"LIAR!"

The shout from down the hall startled Jane so badly, she nearly spilled sent a pot of boiling water to the floor. As she heard footsteps racing towards the kitchen, she hurriedly stepped out in time to see her twelve-year-old son running towards her. Dumbfounded, she opened her arms and for once he wasn't too proud to embrace her; but when he looked up, Jane saw a fury through his tears that she'd never seen in his face before.

"Conner?"

Shaking with rage, he unwrapped one arm from around Jane to point behind him at Maura, who had just walked over looking incredibly guilty. "Mom, make her leave! She's telling a bunch of lies!"

"What?" Jane laughed. "Conner, you know Maura doesn't lie—"

"Yes she does! She's telling lies about dad!"

Jane stiffened and Maura all but cowered under the patented Rizzoli glare. "What're you telling my son?" she asked in a voice made no less dangerous for its quietness.

"The truth," Maura answered, hands in her pocket.

"Conner, go to your room and do some homework," Jane said.

"I'm done with my homework already. Are you gonna make her go?"

"We're going to have a talk," Jane said. "Go to your room."

Conner turned to leave, but not without first giving Maura the dirtiest look he could muster. Maura was almost afraid to meet Jane's gaze, even as she felt entirely justified in what she had done. She knew Jane was waiting for Conner's bedroom door to close; until then, she was pacing, her anger just barely simmering beneath the surface. Then, as soon as the coast was clear—

"What the hell, Maura? What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Jane—"

"We start dating, and you think it's your right to just start badmouthing the boy's father to him?! Who do you think you are?"

"Who do you?" Maura shot back.

"Who—?! I'm Conner's mother! That means I get to choose what he knows about his father, and if that means—"

"Lies?"

Jane looked furious, and her voice was a growl: "I never lied to my son!"

"That's a technicality. You've been hiding the truth from him. And you know, I'm sorry, that's just the way I was raised. You don't sugarcoat things in the Isles family," Maura said.

"This coming from the woman who didn't know until five years ago that her father was Patrick Doyle? That's rich!"

"It's different," Maura said coldly. "My closed adoption was a legal issue. I'm talking about other things. How could you go on this long letting your child believe that his father was some Romeo who—who treated you like a queen? How can you stand listening to Conner go on and on about what an honorable man Casey was—"

"He was honorable, Maura!"

"An honorable soldier, Jane. Not an honorable man. Not an honorable husband or father. You and I both know that. And I know," she said, raising her voice when Jane looked ready to protest. "You hate to discredit anyone in uniform, even the man who in your own words made you turn into someone you weren't. That uniform doesn't excuse the way he treated you, Jane."

"What… what all in God's name did you tell Conner, Maura?"

"I didn't start anything, first of all. He asked me."

"What'd he ask you?"

"He was telling me his favorite Casey story for the eighteenth time," Maura said, trying to calm herself down in hopes that Jane would follow suit. "And I don't know, Jane, this time I couldn't just bring myself to smile along. Yes, it is incredible that he saved all the men on that transport. That is a valid accomplishment for him to be proud of, and for you and Conner to be proud of. But that's the problem, sweetheart. You let Conner assume Casey was that hero at home, too, and we both know he wasn't. Honey, biting my tongue has been hell for me, but I did it because I knew you wanted it that way. When he asked me outright—"

"He asked what outright?"

Maura pursed her lips together and shook her head. This time, as Conner had recounted his father's famed military exploit with admiration shining in his eyes, all Maura could think about were the phone calls she'd gotten over the years from Jane where she cried and cried. This proud woman, reduced to tears multiple times by a man who used her and manipulated her and condescended to her. She thought of the time she herself had tried confronting Casey about it, only to have Casey tell her "Jane doesn't know it, but she needs someone to take care of her. She's fragile, even if she doesn't show it. I'm going to be that person." Maura thought of the ultimatum he had used to wrangle a marriage, a commitment, out of Jane—only to go back on his word when the insistence for his return was too great. When Jane didn't take more time off to spend with him while the army wined and dined him and told him how wonderful he was. Maura thought of the nurse he'd had an affair with while he was away, and how it had finally pushed Jane for a divorce.

She thought of how long it had taken Jane to become herself again.

"When I grow up, I wanna be just like him! Don't you think that'd be great, Maura?"

"No, Conner. I don't."

He'd thought she was joking, taking it for granted that her jokes just never were that funny. But he laughed anyway. "You don't want me to be like an awesome war hero?"

"I think there are other war heroes out there who would be better to imitate."

His face fell. "Everyone says my dad is great." (Which was true, Maura had to admit. Nobody else was clued into Casey's treatment of Jane, because Jane never let anyone - even Frankie or her mother - close enough to know those things. Maura was the sole witness to the whole picture, and that burden had been crushing her for years.) "Maura? Didn't you like my dad?"

At that point, she didn't think she could've lied even if she'd wanted to: "No, Conner. I didn't."

For the look on Conner's face, Maura might have just admitted to a horrible crime. He moved further away from her on the couch. "What's your problem? My dad was a hero!"

"Objectively, yes. He did many heroic things. And I'm not… Conner, please don't think I'm saying that I'm not sorry he died. I wouldn't say that about anyone. I just did not like him."

"Why not?!" he snarled. "Why didn't you like him?!"

"I didn't like the way he treated your mother."

"He loved her! And she loved him too, and—and they only got divorced 'cause it was too hard that he was away so much, but that didn't mean they didn't love each other! What do you know anyway?!"

Leave it, leave it, leave it. But she couldn't. "Conner, I know plenty. And I know that the way your father treated your mom is not an acceptable way of loving somebody. He didn't deserve her."

"Screw you!"

"Conner—"

"Liar! You're a LIAR!"

Jane had sat herself down at the kitchen table, face in her hands as she tried to process what Maura had just told her. Maura was standing on the other side of the table, idly scratching at the top of one of the chairs. "He hates me," she said simply.

"No, Maura. He doesn't."

"Oh yes, he does. You didn't see the way he looked at me."

"Well geez, Maura, what'd you expect?" Jane asked wearily, looking up at her. "The boy's spent a lifetime idolizing that man, and you took five seconds to start tearing him down." She let that sink in, as if Maura wasn't already painfully aware that she'd gone too far. "Look, babe. Conner loves you. You're the only reason he's passing his science class! You let him keep his after-school snacks in the dead people fridge, and he even let you kiss his cheek in public. Trust me, he loves you. But being a parent isn't all picnics and birthday parties all the time, okay? He's gonna hate your guts sometimes. You're a grown-up and he's not. That's how it works."

Maura slowly sat herself down across from Jane, kneading her hands. "Would you have ever told him?"

"Wh—about us? I told you, we'll find a way to break it to him."

"No, Jane. Would you have ever… ever told him about Casey?" Maura asked, and the silence after she asked it fell like an axe. She could see the answer in Jane's eyes: "You've never thought about it."

"I don't know," Jane said quietly. "I just figured maybe someday it'd… come up. Or no, I didn't. I didn't see the harm in letting him think his father was this great guy."

"You didn't see the harm?" Maura whispered. She reached across the table for Jane's hands, and when Jane didn't pull away, Maura rubbed her thumbs over the knuckles. "Jane. Casey's gone, but that doesn't mean he's just some mythical character that Conner only sees in old pictures. He was a real person who made real choices that had real affects. On you. And on Conner, but he was too young to know the difference. And I know he's still too young to tell when you're just putting on a good face, but you can't pull the wool over my eyes, Jane. I see your pain when Conner goes on one of his hero-worship rants. I see it, and it kills me every time."

"My relationship with Casey is separate from the one he had with Conner," Jane said, fighting off tears.

"I understand that, Jane, of course I do. But Casey was far from perfect, and letting Conner go on thinking he was—that's the mistake. That's the lie. Conner has the right to know that Casey may have been a great soldier and a decent father, but that he was terrible to you. I can't just stand by and let you shortchange your own self-worth for that man."

"Boy," Jane chuckled, tears stinging her eyes. "You really are something else, Maura Isles."

Maura cocked her head. "How do you mean?"

"I mean… I don't know, I guess you're just so… you. Rizzoli's cover up unpleasant things. We don't talk about them. We prefer pretty pictures to reality, and that doesn't always end well for us." She didn't brush her away her tears, preferring to keep her hands in Maura's. After a few moments, she lifted one and kissed the back of Maura's hands. "Sweetheart, I know your intentions were good." She kissed her hand again. "I know that, and I love you for it. But please. Can you understand why I'm upset?"

"Yes," Maura said. "I know it wasn't my place to tell him like this—"

"He's still just a kid."

"—but he asked me what I thought, and I didn't want to traumatize him by lying and then passing out in front of him."

Jane laughed weakly, leaning back in her chair and pulling her hands free of Maura's. "C'mere," she murmured, indicating the seat next to her. Maura walked over and sat there, and Jane leaned into her embrace. "I just didn't know how to tell him," she said quietly. "I didn't know if it was better to just let him keep on believing in that image of Casey… and whenever I thought about it, I just kept pushing it away. It's been this awful push-and-pull, because I know Conner's got the right to know about it, but there just wasn't ever a good way to bring it up. Or I couldn't think of one, anyway. He's just always seemed too young."

Maura shook her head. "You're right, Jane. We are different. I've never thought of anyone as being too young for the truth—at least, some version of the truth. That's not how I was raised."

"Right. Well." Jane took a deep breath and straightened up, though her arms remained loosely in Maura's grip. "He's gonna want to know how I stand on all this now. He's gonna have a lot of questions."

"And?" Maura prompted her.

Jane looked ready to cry again, but she kept a stiff upper lip by averting her gaze from Maura. "I'm gonna be honest with him. And…"

Maura leaned forward a bit, resting her hand soothingly behind Jane's neck, bringing their foreheads together. She gave Jane a quick kiss. "There's more?"

"Yes," Jane breathed, kissing her again. "Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Soon I'm gonna tell him how nobody's ever l-loved me the way you do." Her tears fell again when Maura tightened their embrace. "And I'm gonna tell him how you show it by respecting me, and listening to me, and telling me the truth. And I'll tell him…" She laughed quietly to herself.

"What is it?" Maura whispered.

"You know how in his English class they're doing that mythology unit? He's obsessed with Hercules. Thinks he's the coolest guy ever. And I'll tell him someday soon …I'd go through all twelve of those labors and then some if it meant getting to be with you. And that's nowhere near a lie."

A/N: Just wanted to pop in and thank you guys for reviewing/following and what not, and also just to remind you that these are supposed to be one-shots... Granted I've done a couple two-shots, but these are not intended to be fully fleshed-out stories.