A Story of Us

by Kadi

Rated T

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. It's just my favorite sandbox to play in.

Epilogue

"Sorry!" He stepped through the sliding glass door and onto the deck. "I know, I know," he added when his sister glared at him. "I'm sorry, okay? Traffic was bad coming out of LA. I'm sorry." He bent and kissed his mother's cheek.

"You're here now." Sharon smiled as she rose. She wrapped him in a hug. "That's what matters."

"Oh sure." Emily rolled her eyes. "If I had been late, I never would have heard the end of it. Ricky?"

"Definitely." He shook his head. "I'd still be hearing it. There would be a lecture on time management and consideration of others. Rusty?"

"I'm never late." He smirked at them as he lifted his glass to his lips. "It's not a problem I've ever had." He looked over at his brother, the recently arrived and perpetually late Joey. "What happened?"

He sighed. His shoulders slumped. "That woman is going to drive me bat-shit—"

"Joseph." Their mother's brows rose. Her voice dipped. "Language."

He felt like groaning. Instead, he just shoved his hands into his pockets. Joseph Michael Flynn was his father's son. Right down to the frustrated bowing of his head. He looked up at her through his lashes and grinned crookedly. "Do you wanna hear it or not?"

Her lips pursed. She folded her arms across her chest. "Let's hear it." There was a sparkle in her green eyes. Her youngest child, the source of such delight was often the source of a never ending amount of frustration too. Just like his father. It always amazed her that Joseph could be so much like Andy, given the true nature of his parentage. Somehow these two men had managed to blow the nature versus nurture argument right out the window. At least as it pertained to them.

"Sykes," he bit out. "I was getting ready to leave, and I'll be damned…"

"Yes?" His mother drew the syllable out, even as her head inclined. The tone was a warning.

His eyes narrowed. Joey wasn't so bold as to glare at his mother, but he was tempted to run a hand through his hair. "Captain Sykes," he managed to grit out, at least with enough respect so as not to incur any further wrath, "called me into her office to go over questions she had about three different cases that are going to trial soon."

"Dammit Sharon." Andy shook his head where he sat. "Let the boy explain." It earned him a look from his wife, but he simply grinned in response.

As his younger brother continued explaining his tardiness, Rusty shook his head. He could have been transported back twenty years, watching the same scene in the old Major Crimes Murder Room. He looked across the table where they were all gathered and met his brother-in-law's gaze. When Buzz just rolled his eyes, Rusty laughed quietly. At least he wasn't alone.

Joey stood there, having come directly from work, suit jacket gone and tie loosened. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up, hands tucked into his pockets. Occasionally one of them would appear as he gestured, explaining some point or another. Rusty had to laugh.

Of course, Joey was the cop. Somehow, he saw that one coming before the kid was even five. He was his father's son, but more than that, he'd grown up in a house with two parents and a number of honorary aunts and uncles in the profession. It was only natural that he would follow them. He'd gone to college first, Sharon wouldn't accept anything less. So here he was, twenty-five, and recently made a detective.

That promotion had come with a transfer.

They'd all held their breath when he dropped that news on them. They expected Andy to have something to say about Joey going into Internal Affairs. He'd laughed. Long and hard, and then shook his head. "Only the best things come out of IA," he'd told them.

It was why, Rusty knew, he always got excused when he was late. They understood it. The ever changing schedules, the last minute cancellations, and showing up almost an hour late to family gatherings. Yeah, they got it. It was the life they had both lived until they had both retired. First Andy, and then Sharon within the same year.

They hadn't moved north until Joey went away to school. When he moved east to go to NYU, they sold the house. They bought a little cottage north of San Francisco. It was on the cliffs, and surrounded by trees. They left Los Angeles behind, with all of its politics and murders. They found a place where they could simply be, just the two of them, and their children when they visited.

With Mark and Nicole living in Portland now it was a nice, centralized location. They all got together when they could, as often as they could. Unfortunately with the busy lives that they all led that was usually relegated to holidays and special occasions. Such as anniversaries, like the one that they were celebrating today. Their parent's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary had brought all of them together.

It was a simple affair, a family dinner. Their parents hadn't wanted anything elaborate. They only wanted each other, their kids, and the grandkids. Even still it was quite a crowd. Enough to keep the evening light and boisterous. Even after Joey settled in, the bantering continued. Emily and Nicole were never going to allow Ricky or Charlie to get the better of them, no matter how old they got. Each side tried to pull him or Joey into it. They had learned, at least, to dodge the attempts and amuse themselves with watching.

Later, much later, Rusty took a walk along the cliffs. There was an arm looped through his. "I've got something for you."

"Oh?" She tried to play coy, but chuckled instead. Sharon was almost seventy-five now, and she leaned into his side more as they walked than she once had. "Rusty, I think the package under your arm gave it way."

"Funny lady, such a comedian." He tossed a side-ways smirk at her.

"Well, where do you think you got it from?" They stopped walking and she turned to smile at him. "I thought we told you kids no gifts?"

"You did." He held it out anyway. "It wasn't for the anniversary. The timing just worked out that way. I wanted you to see it first."

Her eyes narrowed. The light was fading, and her eyes were not as good as they used to be. "Let's go back onto the deck." She slipped her arm into his and walked back with him, the short distance to the cottage.

She took a seat on the old wooden swing, one of the things they'd bought with them from the old LA house. It had been refurbished some years before, but it was still basically the same swing. Rusty sat beside her and held his breath as she opened the parcel.

There was a book nestled within. Sharon slipped the paper away and turned it over in her hands. Hard bound, with a cover in deep blue and silver. She glanced at Rusty only briefly before reading the title.

The Weirdest Parents on the Planet - Life after the streets

"You did it." Her eyes widened. She lay the book in her lap and stared at him. "Rusty." She reached out and cupped his cheek. Nicole had always been perfectly happy in Marketing. Charlie was their architect. Emily managing a successful Auction House in Los Angeles, while Ricky was getting ready to sell a third software firm that he had built from the ground up. Joey was their police officer, and Rusty… the child they'd chosen, who had by some miracle chosen them, found that his talent lay in the written word.

He began writing while he was still in college, and discovered that he had a passion for it. His degree was in Behavioral Science. He'd gone into Counseling, driven to help others like him, in the same way that Doctor Joe had once helped him. The writing was something that he had done on the side. His first book was published just before his thirty-fifth birthday. He hadn't stopped since. He'd had some success, this boy of hers. For years, though, he talked about sitting down and telling his story. He wanted to use his craft and skill with words, along with his experience as a Counselor to tell that story in such a way that it would help others. That there would be hope for boys like him, abandoned and forgotten. For those that didn't end up in the wrong place at the right time.

There were tears in her eyes. "That's not all." Rusty tapped the book again. If she was already tearing up at the title, he could only imagine what she would do next.

She studied him for a moment, and then let her gaze drop to the item in her hands again. Slowly, she opened the cover and paged through to the dedication.

Family isn't always easily defined. I learned this the hard way. Songs and poems tell us that families are created because two people fell in love. That was how mine happened too, but mostly, I have a family because two people took a chance. It's not a chance that everyone gets, but I was lucky enough to get mine. Hope can sometimes find us even in the darkest circumstances. Oddly enough, I got even luckier than that. I had Sharon and Andy. Or as I like to think of them, Mom and Dad.

She laughed out loud. Sharon pressed a hand to her mouth. "You sneaky little monkey." She swept her fingers beneath her eyes, but it didn't stop the tears. "He's going to love that."

"I hope so." Rusty nudged her shoulder with his. "It's too late to change it now. They hit the shelves in a month. I almost didn't let it go to the editor. I sent a copy of it to Doctor Joe first." The man was retired now, but he had been glad to read it. "It got his seal of approval, so we'll see." It was a departure for him. His previous books had been fiction. Based in truth. Mysteries mostly, things he had seen and heard, stories they'd told over the years.

"Rusty," She wrapped her arm through his. "You wrote this for you. More than anything, it was for you. Not for us, and not for anyone else. If you're happy with it, that's all that is important."

He glanced away while he thought about it. He nodded. "I am." When he looked back, he was smiling again. "It's, well a lot of it is about my other mom, and what happened on the street. Most of it is us. You know, our story. Mainly that first year, and… well, I don't have to tell you about any of that."

"No." Sharon stood up. "Come on, let's go and show it to Andy. He's going to love it."

"Will he?" Rusty looked nervous again. "I mean, I know you will. I know that, Sharon. I know that you're always proud of us, but do you really think—"

"Yes." She cupped his cheek again. Even now, twenty-some-odd years after he'd come to them, she could still see the frightened boy inside the man that he had become. The one that was desperate for approval and longing to make them proud of him. They didn't see him quite so often as they had those first few years, but there were glimpses. Rusty knew that he was loved, and he knew that they were always proud of him. But he had doubts, just as all of them did, that liked to creep in at the oddest of moments. "Rusty, you know, he's going to want you to sign it. Actually," she shook her head. "If I know my husband, he's going to want his own copy, and he's going to expect you to sign that because he isn't going to share it with me."

Rusty laughed as he stood. "Yeah. That's why I brought two." He shoved his hands into his pockets as he looked at her. "I know what I said a minute ago, but I really do hope that you like it. I hope I got it right."

"You did. It was your story, Rusty. Only you can tell it. I know that I'm going to love it."

"It is," he said. "But it isn't. It's our story. You know. The story of us, all of us."

"Then I know that it will be perfect." She'd always had faith in his work, but this was such a part of him. She could understand his reticence. He would have poured his heart into it. Just as he had poured his heart into his first novel. That one had been a catharsis for him as much as she thought this one must have been.

He'd written it the summer that they lost Provenza. Rusty took it especially hard. They all had, but he'd had so few people in his life that he counted as important, as family. It was the first big loss of those he knew he could count on. He'd mourned with her when she lost her parents, first her father and then her mother, but Rusty hadn't known Miranda and Joseph as he'd known Louis.

It was his heart that took him from them. That big, old, wonderfully cantankerous heart of his. A massive heart attack. It seemed to come out of no where for all of them, despite his age. One moment, the Murder room was filled with the laughter, and the next he was gone.

Oddly enough he even had his stapler in his hand when it happened. Granted, he was shaking it at Buzz, but he'd had it, and that's what counted.

Sharon didn't think her husband had gotten over that, even now, some years later. There were moments when he'd tell her something, some story or another, and he would reach for his phone as though he needed back up with the details. He would catch himself though, and the sparkle in his eyes would dim... And then he would go on, but the moment was there, and so was the grief.

He once told her that when their time came, she had to let him go first. He came too close to losing her once and he wasn't built for it. He said that she was the strong one. He didn't know that it was his strength that brought her this far. She found something precious and unique that night in the parking garage, so many years ago. He chose her, even underneath his belief that it was a miracle she could love him, she knew that he was the miracle. He was something rare. A truly good man.

~FIN

A/N:If you've gotten this far, then I have to say thank you... again. Mainly for sticking with this wild and crazy ride. I know that it has been a long one. You rock!