For an instant, she hesitated, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, then she wrapped her arms around him just as tightly as he held on to her. She inhaled on a sob, turning her head to kiss the side of his. She shook slightly from this emotion, this sudden burst of fierce love that had exploded in her chest the moment he embraced her. She clung on and on until she felt that he might want her to let go, and only then did she pull back enough to look him fully in the face.
"Hello, you darling, beautiful man. I can't even rightly call you a boy, can I? I am so terribly sad that I have missed all of the wonderful years when you were small, but I have you now. And now is the only time that matters," she said, a smile spreading across her face as she unconsciously fell into her childhood habit of talking almost non-stop. "I want to know everything about you, of course. About this SHIELD that you are a part of, and about your roommate and the friends you've made here. And -- and anything else you want to tell me."
She stopped abruptly, thinking about the war, and France, and the horror of a battle that had stolen yet another of her children away.