Hi, so here is the final chapter, i want to say a massive thank you to all of you for your kind words and reviews but this story has to end and this is where it ended.

I am updating all of the final chapters together in order to keep it neat before i go away so therefore that is the reason why it's such a late updating schedule.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine just Lily.

i hope i've left this in a good place, i am gonna take a little bit of a break from the Blue Bloods fandom. There is one story left to do on my list then i am going i think on hiatus a little bit from this fandom.

Please Read and Review.

Migration

Chapter 13-One Perfect Day

His room was still the same.

He hadn't gone back to the apartment that he and Eddie were sharing prior to all this shit taking place. He had gone back to his house, his home, his Dad's home.

He was more than surprised to see that the bedrooms were the same. Danny's was still blue and covered with the posters of the Jets. Erin's was covered in pictures of the band that she had liked at the time and his was still the same.

He had yet to look in Joe's.

But his room was still the same. Only now it was Lily that was sleeping in it.

He shook his head leaning back on the window sill.

It was strange to imagine life almost a month ago Jamie realised. It was strange to imagine a life that didn't include his family when for five years he'd been forced to live with nothing but.

He stood up wincing and made it all the way down the stairs without his leg cramping which was generally a good sign. He slipped out the door and stepped into the garden. First thing he'd have to do was get his car license back again because there was something he had to do and he couldn't do it stuck in this house barely able even now to walk down the street without feeling his knee twinge.

The days of boxing and running were gone, the days of him being a police officer were gone and the end of him being Jamie Reagan, the old Jamie Reagan were gone.

But he was alive.

He still went back and forth with putting that between the pro's and the cons of surviving. He had always banked on Lily surviving, he had never banked on him surviving with her. And he had been prepared to die. To live...well that was another story.

He was waiting on the stone steps his knee bent at an odd angle, even after a month of physio it felt like it was being twisted again. He found however he could sleep a little bit better. It had not become strange to sleep next to Eddie again even after a month and more than not Lily turning up in the middle of the night had now whittled down to once a week.

Baby steps as his mother had once said.

But he was waiting on the porch breathing in the fresh air and he tried not to shiver when the breeze hit his face. He forced a swallow again as the breeze made the bushes move. Somethings he had learnt a long time ago were not to be messed with, were not to be taken for granted and this, being able to sit out on his own porch and breathe in the fresh air was one of them.

The car in front of the house pulled up and he saw Danny climb out of the seat. He tried to smile but found that he was playing with the edges of his sleeves. Ever since he had disclosed to his brother the worst of the abuse that he had suffered while under Daisy's imprisonment they had forged a way forwards though it had been a hard slog. There was a pause where both of them stared at each other from the other side of the car and then his brother was pulling out the box in the back seat.

Danny grinned at him. "You sure you wanna do this?" he asked. His brother was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt and he looked causally. Danny was back at work but Maria seemed to be catching the cases and he was only working them when it didn't get in the way of being home every night at five pm so that he could see his goddaughter before she disappeared to her bedroom and he had to go back out and work again.

Jamie peered through the slats on the box. He'd had some doubts sending Danny out to do this because Danny seemed to still somehow whenever Lily was involved develop the mind of a child and knowing Danny he might have come back with something that bit rather than be allowed to be cuddled.

"Oh yeah I wanna do this" he said taking the box out of Danny's hand and turning. He winced as he turned the knee throbbing with pain. He felt a hand on his back and for the first time in a long time found that he didn't flinch away from any touch that wasn't Lily or Eddie.

"Thanks" he said through the pain and then he was up the steps and into the house.

The house was already getting ready for Sunday dinner. That was another thing that had confused him at first. He had thought for a long time that he would never get to see or enjoy a Sunday dinner again and now here they were, with all the food he could eat and so much noise. He had tried to keep that aspect in Lily's life but there were times still where she was confused about what was going on and he knew certain loud noises or bright lights still scared her after what had seemed like a lifetime in darkness. But she was surviving just as he was and now Jamie was finally able to give his daughter the one thing she had always wanted.

Danny followed him into the house just as his father came out. His father had the unnerving way of spying on him even when he was on the front lawn, last week Jamie had gone for a walk to the end of the road and half of the NYPD had been on standby in case something happened.

He moved past his father limping into the dining room. Lily was in the kitchen with his grandfather and her mother. Eddie and Lily were coming alone, now it was Eddie reading the story at bedtime instead of Jamie and she found that the two of them were finding a way forwards no matter how slow the way forward was.

He on the other hand was a different story. He still had nightmares, mood swings, had once found himself staring at a razor for too long until Danny all but threatened to kick open the door and still struggled to deal with intimate contact.

Danny had been trying to get him to disclose what had happened to him to his father or at least to Eddie but Jamie was refusing to. Somethings he had to do on his own term and he wasn't going to do it when the wounds were still fresh and bleeding all over his body.

But the big shocker had not been him, the big shocker had been his sister who had walked into work one day to hear someone ask her boss Monica was it favouritism to drop any case against Jamie, had promptly thrown her files on the floor and told a stunned Anthony that she was quitting. Half of the private practice firms in the city had sent food parcels round and now his sister was on a lighter schedule that still involved justice. She had taken up the partner position at a private practice that had a wing prosecuting war crimes and she was once again excited about it.

Anyhow Lily was in the kitchen her legs swinging of a chair and her hair neatly braided. She was wearing jeans and a blue shirt with a butterfly on courtesy of Linda who had picked up very quickly that his daughter was not a pink girl.

"Hey Lil, I got something for you" he said. Danny helped him sit down on the floor his leg still at a bent angle. Lily hoped of her chair her hands freshly washed and she stared at him her head tilted to the side.

Danny passed him the cage again and he opened it scooping the ball of fur inside it.

"Oh brother" he heard his grandfather say accompanied by an eye roll but Lily's attention was distracted by the ball of fluff that Jamie had just handed her and his attention was completely on her.

The kitten was Jamie's idea and he had roped Danny into it because Danny was more a kid than he had let on and a he had known that it would have screwed up his grandfather's plan to get the floors waxed which would mean a hell of a lot of work and a hell of a lot of noise.

The ball of fluff was as small as Lily had once been, it had black fur accompanied by a spot of white near its ear and wide eyes that were regarding the girl holding him with as much interest as the kid holding him was.

"I get to keep him?" she asked her voice forming around the words.

"Yes you do" Jamie said satisfied that he had gotten a good reaction, he knew how to read his daughter better than anyone.

"Thank you" she said her attention still completely enamoured by the kitten.

"Can he sleep on my bed?"

Both his father and his grandfather winced at that.

"Is he trained?"

"Didn't ask" Danny said grinning.

"Oh wonderful" his grandfather muttered.

"Does he have a name?" Lily asked instead.

"No" Jamie said meeting Eddie's eyes.

"You can think of one if you like over dinner"

Later that night, Lily and the kitten safely in bed Jamie crept out of his own and down the stairs only wincing once when the pain in his leg got too bad. There was something he needed to do and Eddie god bless her seemed to know what it was and why he needed to do it without ever asking him.

He went down the stairs and out into the backyard. His father at some point had put in a table with beach chairs and he gingerly lowered himself down into the chair so that he could stare at the sky and listen.

New York was really the city that never slept.

And now he had a chance to listen to it all, to drink it all in, no matter what the cold temperature. He would fall asleep here at least once a week and wake up when the frost showing. Snow had stopped falling but it was still on the horizon and having been unconscious throughout most of the snow including Christmas Jamie was just eager to feel it again.

And the rain, he was desperate to feel the rain.

He was just about to fall asleep when he felt something on top of him. He jerked awake memories phantom and dangerous touches on the forefront of his brain until he saw that it was his father watching him with a blanket in his arms. Jamie struggled to sit up but uncaring of the cold his father slid into the seat next to him.

He and his father had not said much in the last month, Jamie had been angry for a very long time and a lot of that anger had been and still was directed at his father. But right now Jamie couldn't feel angry towards him, not when he was seeing the way he was staring at Jamie as if he was going to disappear in a puff of smoke. In the dark and the cold Jamie was fully aware with a startling clarity of what it had been like for his father, to lose a son and granddaughter in one night and then finding them. At least with Joe there had been a body. There had been some sort of closure.

He held out a hand and his Dad took it. Jamie was not one for initiating touches all that much but he sat up so that his Dad and him were face to face.

"I'm..." he couldn't say fine that was too big of a lie even for him to say.

"I'm...not broken" he settled on, because he wasn't.

He was many things, but he had never let her break him and he wasn't about to start now. He was bruised and battered but he wasn't broken.

He was alive. Lily was alive. Eddie was alive.

He could pick up the pieces from there.

"I know" his Dad said simply and his eyes were roaming over Jamie's greedily as if he was so afraid that he was going to disappear again.

Jamie nodded struggling to swallow down his emotions, he noticed a bird on the branch and remembered something he had read about a long time ago. About birds and how they migrated for the winter, well the same could be said for him and Lily. They had migrated for the winter as well.

He shook his head banishing those thoughts out of his head. He didn't have to be in survival mode, now he could just live. Lily could have a family to worry about her just as he had planned for.

"I survived" he said finally. "I'm not gonna be ashamed of that"

He didn't know why he was saying this only that he wanted it to be clear. His father nodded reading straight through him the same way he always had. He had never thought his father able to do that, Joe maybe, Danny yes, Jack never but he had never thought his father could read him because Jamie had kept so many secrets from his father both on the job and afterwards.

"I know" his father said after a long significant pause.

"I also know you're not fine"

Jamie shook his head looking away and letting his hand fall to the side.

Something was brushing his shoulder and he turned to see snow.

"Snow" he said more to himself.

"Oh good, so now we'll have Lily and that kitten you got her in the snow all day. Your grandpa should be thrilled. There goes his plans to wax the floors"

Jamie nodded still watching the snow fall and melt on his hand. His father reached out to grab his face forcing him to look at him.

"Jamison" he said and his face was half shadowed in darkness so Jamie couldn't see his expression.

"I'm not fine Dad" he said letting the hand fall. His Dad swallowed heavily.

"I know son" he began but Jamie shook his head still watching the snow falling down.

"No Dad" he said turning to look at his father and feeling the first genuine smile he had given in five years creeping across his face. It was stiff but real and he found his eyes were watering because he knew. No matter what...he knew.

"But I will be. One day"

And until that one perfect day he would settle with this, right here.

"Go ahead" he whispered again remembering those words. "I've made peace"

And this time, just like the last time he knew he had. He had made peace then with dying.

Now however. Now he realised unable to stop the grin on his face.

He had made peace with living.

So here is the final chapter, i hope that you enjoyed this little story and i will see you soon.