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She remembered when her son had come home.
He stood on the porch, holding his hand up to knock again on the door, in case no one had heard. He stared at her, his mother, before moving his gaze to his father, his siblings, only to come back to his mother.
"Hi Mama. I'm home," he had said. His smile held pain and grief and longing; his arms were suspended in air as if he wasn't sure to hug them or push them away. But his eyes were the same, the same shade of blue that Maria remembered when she laid exhausted and spent on a hospital bed with her newborn in her arms, the same shade of blue that stared at her innocently and confidently when her youngest had enrolled into the Garrison, the same shade of blue that stared at her from a flat photograph in a house of silence, the blue that she thought she would never see again.
Her mother's instinct surged her forward to embrace the son that she thought she had lost, the son that had come back. He was here, in her arms. He was back home.
She remembered his first day of school, when Lance had enrolled into kindergarten. While other children cried while clinging to their parents, her brave son had stared at the school doors confidently and told his mother to pick him up later. She remembered when he got accepted into the Garrison and when he thought no one was looking, stopped bragging and stared at the acceptance paper in his own disbelief. She remembered the day she got a call, saying that her son had gone missing with no warning.
She remembered the day she had opened his door one night, wondering why the light was still on. She thought that he had left it on before falling asleep. She remembered opening the door to see a grown man, his back facing the door as he calmly stared at his marred and beaten chest in front of the mirror. There were so many, too many. Tan skin gave way to lighter scars and darker marks, permanently etched onto his skin.
She remembered the way her son had turned on her, hanger in his hands as a makeshift weapon as his eyes scanned for threats. She remembered her heart breaking as her son choked on his own laugh and joked about a teenage boy's needed privacy. She remembered pulling him into an embrace so tight his breathing became labored enough to cause tears to well up in her eyes.
"I'm okay, Mama," he had whispered. "Really, Mama."
She remembered when her son had opened up to her. The memories were faded enough after a few years that he had mustered up the courage to explain the fearful eyes, the calculated stares, the horrible scars. She remembered envisioning space battles and fearsome wars in her head, wondering how her little boy had played into this. She had mouthed foreign words and furrowed her brow in confusion at trying to understand alien cultures. She had come forward to hug him after his tale, because what else could be done for a man so hurt by his past? What else should she have done?
She remembered the exact second that her son had broken down, the first time that he had allowed himself to grieve over everything and everyone since arriving back on Earth, back home. She remembered the way that he formed words to call her mother, words that were cut up between sobs. She remembered the fingers that hugged her, twitching as if they were still on the trigger of a gun. She remembered how he had thanked her, thanked her, for listening. She remembered her heart breaking for the second time.
She stood on the porch that had brought her son home, and she stared at the foreign yet familiar faces that hesitantly stared at her. She knew their names by heart because she knew how much they meant for her son. Pidge, Hunk, Shiro, Keith. Hunk, Keith, Shiro Pidge. Keith, Shiro, Pidge, Hunk. She invited them in for dinner and she remembered the way that her son's eyes lit up with hope and tears at their arrival. This, she remembered thinking, was his family just as much as she was. In some sense, they were tighter then a family with all that they had been through.
She remembered seeing the smile on her son's face, the happiness that showed in every corner of his expression. She remembered hugging him that night, and she remembered the words that left his mouth in a soft confession.
"Mama, thank you. I love you, Mama."
She remembered the exact moment her son had come home.