Chapter Text
Out of the Shadows
By Fluffy Rabbit
If his mom was going to move to Cascade permanently then she needed to make friends, Henri thought, which was why he'd arranged for her to go shopping with Brian's mom this afternoon. Admittedly, he'd only met his friend's mom once but she had seemed like a nice person and he was pretty sure that she and his mom would have a lot in common. He'd even bought his mom something new to go shopping in, something that he wouldn't be seen out in public with her when she was wearing it.
"Mom, I bought you a present," he said.
"Honey bear, there's no need for you to waste your money on me," Anne said.
"Think of it as a really late mother's day gift," he said, handing her the box that he was holding.
"I'm sure that I'll like it," she said, opening the box. "It's grey," she added when she saw the colour of the contents.
"It's more beige than grey," Henri said.
"I'm sure that it'll look perfect on me," Anne said, taking the dress out of it's box.
"I know that it's not what you'd normally wear," Henri said, "but I thought that I could wear it when you go shopping with Brian's mom."
"And when am I supposed to be doing that?" she asked, putting the dress back into it's box.
"This afternoon," he replied, "you're not busy, are you?"
"No," she replied, "and I'm sure that I'll get on just fine with Brian's mom."
"The two of you are going to get on like a house on fire," he grinned. Brian's mom might even be able to do something about the way that his mom dressed, because as much as he loved her there were times when she really embarrassed him. She didn't seem to realise that she wasn't young anymore and had to start dressing her age.
"I've to go out for a little while," Anne said, putting the box on the coffee table, "but don't worry I'll be back by twelve."
"Where are you going?" Henri asked.
"I have something that needs finishing off at the station," she replied.
"Are you going out dressed like that?" he asked.
"I'm not going to be long," she said, "and there is nothing wrong with the way that I'm dressed."
There were several vacancies that in his opinion would be perfect for Anne, Joel thought, but she hadn't said for certain that she would be moving to Cascade on a permanent basis. He assumed that she would be though, because this was where he and Henri lived. It was something that they were going to have to talk about, not that they'd had much chance to be alone since she'd come to Cascade. Henri always seemed to be there wanting attention from her, taking her places that he had wanted them to go as a couple. He could understand Henri wanting to spend time with his mother, because he hadn't been able to for the past year, but then he hadn't spent any time with Anne either. Perhaps Henri wasn't ready to accept the fact that he and Anne were going to get married, he was probably more than a little worried that Anne wouldn't always be there for him like she had been in the past.
However, it was time that Henri realise that Anne's world didn't revolve around him alone. He had been more than a little surprised to discover that Anne hadn't dated anyone since Henri's birth, but he admired that fact that she hadn't exposed herself and her son to a series of men who might have treated them badly. Now he knew the real reason why she hadn't dated, and he couldn't even begin to imagine how much courage it must have taken her to have dinner with him that first time, let alone tell him recently the basic story of how she had become pregnant with Henri. Anne hadn't told him who Henri's father was, but god help the man if he ever found out who he was.
She was never going to be able to wear that dress, Anne thought, entering the Bullpen. To begin with it was grey, a colour that she had vowed never to wear after being forced to wear it most of the time while growing up, secondly, it was precisely the sort of dress that her mother would wear. There was no way in hell that she was going to turn into her mother, she would rather shoot herself before letting that happen. Henri was going to be disappointed and more than a little upset that she wasn't going to wear that dress, but hopefully he would have kept the receipt and could return it to the store that he had bought it from. As far as she could see there was nothing wrong with the way that she dressed, Joel had certainly never complained about anything that she wore. Her clothes were her way of telling the world that she was here and she wasn't going to hang her head in shame at having become a mother at such a young age. It hadn't been her choice to become a mother, but she was the one who had been blamed, the one who'd had to struggle both herself and Henri at an age when other girls had been looking forward to their first dates. Admittedly, there had been times when she had cried herself to sleep with worry over how she was going to find that week's rent. However, she had never let Henri just how bad things had gotten at times. As the parent it had been her job to make sure that things had worked out, even if it had meant starving herself so that her baby could eat.
"Have you got time for a coffee?" she asked, joining Joel at his desk.
"Of course, I do," he replied, "is there something wrong?"
"Just Henri," Anne replied.
"Let's go for that coffee and you can tell me all about it," he said, standing up.
"I really hate to burden you with my problems," she said. He probably had a lot better things to do than listen to her go on about Henri.
"Your problems are my problems," Joel assured her.
"Chief, quit staring at her," Jim said, cuffing Blair around the back of the head. "She's Henri's mom," he added.
"I know," Blair said, "what can I say, she looks amazing. There aren't many women who could pull off the outfit."
"At least we know where H gets his dress sense from," he joked. It took some guts to wear clothes like that, but then he had seen her push through a mob of Aryans and tell them exactly what she thought of them. Although, at the time he'd suspected that she'd wanted to say a lot more than she had, but then she had just arrested her own mother.
"It's still pretty hard to think of her as H's mom," Blair admitted, "she must have been pretty young when she had him."
"She was," Jim said, "but then Naomi must have been young when she had you."
"yeah, she was," Blair replied, "and I know how hard it was for her sometimes."
"She did something right, though," he said. However, from what Blair had told him about his childhood the fact that his friend had turned out to be such a great person probably had a great deal more to with luck than anything that Naomi had done.
"You know, she bakes Henri cookies everyday," Blair said, "the only thing that Naomi can cook is tongue."
"Maybe you should ask her if she'll adopt you," Jim joked. He would probably seen a lot more of Henri's mom than he had of his own during the past couple of years."
"That's not a bad idea," Blair said.
"Chief, it was a joke," he said, "but if you asked her she'd probably send some cookies in with He tomorrow." While he still might not have a great relationship with his family at least he knew where they were if he wanted to talk to them.
"I thought that it was your day off," Rafe said when Henri joined him at his desk.
"It is," Henri replied, "but my mom had something to finish off."
"What?" he asked.
"I don't know," Henri admitted, "but don't worry she's not going to be late meeting your mom."
"About that..." Rafe began. How was he supposed to tell his best friend that his mom didn't want to go shopping with his mom.
"Don't worry, my mom's not going to embarrass her," Henri said, "she's going to be properly dressed."
"That's not what my mom's worried about," he admitted, "she doesn't think that she's going to have anything in common with your mom." Or as his mom had put it why would she want to spend the afternoon with someone who wasn't from her background.
"My mom is just as good as your mom," Henri said defensively, "in fact she's probably better than yours."
"My mom went to college, yours didn't," Rafe said. This was his mom that H was talking about so he had to put on a good show of defending her.
"She had to work for a living," Henri said, "she didn't have a trust fund to fall back on."
"She was a waitress," he said, "you wouldn't catch my mom doing a job like that."
"Well, your mom doesn't have a stack of bravery awards, mine does," Henri snapped.
"Henri is driving me nuts," Anne said as Joel handed her a mug of coffee in the break room.
"Have you tried talking to him?" he asked, sitting down opposite her.
"Tried and failed," she replied, "I'm seriously considering moving into a hotel."
"There's plenty of space at my place," Joel said. They would be living there once they were married, and if she moved in before then it would give them a chance to get used to each other's annoying little habits.
"Listen to him arguing with his best friend," Anne said, "he shouldn't be doing that."
"He's right you probably are the better mother," he said, "you wouldn't be worrying about hurting his feelings over a dress if you weren't."
"I should go out there and stop him," she said, "Because I didn't raise him to act like that."
"He's just blowing off steam," he said. Henri was not going to thank her if she went out there and told him off.
"You don't know him, at times he has a hell of a temper on him," Anne said, "it was always just the two of us while he was growing up."
"You did a good job of raising him," Joel said. She had every right to be proud of the man that her son had become.
"I'd never even held a baby until I had Henri," she admitted, "in my old family you hired people to do that sort of thing."
"You had servants?" he asked. They had never really talked about what her childhood had been liked, except for the fact that it had stopped the day that she had discovered she had been expecting Henri.
"Yeah," Anne replied, "and I went to a private girl's school. Only the best was good enough for the Curtis children."
"I've always had the impression that you were an only child," he said.
"Believe it or not I'm one of four," Anne said, "there's Frederick Jr, he's the eldest, then Joseph, he left one night and was never mentioned again. Lastly, there was Henri, he died."
"How did you find out what your father was?" Joel asked. Considering who the man represented he was hardly likely to have just come out and told her.
"When Henri started to get sick he was taken to an out of state hospital," she said, "I went once. I knew that there was something really wrong, but I didn't understand why those words terrified my father."
"What words?" he asked.
"Mixed race," she replied, standing up, "of course it was never written down anywhere and Henri was buried in the not so nice part of the graveyard."
"Sounds like it's a habit to treat people like that in your family," Joel said.
"My old family," Anne corrected him, "god only knows what they've told people about me."
"Does it really matter?" he asked.
"No," she replied, "I stopped caring about what they thought of me a long time ago. Now I'm going to try and stop my son from doing something that he's likely to regret later."
Oh shit, he was in serious trouble, Henri thought, when he saw his mother coming out of the break room. He didn't know how his mom did it, but she always knew when he'd done something that he shouldn't have.
"Hi mom," he said, "did you..."
"Don't hi mom me, young man," Anne said, "I heard the sort of language that you were using."
"But..." Henri began.
"But nothing," she said, "I raised you better than that."
"Yes mom," he said. She was really laying on the accent and that meant that he would be lucky if he got away with a lecture about how disappointed she was with him. He hated it when she did that, and she had raised him to stay calm no matter what people said, but Brian had been saying some pretty nasty things about his mom. They weren't true, he knew that they weren't but that didn't mean that they hurt any the less. "Brian said..." he started to add.
"Honey bear, I know what he said," Anne said, "but I can defend myself. It's not the first time that someone's said those sort of things about me and I doubt that it's the last."
"He shouldn't have said them though," he said, "you're a better mom than his." Brian's mom didn't Fedex his cookies when he'd been working on a hard case just to remind him that she did love him. "I'm sorry," he added.
"Baby, it's okay," she said, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him, "but it's never a good idea to fight with the man who's going to be watching your back on the streets."
"I'm not going to apologise," Henri said.
"Your pride isn't going to be of much use to you when people are shooting at you," Anne said, letting go of him, "and you've always been very good at saying sorry and no meaning it."
"How do you always know what I'm thinking?" he asked. There had been times in the past when his mom's ability to know exactly what he was thinking had stopped him from getting into serious trouble.
"Thirty years of experience," Anne replied, "now go talk to your partner and see if you can't find a way to work things out."
"Yes mom," he sighed.
Her son's idea that she go shopping with one of those people had been ridiculous, Jean Rafe thought. It was bad enough that he had to work with them and that she'd had to come here. She had a lot better things to do with her time than run around after her son. Becoming a police officer had never been her idea of a suitable career for him, but her late husband had allowed Brian to do exactly what he wanted with absolutely no regard as to what it would look like to the people that they mixed socially with. This was the first and only time that she would be coming to the station. It was a lot worse than she'd thought it would be, these days they seemed to be allowing any degenerate to become a police officer. Still, she supposed that she should get this over with. Although, what her friends would say when they found out that she had been talking to those people she didn't know, but it wouldn't be anything good. Everyone had their place and theirs was cleaning up after people like her.
"Excuse me," she said, approaching a woman dressed in a bright floral print shirt, jeans and crimson red boots.
"Yes," the woman replied.
"I'm Detective Rafe's mother, do you happen to know where he is?" Lauren asked.
"He's in the break room talking to my son Henri," the woman replied.
"I see," she sniffed, sizing the woman standing in front of her up. She wasn't what she'd been expecting at all, she was a lot younger and she looked nothing like her son. "Mrs Brown, it's nice to meet you at last," she added.
"It's Miss, or if you prefer Detective First Class," Anne said.
"You're a police officer," Lauren said, "I thought..."
"I'll have been a police officer for twenty yeas next month," Anne said, "and I know exactly what you thought."
"If you could point me in the direction of the break room," she said. She would definitely be having words with her son about his not warning her that his partner's mother wasn't the same color as her son.
"It's just over there," Anne said, pointing in the direction of the break room, "and by the way no one here is a degenerate."
"If you'll excuse me I have to go talk to my son," Lauren said, hurrying off in the direction of the break room. How could that woman have possibly known what she was thinking? Perhaps she had muttered a few comments in the lift on her way up, but she had been on her own in it.
"And I'm sorry that we won't be able to go shopping this afternoon, but something more important's come up," Anne said loudly, "I have to scrub out the toilets down in holding."
"She said it in the lift," Jim said when he saw the questioning look on Blair's face.
"Cool," Blair grinned. Henri's mom had to have enhanced hearing to have been able to hear what had been said in the lift.
"Chief, it doesn't mean anything," Jim said.
"But if she..." he began. When he'd first started looking for sentinels he'd come across people who had one or two enhanced senses, but Jim was the only one that he'd discovered who had all five enhanced.
"It could just be a coincidence," Jim said, "Rafe's mom was looking down on her."
"And everyone else," Blair said.
"Plus, working undercover you get very good at reading body language," Jim said, "it can make all the difference between life and death at times."
"Maybe I could ask her what it was like being with those people," he said.
"I wouldn't do that right now if I were you, Chief," Jim said, "it takes a while to get back to normal after you've been under for that long."
"Okay," he said. However, that didn't mean that he couldn't talk to her at all. She could probably tell him whether she had always had good hearing or whether it was something that had happened recently.
"I mean it Chief," Jim said, "Henri is not going to be happy if you piss his mom off."
"I'm not going to do that," Blair assured him.
"Mom," Brian smiled, "you remember Henri, don't you?"
"Of course I do," Lauren replied, "and I've just met his mother. I have to admit that she's not what I expected."
"My mom is pretty unique," Henri grinned.
"H, I think that my mom wants to talk to me alone," he said. His mom had that look on her face, that one that said that she was upset about something and he was going to find out what it was.
"I'll see you later," Henri said as he left the break room.
"I really wish that you wouldn't be friends with someone like that," Lauren said, "And why didn't you tell me that his mother wasn't..."
"Wasn't what?" Brian asked.
"The same color as her son," she replied, "not that it excuses the fact that you wanted me to go shopping with her."
"I don't think that she was too keen on the idea either," he admitted, "and what is wrong with Henri's mom?" He liked her.
"Brian, she's obviously not from our social class," Lauren said, "not to mention the fact that she had her son when she was fourteen. I don't think that you should get too closely involved with someone like that."
"So she had Henri when she was young, that's not a crime," he said.
"I know the sort of person she is and she is going to drag you down to her level," she said, "it's bad enough that you had to become a police officer without being partners with him. Do you have any idea what people are saying about you?"
"I don't care what they're saying," Brian replied, "Henri is my friend and his mom is great. She's just spent a year undercover. Do you know the sort of people that she had to mix with?"
"Probably a better class than she is," she replied, "Mark my words that woman is going to get you into trouble if you continue to have anything to do with her."
"Mom, Henri is a good partner and he's going to carry on being that until one of us decides otherwise," he said. He'd known for a long time that his mom wasn't happy about him being a police officer, but there was no reason for her to start on about him being partners with Henri, because in a tight corner there was no one else that he would rather have backing him up.
"Anne, are you all right?" Joel asked.
"I need to get out of here because my head is killing me." The stench coming off Brian's mother was starting to overwhelm her.
"Another migraine?" he asked.
"Probably," Anne replied, "But I'll be fine once I've got some fresh air." At least she hoped that it would cure her, because she didn't want to get sick again.
"Maybe you should go see a doctor," Joel suggested, "they might be able to give you something."
"They can't," she replied, "I've tried pills and they just end up making me worse." Some of the doctors that she'd been to see in the past had said that physically there was nothing wrong with her and that it was just in her mind. However, that didn't explain why she some times threw up after being exposed to people full of hate. They probably wouldn't have believed her if she'd told them that she could smell hate, but she'd always been able to tell what people were feeling by the way that they smelled.
"Is there anything that I can do to help?" he asked.
"You could let me take you out to dinner tonight," she replied, "Henri's going out with Brian so he won't be able to interfere with our plans," Especially, if she didn't tell him what she was planning to do. "That's if you don't have any other plans for tonight?" she added.
"I don't," Joel replied, "What time should I pick you up?"
"Seven thirty," she replied. That would give her enough time to get changed after Henri had gone out. She really didn't like sneaking around behind her son's back, but it was going to be the only way that she would be able to spend any time alone with Joel without Henri coming up with some reason why she had to spend all her time with him. Probably the best thing that could happen was if Henri found a nice girl to date, because then he would be so busy with his own life that he wouldn't have time to worry about what she was doing.
"I'll see you late," Joel said.
"Until tonight," Anne smiled. She then headed out of the Bullpen.