Rory was no stranger to the sleepless nights that came with parenthood. The thing was, AJ hadn't had much trouble sleeping since they arrived at Sing Sing. It might've been the environment, that it was somehow calmer than the Library ever had been. Or maybe it was Rory, her stress level no longer rubbing off on her poor kid because she had considerably less to stress out over. Whatever the reason, all that had changed since the attack.
There wasn't anything Rory could do about it, of course. Her son had been standing in the doorway as his mother was drugged and carried off, and a strange man had scooped him up as well. His blood had been drawn, a traumatic enough experience for a child without the added fear that came from being in that place. When AJ woke up crying, it was very much as it had been when he was first born. Rory picked him up and held him close, and from there, she just kept moving. That was all that kept him calm.
This was beginning to take the place of her morning runs, considering how far she had to walk some nights before AJ fell asleep against her shoulder. On this particular night, he was being incredibly difficult, refusing to be held. Her boy was walking ahead of her, and Rory was too tired to try and argue with a sleepy child under the age of two.
And then he tripped. And started crying. And for a moment, Rory's instinct was to cringe, the sound putting her frazzled nerves on edge. But she ran up to him like any mother would for their child, lowering herself into a kneel beside him. "Lemme see, sweetie," she whispered, easing his hand close so she got a look at the scratches on his palm. Nothing deep, but a scrape was painful, no matter what age a kid was at.