when she was one (even though she barely remembered anything, she still had nightmares of the man in the photo of the file that had been on Papa Mac's table) and the few long-term trips to the hospital because of her parents' dangerous jobs, Lindsay and Danny had definitely been through a lot. She'd often respected and admired how strong their love for each other was.

Lucy got up and leaned her head against her mother's chest and closed her eyes as comfort and relief flooded through her.

"And you know what?" Lindsay wrapped her arms around her daughter and kissed her hair. "I'm proud of you for rejecting him. Many women wouldn't have had the strength to."

Lucy just remained in the position she was in as a small smile made its' way onto her face.

"I love you, Mama."

"Love you too, my darling."

And when you need me
I'll be there for you always
I'll be there your whole life through
I'll be there this I promise you, Mamma

"Mom?"

Lindsay looked up at the sound of her daughter's voice and a small smile graced her tired face when she held open her arms. Lucy immediately rushed into them.

"You alright?" the younger Messer woman whispered. Lindsay shook her head and gripped her daughter tighter. "Drake and I got here as fast as we could. Dad's going to be alright, Mom. He has to be."

Lindsay sniffled and slowly, she started to loosen her grip on her daughter. When she finally pulled away, however, Lucy made sure that their hands were still interlinked, knowing that the simple gesture would comfort her mother. Lindsay looked up at and gave a watery smile to Lucy's boyfriend.

The older Messer woman could not think straight. How could all of this have happened in such a short amount of time? They had been questioning a suspect when everything just went wrong. The teenage girl, she couldn't have been older than sixteen, had just pulled out a gun and aimed it at Lindsay. Lindsay remembered trying to calm the girl down before she was pushed to the side roughly and a gunshot was heard less than two seconds later. She remembered her world stopping as Danny fell beside her, clutching his stomach as blood stained his hands. She remembered screaming for someone to help her. And when someone finally did, she remembered thinking about the 2009 incident that had scarred her and Danny for life.

It never got easier. In their line of work, all three Messers were at a higher risk of getting injured than anyone else. With Lucy joining the New York crime lab a year fresh out of college, Lindsay and Danny worried more than they ever did.

"Mrs. Messer?"

The doctor's voice brought her out of her thoughts and Lindsay immediately stood up, desperate for any kind of news on her husband.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Mrs. Messer. I don't think there's much we can do for him. He has lost a lot of blood and –"

Tears streamed down her cheeks and Lindsay tuned out everything the doctor was saying.

No, please. Not Danny. Not her husband. What would she do without him? Hadn't she lost him too many times already? The world around her did not matter any longer. Despite this, however, the only thing she could hear was her daughter's gentle whisper.

"It's going to be okay, Mama. We'll be okay."

Mamma, I'll be
I'll be your beacon through the darkest nights
I'll be the wings that guide your broken flight
I'll be your shelter through the raging storm
And I will love you 'till forever comes

"Mama, you alright?"

"I'm fine, Luce."

"Dad's going to be okay, Mama."

"It's been three weeks, Lucy."

"Mama, you can't give up hope. The doctor's said –"

"That he has a ten percent chance of survival."

"Mama, seriously –"

"Luce, you have to stop pretending as if everything's going to be okay."

"Okay, you know what? I've had enough of this bullshit!"

"Lucy Messer, don't you dare use that tone and language with me!"

"I'm sorry, okay? I just find it hard to believe right now that you were Dad's main support when he was in the wheelchair all those years ago. What happened to you taking a chance no matter how slim it is?"

"Lucy –"

"I'm not finished! Dad wouldn't have given up on you and you shouldn't too. I know that we have been going in and out of this hospital more than most families have but Mama, we're in this together. I love Daddy very much and I'll be damned if you end up in a hospital bed the way he is now."

"Oh, for goodness sake, Lucy Messer, you are so overdramatic."

"Am I? You haven't been eating well. You're as thin as a pole. When was the last time you got some sleep, huh, Mama?"

"…"

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You're not doing this alone, Mama. I'm here for you. Please, just go home and get some rest, alright? Drake will take you. I'll be with Dad. I promise."

"Okay."

"Look, if you're going to argue – what?"

"Okay. I'll go back and rest."

"Oh, thank god. Love you, Mama."

"And I love you, my darling angel."

Goodbye's the saddest word I'll ever hear
Goodbye's the last time I will hold you near
Someday you'll say that word and I will cry
It'll break my heart to hear you say goodbye

"Mama?"

Lucy looked up and smiled at her twenty-four year-old son, Daniel, as she beckoned him to sit beside her.

"Why aren't you going in to say goodbye to Grandma?"

Lucy choked back the sob that was rising in her throat.

"I can't," she croaked. Unwanted tears gathered in her eyes and Lucy didn't bother blinking them away. A sad smile crept onto her face when her son wiped her tears away.

"You know what Grandma said when I kissed her goodbye?" her son asked and Lucy shook her head, her full attention on him. "She said that it wasn't goodbye."

"What?"

" 'It's not goodbye.'. Those were her exact words."

Lucy snorted. Trust her mother to say that on her deathbed. Lucy took a deep breath, kissed her son on the cheek and made her way to her mother's room.

Lucy swallowed, knowing that this was going to be the last time her mother would be lying on the hospital bed after being in it for so many times. With her father's death three years ago, Lindsay had drifted in and out of the hospital.

"Hey, Mama. It's not goodbye, right?" Lucy asked softly as she caressed her mother's cheek and kissed it. Lindsay smiled.

"Oh, Lucy Messer, it better not be."

Ten hours and eighteen minutes later, Lucy Messer kissed her mother's cheek for the last time.

"I love you, Mama."

'Till we meet again...
Until then...
Goodbye

A/N: Please review and tell me what you think? Should I make one for Danny and Lucy?