A/N: According to word, this story is 1600 words, ergo: 16 drabbles. AND we'll go with microsoft word words count.
He begs her not to leave, but he doesn't man up enough to tell her everything. "Don't break up the team", he says, and the excuse feels lame even to his own ears- and the sufferance on her face, the disappointment in her eyes, they break him a little bit more.
And yet, he does nothing.
Not until the plane is leaving; only then, he runs before it, risking his own life because the idea of losing her when she has never been his is suddenly unthinkable: he runs in her arms and kisses her, and it's enough: she stays.
That night, they don't talk, not with others nor between them. But they don't get have sex either; it's not because it's too soon and she has just left her boyfriend (even if, technically, she hasn't called Marcus yet). They simply don't need it. cuddling each other on his bed in the airstream is enough, lazy kisses every now and them as they sigh in each other's mouth because they can't believe they have lost so long.
(She could have been his at least an year ago. It doesn't matter: the only important thing is that now they are here.)
She hates breaking up with Marcus over the phone, but she can't do any different. Jane asks her if she wants him to be there with her, but she tells him no: this is something she has to do on her own.
In the morning, Jane leaves, and she finally makes the call: he is so sweet at first, believing she had been forced to stay in Austin because of a case, not even giving her space or time to explain.
Then, she tells him. "Jane… he asked me to stay here. With him."
Marcus hangs up with no words.
She has worked for the FBI for over a year, being praised because despite what had happened in her past (Jane, Red John, the CBI and the Blake Association, and then being a small-town sheriff) she is extremely talented, and full of resources and knowledge. Now, though, with her position in Austin already filled, and a job for her in DC, in the Austin office she is already at square one.
She thought she would have been mad because of it: she soon finds out she doesn't really care too much.
(Apparently, job and career were just rebounds for her.)
She doesn't know how to take Jane at first, because frankly, she has never seen a man so hard-headed. It's not because he waited for the last second before showing her how he feels (not too much, at least); it's because he can't get rid of the guilt. This time, though, it's not because of his family: he feels like, with her being back at square one at the office, it's all his fault.
"Maybe you'd be happier there" he tells her, and she silences him with kisses and her naked body, because that life would have been a rebound.
It's two weeks since she hadn't joined Marcus in DC when she starts to feel strange; fear runs through her veins as, day after day, she realizes what's going on. This is no flu or food poisoning: there's a good chance she is pregnant.
With a child.
With Marcus' child.
She wonders if she should tell Jane, and what she should tell him, but that's him she is talking about (Besides, he has already been there once before.), so, at the end, it's just him taking her hand in his own and reassuring her that everything will be all right.
Even if she has always been as regular as a Swiss clock, even if all the symptoms are there, Jane buys her five different pregnancy tests, just to make sure.
(And because she is a control freak who will need to make sure again and again and again with only one test, so…)
She takes test after test, and after the deed is done, he joins her, engulfing her in his arms, and soon, and yet after an eternity, the airstream is a cacophony of alarms, and tests after test, they check the results.
It's always the same. Positive. Pregnant.
She tells Abbott about the pregnancy, because he is still her boss, and frankly, she doesn't want to endanger the life of the baby; this may not be Jane's child, she may have never been in love with the father, but this is something she wants despite everything. She doesn't care if Marcus will try to get her back, if Jane will never accept and use it as an excuse to break things up with her: this is the life she has always craved and never believed to be able to have.
She'll fight to protect it at any cost.
One day, Jane asks her what she wants to do, and she almost kills him in the spot, reading it as what it isn't. She screams and shouts, tells him she'll not get rid of her baby because of a man, and if she'll have to choose, the tiny creature in her will always take first place. She is hitting him in the chest when he hugs her firmly, kissing her hair, and tells her that all he wants to know is what his place in the baby's life will be, father or uncle or whatever.
She really doesn't know.
"Listen… there's something I need to tell you before you hang up… I'm pregnant, and it's yours." She says without breathing, pacing the room she is renting. She hasn't been sure she would have told him, but this morning she discovered she can't wear normal clothes any longer, so someone will tell him. he would have called anyway, asking if it was his, Jane's, or if she has been sleeping round while they were arranging their wedding, so she made the call.
He asks her what she wants. She answers she just wanted to be honest with him for once.
Marcus sends her money, but she doesn't touch it, and put it away just in case. he doesn't push her, and she guesses he doesn't know what to say or how to behave. Neither does Jane, and he is weird she even thinks he is going to break up with her (just like her nightmares). But then he pulls one on her, and he proposes- in the way she would have never guessed, because it's so classic it's just not him.
She tells him not, because it's for the wrong reason and it's not him.
And then adds "Not yet.
She receives the papers when she is in her third trimester, the baby due in a month or so – it's not a science- and a lawyer gives them to her as she is at the office (she is back there, where she belongs and where is supposed to be.) and this time, when she breaks her window it's for real.
She can't believe it's really happening and he is having such a gut. Marcus wants her baby. In DC, with him. and she wants her out of his life (Yes, it's a boy, but Marcus doesn't know. He never asked.)
He does show up, one day. Not at her place (she isn't exactly living with Jane. he has the airstream, she has her place, they just end up together wherever they are more comfortable, according to the day), but one the job (does he fear a scene?). he tells her he understands her, but that they can make it right. they can start anew (in DC) and together (for the baby's sake).
She tells him she can't; she would never be happy if forced into a relationship she can't fully commit herself to, and the baby wouldn't be happy too.
She and Marcus cut any contact while he is in Austin, when she discovers he is there for the job and not the baby, and she wonders why he wants him.
(Pride.)
But when oversees her, her feet in Jane's lap as he massages them, his heart clenches, and he sees the truth, realizing that Teresa is content, it's not force like when they were together.
(That's Jane's family, not his own.)
The next day he gives her the papers for the renounce to parental rights (his) and she hugs him.
He is giving her what she has always wanted.
Jane is with her when she gives birth, crying with her and kissing he and loving her, thanking her all the time for this precious gift.
(Like they were really his, the both of them, and in manner of speaking, they are.)
She looks at him with huge, worried eyes when the nurse asks about the father's name, and the baby's surname (they aren't married) but smiling and crying he gives her his own.
(Patrick Jane, I'm the father. And this is Liam Jane.)
One day, she knows they'll tell their baby the truth ("Your father loved us enough to let it go of us, to give us to someone who would have loved us more than he would.") But for now she is content that way. This is what she wants, what she has always wanted, a loving father and a loved child, and it doesn't matter if his DNA doesn't match Jane's (Liam is her photocopy anyway, dark curls almost black and huge green eyes, and the most perfect pouting lips.), Patrick Jane is the father of her (their) child.
This isn't a rebound: this is the life she has always wanted. Even when she didn't know it.