A/N: If you couldn't tell by the prompt/chapter title, this one's more on the angsty side. Warning: character death.
"Honestly, Jane, sit down!"
"SIT DOWN!? Are you crazy?! YO, REF! ARE YOU BLIND?!"
The words her mothers used were ostensibly annoyed, angry even, but the laugh in Maura's voice and the look on Jane's face as Maura filmed her proved that neither of them were actually upset at each other.
"It's just a—"
"I swear Maura, you say it's just a game one more time and—HEY! HEY! That was a cheating m—Maura, don't film me! Film the game, get Lily! LILY! GET IN THERE, COME ON!"
The camera panned quickly to the field overcrowded with grade-school girls, half of whom seemed a little more than terrified of the soccer ball they were supposed to be passing back and forth. Jane's encouraging voice blocked out nearly all other sounds the camera picked up, though the screen was filled by Lily Isles-Rizzoli, who had just gotten the ball away from their opposing team. Her coach was yelling for her to pass, but her teammates (and Jane) egged her all the way on to the goal, where she gave the ball a swift kick, and punched the air victoriously when the ball sailed into the net over the goalie's outstretched arms.
(It was the only goal scored in the entire game, but anyone just watching the tape wouldn't know that, as the scene ended abruptly. Maura, in her enthusiasm, had accidentally turned off the camera when she tried to clap. When the game ended, she hit the "record" button again, thinking she was turning the camera off.
This was Lily's favorite part to watch.)
The tape starts again, and the camera is sitting at an awkward angle on top of Lily's piles of gear and Jane's unused chair. This offers a slight profile of Jane as she gets on her knees to be around Lily's height when her daughter comes charging over to hug her.
"Mama! Nobody else scored a goal, and I did it! I scored my first ever goal!"
"You were amazing out there, baby, you really were! Like lightning! I was telling mommy that for a second, I wondered if maybe we'd forgotten you in the car, 'cause you were running so fast I couldn't hardly see you!"
Lily laughed and hugged her mother again, Jane clearly not caring that she was getting second-hand sweat and grass stains all over. "You were right, Mama. Playing in a ponytail is a LOT better than hair down."
"Bet you don't feel so hot anymore, huh?"
"Yeah! And I pretended I was you when I was gonna make that goal!"
"Really? How?"
"I pretended Alecia was a bad guy protecting an even badder bad guy, and my ball was like what I had instead of a gun, so I pretended I was you chasing down a bad guy and I had to kick the ball at his head to beat him, and I did it!"
Jane crowed and picked Lily up under the arms as she got to her feet. She swung her little girl around as she hugged her; only the bottoms of Lily's legs and her feet were visible on screen now.
"Maura! Maura, get that camera out and let's have an interview with the Jungle Cat's VIP!"
"Mommy, did I play good—I mean, well?" Lily asked, as the camera got picked up and the screen swung around.
There was the sound of Maura kissing her on the cheek. "You played beautifully, honey. We're very proud of you. Now…" She held up the camera and focused it on Lily and Jane's faces, then said, "Oh! Oh, it's already on. Whoops!"
"See that?" Jane sighed to Lily. "You were so awesome there, your brilliant mother forgot how to work a video camera. Is that silly or what?"
"Really silly!"
"Okay, official business now," Jane said, looking somber. "Lily, gimme your game face." (Maura barely contained a laugh as Lily, still in Jane's arms, tried to look deadly serious for the camera.) "Is it true that the girls on your team all want you to be your captain, even though there are no captains in leagues this young?"
"Yes, Detective Rizzoli! That is correct!"
"Is it also true that your coach has recommended you for Olympic consideration?"
Lily laughed out loud again. "Me, at the Olympics?! Really?"
"I bet you'd win the gold, silver, and bronze, no big."
"All three?" It was clear Lily was looking at Maura now, not the camera. "Has anybody ever done that before?" (She knew even at that age which mother was the one to go to for fact-checking.)
"There's a first time for everything," Maura responded.
"Okay, one last question, sports star," Jane said. "Grandma's making a celebratory dinner tonight just for you. Is it a) brussel sprouts, b) eggplant parm, or c) manicotti?"
"C!" Lily shouted. "Please, please, Mama, is it C?!"
"It's C!" Jane crowed. "But first, I think some ice cream is in order, yeah?"
"Jane!" Maura chided her. "Before dinner?"
Lily stuck out her lower lip as Jane had taught her to do, and Jane imitated the puppy dog pout as Lily implored the camera: "Please, mommy, please?"
One of the two on their own was hard enough to turn down, but the two looks together bowled Maura over. "Oh, fine."
"Yes! That's my girl!" Jane said, before giving Lily a big kiss on the cheek. Lily threw her arms around Jane's neck and kissed her cheek right back.
That's where the tape ended. Lily rewound the last few seconds four times before she heard a distinctive sniff from behind her. She whirled around and shut off the TV to see Maura standing by the couch, eyes red and watery.
"Mom," Lily said, quickly getting to her feet. Maura waved her off, sitting on the couch, and Lily joined her. "Mom, it's late. What're you doing up?"
"I might ask you the same thing," Maura said. "You've got graduation rehearsal in the morning, young lady. 8:00!"
"I know," Lily muttered, rubbing her eyes. "I just …I couldn't sleep."
"Did you have a bad dream?" It sounded like a childish implication the moment Maura said it, but she appreciated that her daughter just responded instead of pointing that out.
"No." She shook her head, looking down at the floor. She knew if she saw the tears in her mother's eyes, that would make her cry, and she was already on the verge. "I just …I, um… I think of her at times like this." Maura reached over and put her hand on Lily's leg. "You know, times I particularly feel like she ought to... to be here."
"She'd be so proud of you, baby," Maura whispered.
Lily let out a short breath. "Really?"
"Of course! Valedictorian, and leading the field hockey team to the state championship? Honey, that would be her dream come true." Maura opened her arms, and Lily leaned over to be embraced, now starting to cry. Maura kissed her forehead. "You were her dream come true."
Lily had just turned ten and her little brother Conner was seven when Jane Rizzoli was killed in the line of duty. Since then, Lily had kept a photo of Jane close to her no matter where she was: one in her wallet from a photo booth, taken at a school fair when Lily had been five. One at her desk from her mothers' wedding. Her favorite was on her night-stand, so far the only possession she knew for sure she would be bringing to her dorm in BCU in the fall: Lily sitting on Jane's shoulders while Maura held baby Conner in her arms. Fireworks were in the air behind them. It was the Fourth of July, Jane and Lily's favorite holiday.
In just a few short years, more time would have passed in Lily's life where Jane had been absent than when she'd been so vibrantly present. That scared her. It scared her that someone who meant so much to her was no longer there, and that with each passing year, Lily thought of more questions she'd wanted to ask Jane and more things about her life she wished she knew. There were things her mother and grandmother and uncles just wouldn't be able to tell her. They all missed her in their own way, and buried deep inside them were little anecdotes that Lily would likely never be told, simply because they never came to mind. Lily envied them that.
She loved the slice-of-life commentaries that these home videos offered. It felt strange to witness the interactions Jane had with her, because in a way, Jane no longer felt real to her. To put it simply, she was a ghost. She was an idol Lily aspired to be like. She still aimed to please her mothers the same amount. Some nights that ache to see Jane, to talk with her and be comforted her, kept Lily awake.
What would she think of me right now? If I asked her advice on this or that or maybe even that, what would she say? Would she make a joke? Would she like my boyfriend? Would she have come to each of my games, like she did when I was a kid?
Of course she had always known this had to be hard for the mother who got left behind. Of course she knew the woman had been heartbroken. But Lily was ashamed to realize that it wasn't until this moment, where Maura was red-eyed but quiet next to her, that she had ever truly tried to consider how her mother must feel. How her own heartache must eclipse Lily's. No... no, she'd say it's not fair to compare them. And I guess it isn't. But my God...
Having never really been in love, it was hard for her to even imagine how it must feel to have that ripped from you. How hard it must have been marrying someone who put her life on the line everyday, and it was just another day at the office. How Maura must have felt on her day off to get a phone call saying the woman she'd envisioned living the rest of her life with was completely gone.
Lily's stomach ached as she remembered Jane's funeral, and how Maura had been so composed throughout most of it. All until Angela had stood by the casket before the pallbearers moved it, and put her hand on it. How she and Conner had mimicked this action, and she had looked expectantly over at her mother. And when Maura walked up, she placed her hand on the casket and fell to her knees, openly weeping in front of everyone for the first time.
"Mom," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"I don't… I don't know how you do it. How you can stand it."
She was starting to understand that adults weren't perfect. They didn't have it all together all the time, like she'd assumed as a kid. They didn't have all the answers. That terrified her. Her mother was always so put together, she was so brilliant, she was so steadfast. She had kept it together for her kids when they lost Jane. Naturally she cried and naturally she was upset, but she never talked to Lily about it. She never admitted anything more than sadness.
It had been eight years.
For the first time, Lily heard hopelessness, whimpered out into the dark basement: "I can't, Lily. I can't always stand it."