"I am fine. It is not necessary for us to stay here!"

Erin had been arguing. She had been arguing for the last two hours since they had arrived at the hospital. She didn't like hospitals. She had been traumatized, a lot, but she would do what she always did. Play cold.

"Erin, you need to stop and let these doctors check you! You suffered severe malnutrition, dehydration..." Joe stood protectively over his sister, grasping her cold hand in his.

"And RAPE! YES, I WAS RAPED! BUT I AM STILL THE SAME PERSON!"

"No one said you weren't Er." Jamie. Little, protective, baby brother Jamie. Standing right next to him was Joe, looking equally concerned. The two of them stared at their sister, arms crossed.

"You need to convince Dad to let us go home." Erin begged. "And you." She motioned to Joe, "why aren't you with Lizzie? They won't let me go see her! What about Danny? Last time I checked, they were injured as well."

"Danny is getting his leg checked, and Lizzie is with Dad. You need to let them do the rape kit. When we get the all clear that you are okay, we will all go back to Dad's. You, Nick, and Lizzie will be staying there for a bit." Joe stated, trying to get the point across that she was doing it whether she liked it or not.

Erin opened her mouth to argue, but Jamie cut her off before she could start. "And Dad said not to argue because if you go home he will put half of the NYPD outside your door, so don't argue."

"GAH!" Erin growled, crossing her arms. She was clearly not going to win this fight.

Frank had been walking around, looking for his granddaughter. She had been cleared by paramedics at the scene, but she had ridden to the hospital in his SUV with Joe, Jackie, and Jamie.

He found her, as he figured, sitting next to Danny's hospital bed in a chair. He seemed to be trying to convince her that she was not a monster.

She silently sobbed with her head in her hands. She wanted so bad to throw herself at her uncle and cry in his arms, but she couldn't. The images flashing through her brain were slowly burning it to a crisp.

Look at what she had done. She had killed men, one of them being her biological father. Yes, he had done awful things, but he was still the reason she was alive. Half of her argued that if he had never raped her mother, she would have never been born, and the other half told her that her mother would have been better off.

"Lizzie, you need to listen to me. What you did out there has no bearing on what kind of a person you are. You did what you needed to do to survive. And being a cop, or any kind of person with a badge and gun is hard. You need to live with what you did. I am not gonna sit here and tell you that your thoughts and feelings about this will magically fade, because they won't. But I will tell you, that I served the NYPD for 15 years. Then I took a leave of absence to serve two tours as a Marine in the Iraq War."

Lizzie blinked. She hadn't known that.

"I saw so many things that I never thought I'd see. And, I was the only one from my unit to come home alive. I didn't sleep well for a year. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw death. The deaths of my friends seemed to follow me around everywhere I went. Decorated for heroism or not, that didn't change how I felt about what I had seen or what I had done. Everyone has trouble, even me. The moral of the story is that things did get better. You will get better, and you will forgive."

"I don't know if I can forgive myself. Look at what I have done; I am a monster." Lizzie gulped. She was not going to cry. She was a monster. She didn't deserve to whine about what she had done.

"You're not a monster. You're my niece. And you're a hell of a good one. You saved your mother and you saved me."

"I didn't save you; I shot you!" Lizzie argued, why was her uncle so persistent?

"I would take a million shots in the leg if it meant I got to hug my sister and her daughter again! You saved me from a life of misery! You don't understand how much pain I felt when Joe died. And now he's back. I am not really sure how to feel about that. But you and Erin wouldn't have been resurrected from the dead, and I would never have been able to live with myself for that. Now I won't have to."

Frank chose this moment to make his presence in the room known. He had been standing in the doorway for this whole conversation, but the two of them were so involved that they didn't notice his entrance. He cleared his throat and the two of them jumped to look at him; Lizzie straightened herself and wiped her eyes as if to attempt to hide the fact that she had been crying.

"Commissioner Reagan." Lizzie let out.

"Last time I checked, I was your grandfather before I was your Commissioner." He said, scrunching his mustache.

"I don't deserve to be your granddaughter." She bit.

"Daniel, would you excuse Elizabeth and I?"

"Of course." He agreed, shooting a look at Lizzie as she stood up and made her way to him. The two of them made their way down the hallway of the hospital.

"When was the last time you ate a decent meal?" Frank asked, motioning for her to get into the elevator with him. "I have heard this hospital has good chicken salads. And, they do make a mean chocolate shake for those patients on the liquid diet."

Lizzie blinked. This was odd.

"You're talking me on a lunch date? I mean, I know you are going to give me a really cheesy speech on how I am going to forever be a Reagan and all that, but lunch... really?"

"When was the last time you ate, Lizzie?" Frank persisted.

"A full meal?" Lizzie chuckled. "About three or four days ago." Upon seeing Frank's reaction, she rolled her eyes. "I have been eating, just not a lot. I had more important things on my mind at the time."

"Like what?"

"Getting my mother back. In case you forgot, I took a vacation in a scary looking warehouse. One that did provide me food as soon as I swore my allegiance to it. Did you know that joining terrorist groups means you get a buffet every night?"

"I thought you said you didn't eat." Frank raised an eyebrow.

"I wasn't hungry. I couldn't sit next to the man who had sexually assaulted my mother and eat steak. He put himself inside of her on more than one occasion. He forced himself inside of her. I heard my mother scream. I heard the sound of contact, his fist and her stomach. I heard her body hit the floor..." She closed her eyes, but quickly opened them when she saw him again.

"Your mother is safe now. She is safe because you saved her."

"I didn't save her. She is going to mentally scared for the rest of her life because I let her get assaulted multiple times. I saw her give up. I saw her willing herself to death. She didn't think I could get her out of there. And I didn't get her out of there. It took shooting my uncle and having him shoot the perp to get them out of there." She took a deep breath, pushing the salad in her tray around with a fork. She was not hungry. She didn't think she would ever have an appetite again.

"Lizzie, you have to eat." Her grandfather pressed.

Lizzie bit her tongue and put some salad in her mouth. It had a bad taste, but she swallowed it anyways.

"I think you should talk to someone. A therapist."

"Grandpa, I am not crazy!" Lizzie said, her voice rising a tad.

"I didn't say that you were! You are not crazy. You went through something traumatic and you need to tell someone because otherwise you will never be freed from this. I have had a therapist before. I have been a cop for forty years, and I have seen some pretty dark things. At first, I used to tell your grandmother everything, but after she died I started speaking to an outside source."

"Who?"

He smiled at me. "Baker is a remarkable police officer. She is also an amazing listener."

"Baker is the blonde, right?"

"Yes. And she has been by my side for eight years. I trust that woman with my life. She has gone above and beyond on more than one occasion."

"And you think that I should talk to Baker? Your secretary..?"

He swallowed, looking at me. "You can pick whomever you want, but I would go with Baker. You know, once she gets off her vacation that I mandated."

"...Okay...?"

Lizzie was a tad confused. It made sense that her grandfather wanted her to see a shrink. She probably sounded crazy the way she was babbling. There was just so many things going through her mind. Her parents had died. Her mother had been kidnapped. Her uncle had been kidnapped. Her dead uncle wasn't dead... her sister...

Her sister probably hated her. Look at all of the stupid things she had done. She had run off, faked her death, gotten her mother and uncle kidnapped on two separate occasions, and was a murderer.

Yeah Nicky probably hated her.

"Grandpa!"

Speak of the devil.

Nicky attacked their grandfather in a hug. Lizzie had no idea how long it had been since she had seen him. Had he been cold and obsessed with finding them? Had he shut out the people he cared about most because it hurt him?

He may have been the Commissioner, but like he had said, he was a grandfather first.

How long had it been since he had slept? Eaten? Was he just as glued to the task as it seemed? He had lost so much. His mother died, then his wife, then his son. His son had come back though. He had all of his children back, and his granddaughter that he hadn't known existed that had died and returned from the dead.

All of those things took their toll. He looked like he had aged five years in that week.

"Lizzie!" Lizzie was broken out of her thoughts when she realized that her little sister had also attacked her in a hug. For some reason, the contact made her flinch. She thought of the men. Looking up, she saw that her sister looked hurt.

"Sorry." Lizzie pulled her sister in again, this time appreciating the gesture. It just went to show that her family was slowly but surely coming back together.

"Hi Frank. I got a call that someone insisted I was needed in the ER for a patient. So, I will go do my job and make sure they are okay."

Lizzie hadn't even seen her aunt come and go. It made her laugh, thinking of how attached she had originally become to Linda. Linda was not a cop. She didn't have the demons the other Reagans did. If she did get involved in a case, her family by marriage would always save her.

She darted up from the table, running after her aunt. Nicky and Frank both watched her, following her out of the cafeteria into the hall. They saw the brunette gone blonde attack her aunt in a hug. She turned around, looking back at them.

Frank nodded.

The family, slowly but surely, would be okay.

"Erin, please. Let the nurses do their job. It is one thing to be assaulted. It is a completely other thing to inherit some sort of STD or get pregnant by this bastard."

Danny had insisted on seeing his sister. Her demeanor from early had changed drastically. She thought she could do it and play strong. But every sound she heard, every person she saw, they all led her back to the same place. The dark place had her changed down to a bed, screaming as someone forced themself into her.

"Hey there Erin Bear." He made his way across the room, walking towards the bed. "I know you missed me." He sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing his hand down Erin's chest.

She had just blinked at him. The first time it had happened, she had cried loudly. The second time, when he had whipped her, she had held it in. Now, despite the bruises covering her body, the infected gashes on her stomach, and the scarring on her inner thighs, she was going to let him do whatever he wanted. She couldn't help it even if she wanted to.

"You look oh so miserable darling. I can take the pain away. I will take it all away." To Erin, it was odd how words that were supposed to comfort did exactly the opposite. If anything, it probably made things worse.

He started kissing her. That's what she remembered most. His breath. It smelled awful, and he kept kissing her, continuously rubbing his hands up and down her sides. He had thrown himself on top of her, and she didn't think her body could handle it.

"Erin! Erin!"

She quietly looked up to see her sister in law standing at the edge of the room, near the door. Danny nodded in her direction. Linda just shook her head.

"All of you. Out. You are probably making her feel uncomfortable."

Now that Erin thought about it, she had felt safe having her brothers with her. She was scared, yes, she was scared that she was never going to be able to live a normal life again, but she always knew that her brothers would protect her.

They would never hurt her.

She timidly shifted her gaze to her sister in law as she put gloves on. Her blue scrubs seemed to intimidate Erin. She knew what Linda wanted. She shook her head.

"Erin... I have to do this. The sooner we do it, the sooner we can go back home and you can spend some time with your kids. It is what you need right now." She sat down in the spinny chair next to the bed that had been previously occupied by Jamie.

"I need you to change into a hospital gown." Erin had refused to let the other nurses change her. They had hooked her up to an IV to push in fluids, but they hadn't changed her. The Commissioner had suggested that Linda do it, since Erin knew her.

Erin shook her head.

"Please." Linda begged. "I will help you."

Another shake of the head.

"Please Mom." Lizzie stood in the doorway, glancing at her mother's fragile figure. She looked so small, lying on that bed. She looked thinner, and she had already been a toothpick to begin with. "I will help you, if you want."

Erin gave a slight nod. Lizzie nodded at Linda and the two of them helped Erin take her shirt off, revealing even more bruises. Both Linda and Lizzie got a little teary eyed when they saw the gashes on her stomach. They had been treated, so they looked slightly better, but the discoloration was still awful. Linda shoved the shirt into a plastic bag. Lizzie slowly pulled the underwear down and her mother did not fight it. She just spaced out. She was in her own little world.

Lizzie knew she should have stayed with her grandfather, but she had a feeling her mother would not allow anyone to perform the rape kit. And she really wanted to just go home with her family.

Linda began the process, and Lizzie sat down next to her mother and took her hand into her own, giving it a squeeze.

"We'll be okay. We are always okay."

Her mother turned her head, smiling smally at her daughter. Her daughter smiled in return, squeezing her mother's hand in return.