Perchance to Dream
In follow up to: "Remember Me"
Notes:Spoilers to 2x10 - Summer Finale. I wanted to put my own spin on things after coming to realize that I did not like how the episode ended.
W. Charles Hoyt kills couples. Everyone knows that he does, that he embraces the fear he can perpetuate, how he can commit the ultimate act of violence on a bond of love. Jane Rizzoli knows why he wanted Maura, she's never talked about it, never dared breathe word of it to anyone.
They're going to have to have a conversation about this, probably. Jane really does not want to have this conversation. She doesn't want a lot of things that have been foisted upon her as of this moment.
She's weighed down by responsibility, but the twisted feeling of dread that has yet to leave her stomach will not leave her alone. She's nervous, jumpy, terrified of the implications of her actions.
Jane doesn't want the birthday party her mother throws for her. She frankly can't believe her mother's audacity to have it despite the day that Jane's had so far. She's been debriefed, deposed and checked over by three different doctors and a department shrink. They've given her two weeks paid leave. She just wants to sleep, maybe get drunk and then sleep, but sleep yes. She wants that.
But her mother wants to have a birthday party for her. Jane wants to scream, wants to run and hide at the very idea of it. She puts on a brave face, for Maura, for her mother, and walks into her apartment. It's covered in fucking ponies and she can't believe her mother took her suggestion seriously. She's not nine years old. She's thirty five (cringe) now and way too old for such things.
There's presents and booze and Jane is still on edge. As people start to leave, she realizes that she doesn't want to be alone.
She finds Maura coming out of the bathroom and leans against the wall, all long angular lines and pointy elbows that she hates. Jane tries to look casual, tries to look as though this is the most natural thing in the world. She's blocking Maura's way and she doesn't care. She doesn't want to be around people any more. She just wants Maura; it's all she's ever wanted.
Maura's mouth opens and the words begin to tumble out, "May I-"
"Will you?" They begin at the same time and Jane lets the final word of the question fall silent. They're asking the same thing, doesn't take an idiot.
Maura nods and Jane holds out her hand. Maura's fingers are shaking against her palm and Jane's pulled her in close. She smells of fear still, Jane knows the smell well.
They're really not okay.
Maura's trembling, head resting against Jane's shoulder and arms balled up in the back of Jane's open shirt, clinging for dear life. Jane wants to tell her it'll be okay. She doesn't know if it will be.
"I want to shower," Maura whispers. Jane doesn't blame her, her mother insisted on having this fucking party now, Jane had to change her pants at work because she fucking pissed herself she was so scared - Maura doesn't look any better off.
"I'll bring you a towel," Jane says. "And something to wear."
Charles Hoyt kills couples. Jane can't shake the thought from her head. They're not a couple and Charles Hoyt went after them anyway. Jane gets it; his final gift to her is to fuck up this relationship that is teetering just between friends and something so much more.
Jane slips into her bedroom and finds an old t-shirt that she thinks once belonged to her dad and some of her favorite superhero boxers. These ones have Captain America on them and she's sure that Maura will get a kick out of them before debunking every childhood belief that she ever had in such heroes.
Real actual heroes - Jane's met them - they're not quite so flashy.
Maura nests, Jane muses as she finds a few pairs of underwear, clearly Maura's, tucked into her chest of drawers. There are two neatly rolled pairs of stockings and a bra in there too. When the hell did that happen?
There's a clean towel in the hall closet and Jane knocks on the bathroom door once before opening it slighting and arranging everything, towel on top, on the edge of the sink. She closes the door, not looking, never looking, and heads back to her mother's god-awful party.
"Ma," Jane says, finding her mother wrapping up sections of birthday cake on Dixie plates for people to take home. "Maura's gunna spend the night here. Do you want me to call you a cab?"
Her mother says nothing, there's a hardened edge to her that Jane hasn't seen in years. Since the first time around with Hoyt. Jane watches her mother's hands move in tight, controlled motions, and knows that she's not okay either. That her children are constantly being threatened and that they embrace that threat with the same love and devotion that their mother embraces them. Jane cannot help her; they've had this argument more times than Jane cares to count.
"I'll take her home," Korsak, Jane thought he'd left. He's got a Tupperware tucked under one arm, and a plate of cake in his hand. "You gunna be okay?"
Jane shrugs, she can never lie to Vince. She can lie to Frost, it's easy to do that - and she's damn good at lying to her mom and to Frankie. She's collapsed sobbing into his arms on more than one occasion, the loving uncle she never had. Her father is around, trying to sell the house in this terrible market - trying to make ends meat - she misses him. Vince can never replace her dad, but he's here when her dad doesn't dare come close.
"You call me if you need anything Janie," Her mother's tone is short and curt; Jane can tell that she's holding back tears. Jane doesn't want her to leave in the same breath that she desperately wants her to get lost.
Her mother cannot see, cannot see how she's going to fall apart in front of Maura.
Charles Hoyt kills couples. They are not a couple.
They might as well be.
It is quiet then. Jane is trapped, alone in her head, sitting in the living room, waiting for Maura to finish in the bathroom. She can barely control herself, frantic breaths in deep and out long. She isn't okay.
Jane's hands are shaking, resting against her thighs as she stares blankly off at the wall - eyes unseeing. She can look down, cuts on her hand from the scalpel, dried flecks of Hoyt's blood caked under her nails. She couldn't get it all out, she didn't have the tools to scrub at it at the station and they had to process her for evidence anyway.
She inhales, eyes closing, falling into her head, her own world, where reason could potentially make sense.
It is a trance-like state. She is moving in and out of consciousness, out of awareness. Hoyt follows her every motion, Jane feels his lifeblood spewing forth onto her hands again and again. She killed a dying man.
Does that make it right?
She'd do it again too. For Maura. Always for Maura. Maura who is always there, always silent and supportive, a beautiful mind and a foil to everything that Jane is not.
"Thank you," she whispers to no one in particular. To Maura but Maura is washing away the sins of the afternoon, no one can hear Jane whisper thanks for an event that nearly killed her - opened her eyes.
She would have let him kill her to save Maura. Hoyt did not give Jane the choice, but it was there, the most dangerous game of all. Hoyt would not hunt her through the wild of her own consciousness, drawing her naked into the light. She had killed him - he could not return.
Hands still and she feels another presence in the room, Maura, barefoot and wearing her (father and brother's) clothes. "Ma left, Korsak's gunna drive her home."
Maura, all wet hair and hesitating steps crosses the room and falls into Jane's arms. She smells clean, like Jane's shampoo and lotion. Lavender. Jane loves the smell, loves to hate the smell. Her hands hurt.
She won't change for Hoyt. Change everything about herself to hide who she is. Who he ruined.
Maura's curled up, practically in her lap, and Jane wants to touch her, wants to tell her that she doesn't expect anything from the implication that Hoyt kills couples. She can't move, paralyzed by the fear of admitting what a fucking serial killer who she's spent all of probably three hours of her life with could see effortlessly.
Maura's pulling at her shirt, pushing it off her shoulders, trying to get Jane out of her bloody clothes. At least her pants are clean.
"I know, I know," Maura's repeating it over and over again and Jane can't hear anything else.
The words are leaden, heavy in her mouth and Jane has to struggle to spit them out. Her fingers curl in her father's shirt, clinging as it does to Maura's warm body underneath it. "He kills couples," her voice sounds harsh, alien - like she's been yelling for days and has only just now remembered to whisper.
Maura's got her shirt off and is pulling Jane to her feet, eyes ever-knowing. Jane feels naked, is naked, Maura can see everything. Every scar, every mark that Hoyt left on her this time, and the time before that.
He never raped her, said he couldn't.
He probably would have Maura.
Jane's arms are around Maura and she cannot let go, has her pushed up against the wall, leg in between Maura's own. Maura is hot there, hot and warm and she smells so good and Jane wants to give into the need to affirm her consciousness and reality.
"Jane," Maura's voice is a question and an answer, drawing Jane out of her headspace and back into the moment. She backs off instantly, fingers trailing down Maura's front as she does so - eyes lingering on Maura's lips on her wide eyes and confused expression. "Not tonight."
It isn't a rejection.
Something at least.
Maura's warm and comforting and is pulling Jane down onto her bed, pushing the blankets down, pressing her body as close to Jane as she can without actually going where Jane's terrified brain almost wants to go. She speaks with confidence, and Jane numbly acquiesces.
"I couldn't sleep alone," Maura confesses, fingers tracing patterns on Jane's arm, leg thrown haphazardly over them both. She's babbling, Jane is half-listening. She should pay more attention.
"I'm sorry-" Jane blurts out, burying her face in Maura's shoulder. "I should have realized it."
Maura is silent, her lips are warm and Jane has her answer.
Charles Hoyt kills couples; he saw something in them that even they could not see.
x
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit—and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. - Hamlet 2.2