In case you missed the summary, this is set post 2x15, so you can count on there being spoilers for the s2 finale.
And, as if I really needed to say it, please keep in mind that Jane and Maura and all other parties do not, sadly, belong to me. I just like to play with them sometimes. Though, if anyone knows how I can get a Maura Isles, well… I definitely want that information.
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I have never felt this alone. This kind of heavy, silent, over-whelming loneliness is completely foreign to me. Yes, when I was a child, I was often alone, and I often felt isolated, but this… this is new. I have been friendless before. I have been introverted and cut off from my peers before. So why does it hurt so much this time? Why is my loneliness so loud?
I don't know why I bother asking myself those questions when I so well know the answer. Because this time I know what I'm missing. Because this time I know what it is to feel loved and to feel a part of a group and a family and something bigger than oneself. Because this time I have something… no… someone to miss. And because this time the someone I miss is the cause for my loneliness.
Where before I was alone simply because I didn't have anyone, this time I am alone because what Jane has done is unforgivable. The sting of her actions cuts and carves at me until I swear I physically feel pain. I know it's unlikely that I actually do, but I swear I hurt. My stomach twists back on itself until all I can do is sit with my arms clutching myself. Part of me fears that, if I don't, I will fall apart on the spot. And, sometimes, when no one is looking, I let myself, for just a moment, crumble. Because, if I don't let it out a little at a time, I'm worried that I will, at the most inopportune moment, simply fall to pieces. Again, I know it's not possible, but it feels that way.
I want to hate Jane for doing this to us, to me. I want to regret ever meeting her, to wish the worst for her. I want, so badly, to be able to be angry. But I can't. Because, as mad as I want to be at her, as much as I want to despise her existence, at the end of the day, she has meant too much to me, and all I feel is abandoned. I can't help loving her, even though she has ruined us. At night, when the pain and the solitude threaten to crush me, I can't help wanting to feel her warmth surround me, can't help wanting her arms around me and to feel her whisper reassuringly into my ear. I can't help wanting to feel her breath rustle my hair or have her unconsciously pull me closer as she sleeps. I can't help wondering what might have developed between us if all of this hadn't happened, if she hadn't shot. But she did.
Vince and Barry have been exceedingly supportive since my father's funeral. They came bearing condolences. While they may not have approved of his methods, they appreciate what he tried to do for me and what he meant to me, even though I hardly knew him. They understand what Jane could not: mere "sperm donor" or not, he was my father.
Even Angela and Frankie have reached out to me. Frankie was hesitant at first, though he had no reason to be. Angela, conversely, was waiting for me when I came home that day and wrapped me in her arms and held me until the tears ceased. Even though her arms were not the ones I wanted around me, they were the next best thing, and I am more grateful than I know how to convey that she was there when I needed someone.
So, I am not alone. Not really. To say I am would be to sound ungrateful for all my friends and family have done for me. But even as I am grateful, I am reminded that each of them was brought into my life by the very person who necessitates their presence now. By the very person that put the pained, sympathetic expressions on their faces. By the person who has yet to say anything since that day. By Jane.
In the moments after she fired, Jane rushed to my father's side, it's true. She removed her jacket and moved to place it under his head, and I pushed her away. She tried again, and I yelled at her. In that instant I felt the hate and anger that I so desperately wish I could feel now. Even as I met her eyes and saw the wounded confusion in them, I hated her. Over the sound of my heartbreak I heard Barry calling in the shooting and calling for an ambulance. I knew it was too late. The anger churned inside of me, and I stared at Jane with disbelief and rage until she could no longer meet my eyes. She had dropped my gaze, glanced down at my father, and slowly gotten up and walked out of the warehouse, almost as if she were in a daze. I watched her go and then turned back to my father. His hand fell from mine as he took his last breathes. I dropped my forehead to his chest and released the tears I had been trying to hold back. There didn't seem much reason to try to hold them back any longer.
In fact, there rarely seems to be a reason to try to prevent the tears now, except when I am at work. It would be unprofessional to cry at the station. Besides, Jane might see. As angry, or not, as I am at her, for some reason, I cannot let her see how she has destroyed me. I cannot let her see how broken and so very alone I feel. My work distracts me, to a point, but in the fleeting moments between thoughts the pain rushes back in and fills the spaces, and my heart starts to ache. I try to remind myself that it does not, in reality, hurt… but it seems to. It has been weeks now, and I thought the pain would begin to dull, but it hasn't.
I know Jane sends other people down to the morgue in her stead, and I know she tries to avoid coming down as much as she can. Or at least, given her general absence, I assume she does. Barry and Vince follow up on cases or send Frankie down to collect reports. Sometimes they come down for no reason at all. Angela generally takes her break when I go up to the café for lunch, and she has my coffee waiting for me when I arrive in the morning. I am so rarely left alone that it almost seems as if they are working as a team to try to make sure I don't suffer from Jane's absence too much. They are unsuccessful, but they try so hard that I try not to let it show. I think sometimes I am unsuccessful, too.
I have not seen Jane very often since she shot my father. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her walking by when I am talking to Angela, or see her stepping onto the elevator. She avoids my eyes, and she certainly never says anything.
On one occasion recently, however, she had no choice but to come down and collect lab results. It was late on a Friday, and everyone else had left for the day. Given her surprise when she found me in my office, I think she deliberately waited that long in hopes of evading me. She pulled up short as she started to enter my office and immediately began fidgeting. Any other time, under any other circumstances, I would have found it endearing. I would have stilled her hands with mine and shared a smile with her, and I would have tried to calm her. Any other time before now would have, no doubt, found us embracing. It had always been so easy and always felt so right to seek comfort in one another's arms. I think, perhaps, we lost even more than we had.
This time, however, she stayed in the doorway, shifting and fidgeting, and asked for the lab results. I pointed to where they lay on the coffee table, and she, reluctantly, retrieved them. She paused as she began to leave, turning back to face me. I looked at her expectantly.
"Was there something else you needed, detective?" She flinched. I knew I was being unnecessarily and cruelly formal, but I needed her to feel a fraction of the pain I felt and feel on a daily basis. Her eyes met mine, and, in that moment, I almost believed she did.
"No, I, uh, um," she trailed off, looking everywhere but at me. She sighed deeply and turned to go. My heart broke in spite of itself to see her that sad, to see her looking as lost as I felt. Even after all that had transpired, I knew then that I would never fully stop loving Jane Rizzoli, that she had permanently altered me in ways I would never be able to deny. For just a moment, my resolve to keep her at a distance faltered.
"Jane, wait." She stopped in the doorway and turned back to meet my eyes. There was a flash of hope and my breath caught, as it always has, when I saw the unmitigated devotion and affection I had been missing. "Was there something else you needed?" I asked, the words nearly catching in my throat. Jane took a hesitant step towards me.
"Maura." She paused, as if reacquainting herself with my name. I didn't realize I had even been missing the way she says my name, that even that was one more cause for the emptiness that surrounds me day and night. I had never thought much of my name until Jane. It was my name, and that was that. The way Jane said it, though, gave it extra meaning, somehow. When Jane said my name, it was my favorite word. It unexpectedly had begun to signal so much. Coming from Jane's lips, my name became a word full of life and warmth. "Are you… I mean…" Jane sighed. "Dammit, this is hard."
"What is, Jane?" She gestured between us.
"This. Just, I don't know." She looked into my eyes again. "It shouldn't be, you know? Because it's you. Because you're Maura, and I'm Jane, and that's supposed to be, well, I don't know. But it shouldn't be this. But it is this because of this, this… you know."
"I'm not sure what you're trying to get at." Jane sighed again, her shoulders drooped, and she suddenly became fascinated by a spot on the floor.
"Yeah, me neither. That's the problem, I guess. Anyway, I better get out of your hair. I'm sure you've got places to be. I don't want to bother you."
"You don't bother me, Jane. You never did." She gave me a crooked half smile, and I almost returned it. Almost.
"Yeah?"
"Of course not."
"Well, that's, uh, that's good to know. Anyway, I still better get going. 'Night, Maura."
"Good evening, Jane." As she began to leave, she stopped once more in the door and turned to look at me over one shoulder.
"Maura, I wanted to ask…"
"Yes?"
"Um… How are you? Are you ok?" I blinked a couple times, slightly taken aback.
"No. I hurt," I answered truthfully. Maybe I should have given the answer more thought, maybe I should have left her an opening, but all I had been waiting for in the weeks since the shooting was for her to finally come talk to me, to ask me how I was, to apologize, something. I worried now that she had waited too long, that the pieces of the wall inside of me that she had bulldozed her way through had already been rebuilt. I am still not sure there is a way for us to even get back to where we were, much less where we were going. Part of me hopes there is. I fear a larger and possibly stronger part of me insists there shouldn't be.
"Oh," her voice broke. Without another word, she walked away, leaving me sitting there, puzzled as to why she had bothered to ask and angry that she had.
Jane hasn't attempted more than a case related conversation since then. Angela insists she's trying. Frankie says it's because she's not good at talking about her emotions, which I know to be true. Others don't bother with excuses.
I search for answers in the awkward silences between us, but I find nothing. More than anything I want an answer, an explanation, an apology, something. I need something that will help me understand how the person I loved most and who I thought loved me could do something that would hurt me so much. How she could break me and continue on with life without a word. To be left so broken and alone by someone who was supposed to care about me is… incomprehensible.
Without knowing the reasons for why what has happened came to pass, all I can do is run through the short list of things I know to be true about my current situation: I am lonely. I am deeply, desperately lonely. I feel broken. I feel sad. I hurt. I don't understand. I feel lost. I miss Jane.
And I am scared I will fall to pieces.