Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you enjoy this goofy little story!

Jane took out her wrench and prepared to fix the leaky sink. Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, she almost felt she had another, more interesting job, but it had to be a dream. She had always been a plumber, like her father before her. Rizzoli Brothers, they were called now that their dad was gone. Jane didn't like the name since it kind of left out the Rizzoli sister, but Frankie and Tommy felt people would take them more seriously if the name implied an all-male plumbing company. People did tend to do a double take when Jane showed up, but it just made her more determined to be the best plumber possible. She was pretty sure she was better than either of her brothers.

She disconnected the pipe, and to her amazement, she heard a voice echoing inside. "Jane, help!" the voice called. Jane recognized it immediately. She would know that voice anywhere. It was Princess Maura, the woman Jane planned to marry.

Jane couldn't really remember how a princess had come to love a lowly plumber like her, or even what country Maura was the princess of. All she knew was that the gorgeous blonde had her heart, and there was nothing Jane wouldn't do for her. If Princess Maura was in trouble, Jane had to save her. But how was she going to fit inside the pipes to get to her?

What I need is a way to shrink, Jane thought. She looked around the kitchen and noticed some brightly colored mushrooms sitting out on a cutting board. Magic mushrooms. They might make me shrink.

She popped a mushroom into her mouth, and as she did so, she vaguely remembered some other mushrooms she had eaten, she wasn't sure when. She had some vague memory of making reservations at a nice restaurant for the day before Valentine's Day. It was a tradition she and Maura had for the years when they were both single, which is most years. It pained her a little this year, as she'd just accepted a job with the FBI, and she hated to think that it might be their last Valentine's Eve dinner together. She remembered ordering chicken marsala that came with tons of mushrooms, but when she started eating, she began to feel weird.

"Maura, I think something's wrong with my food," she had said. "I feel really dizzy."

Maura had pulled Jane's plate across the table and examined the food. "Jane, this type of mushroom isn't meant to be eaten," she'd said, her eyes wide with fear. "I'm calling an ambulance!"

Jane shook herself. That couldn't be a real memory. Jane wasn't joining the FBI; she was just a plumber. More importantly, she and Maura were a couple, and Maura was a princess. A princess who was in danger.

But the magic mushroom had worked: Jane was shrinking to a size that would allow her to fit into the pipe. Without hesitation, she leaped into the pipe and let herself slide down, down, not the least bit worried for her own safety.

But she couldn't hear Maura anymore. She found herself in some sort of maze of pipes, with no idea which way to go. Then she heard Maura's voice again, sounding very far away.

"Jane, please come back to me!" she pleaded. "I need you. I can't live without you. Fight, Jane, please."

"Maura, where are you?" Jane shouted.

"I'm here," said Maura's voice. "I'm here, Jane."

It was almost as if she could feel Maura's hand in hers as she heard her words. The thought gave her strength. "I'm coming, Maura!" she called. "I'll fight for you! You're the woman I love! I'll always fight for you!"

And then, as if she were a warrior instead of a humble plumber, she ran ahead, towards Maura's voice, picking up coins the whole way.

Eventually, she came out of a pipe into a verdant land where colorful mushrooms grew. This must be Maura's kingdom, she thought. It's beautiful. She saw a castle ahead and thought, That's got to be where she is. They always lock princesses in castles.

So she went in, but she couldn't find Maura anywhere. There weren't any people at all. All she could see were weird little turtles, or were they tortoises? Maura would know. Jane didn't like them though. They seemed sinister, and she couldn't shake the feeling that they were involved in Maura's disappearance somehow. Maura would kill her if she harmed a tortoise though, so she just screamed in their faces to scare them and make them retreat into their shells. Finally, in the last room, she found a human being, but it wasn't Maura. It was Maura's friend, Susie.

"Susie?" Jane said in surprise, although she couldn't remember why she was supposed to be surprised to see Susie. "Where is Maura?"

"We appreciate all you're doing for our kingdom," Susie said, "but our princess is in another castle."

"Which castle is she in?" Jane asked in exasperation.

"I don't know. You'll have to keep searching until you find her."

"How many castles are there in this kingdom?"

"Eight."

"Eight castles? Can't we organize a search party or something?"

Susie shook her head. "Only you can find her. She wants it to be you. You have to prove your love for her."

"Everyone knows I love Maura!" Jane shouted in frustration. "I've always loved her! She has to know that!"

"I admit that I always had my suspicions," said Susie with a smile, "but I don't think Maura knows just how much you love her. You have to find her, and then you need to tell her plainly how you feel."

"I'll tell her," Jane promised, and she continued her search.

The next castle was full of giant Venus fly traps, but Jane was able to dodge them as she searched the rooms, sometimes climbing through pipes to get from one room to another. In the final room, she found her friend Frost, and again she was surprised, although she wasn't sure why.

"Frost, have you seen Maura?" she asked. "I'm supposed to marry her, but someone kidnapped her."

"It's good to see you, Detective," Frost said, though Jane didn't know why he was calling her Detective. "But the princess isn't in this castle, and you shouldn't be either. You need to find your way back to Maura."

"I'm trying, but I don't know which castle she's in!" Jane shouted in frustration. "No one will tell me!"

"Just keep fighting, and you'll get back to her," Frost promised. "She's waiting for you."

Jane started to leave, but then she turned back, her heart seizing. "Frost, I've missed you," she said. "I haven't seen you in a long time."

"You'll see me again," he promised. "But I hope not for a while! Go be happy with your princess. She needs you."

So Jane went back out through the land of mushrooms and kept searching through castles. It was a treacherous journey, but she refused to give up. At one castle she had to swim through a moat full of jellyfish, all trying to sting her. At another she found more of those weird turtles or tortoises or whatever they were, and they had wings! They kept flying at her in a menacing way, but she scared them all back into their shells. But at every single castle, the person she found in the last room was not Maura. She saw Kent in one, Angela in another, Korsak in yet another. They all told her the same thing: "Our princess is in a different castle."

In the seventh castle, she found Frankie in the final room. She had never been so frustrated to see her brother in her life.

"Frankie!" she shouted. "Where is Maura? The princess?"

"Princess?" he said, looking puzzled. "She was just here, but—"

"So she's not in this castle either?"

"Castle? Jane, this is a hospital."

Jane looked around at the stone walls. "It's a castle, dumbass," she said in irritation. "Frankie, I need to find her. She's in danger. I need to rescue her so we can get married."

"Married? You're gonna marry Maura?"

"Yes!"

"Does she know that?"

"What, you don't think a princess would fall in love with a plumber?"

"Um…well, maybe in a video game…"

"You're not making any sense. Just stop talking, okay? I'm gonna go find Maura and tell her how much I love her."

"Okay…"

So Jane left him and went into the final castle.

This castle was extra scary. There was lava beneath the stone floor, and there were places where she had to lower bridges in order to walk across the lava. At one point there was no bridge, and she didn't know what to do. But then she heard Maura's voice.

"Jane, can you hear me?" she was calling.

"Yes!" she called back. "Maura, where are you?"

"I'm here! I'm right here!"

"Maura, I don't see you!" Jane decided she would just have to jump across the lava, so she backed up and took a running leap. She just barely made it to the other side. "Maura?"

"I'm here, Jane." Maura sounded like she was struggling to hold back tears. "Jane, please come back to me."

"I'm gonna find you, Maura! I'm gonna prove how much I love you!"

"I love you too, Jane." Maura really sounded like she was crying now. Jane had to get to her fast, so she could make her happy again. She hated when Maura cried.

Just then, Jane finally saw the princess, looking beautiful in her gown and tiara. But her captor was standing in front of her, and Jane couldn't believe her eyes when she realized who it was. "Bass?" she said in wonder.

"Yes, it's me," Bass said. He looked gigantic, and he was wearing some sort of spiky armor on his shell. Also, Jane didn't remember him ever talking before.

"Why would you take Maura?" Jane asked him.

"Maura used to love me more than anyone else, until you came along," he said, smoke coming out of his nostrils. "It was just me and her, for so many years. Then she met you, and you were all she could talk about."

"Bass, she still loves you," Jane promised. "And if you care about her, you'll want her to be happy."

"I do want her to be happy," Bass said. "That's why I needed you to prove your love for her. I didn't want her to marry someone unworthy, especially a plumber. She's a princess."

"I love Maura more than anything in the world," Jane declared. "I've been in love with her for years. If she marries me, I will spend the rest of my life making sure she's happy."

"That's all I needed to hear from you," said Bass. He turned to Maura. "Will you still love me when you're married to her?"

"Always, Bass," said Maura. "But I need you to go back to your regular size. I can't possibly feed a tortoise who's bigger than me."

"I know what to do," said Jane. "I shrank after I ate a mushroom, so maybe if we feed him a mushroom, he'll go back to his regular size." She checked her pockets. They were full of coins, but there was also a mushroom in there. She held it out to Bass. "Go on," she said. "I promise, when I marry Maura, we'll both take care of you. We'll be a family."

"Okay," Bass said reluctantly. He ate the mushroom, and when he did, he turned back into a regular tortoise, with no spiky armor.

"Jane!" said Maura, running to her arms. "Thank you so much!"

"So you'll marry me now?" Jane asked in relief.

Maura smiled, tears in her eyes. "Jane, I'd have married you years ago if I'd known you wanted to."

"Damn. I wish I'd known."

"Me too, Jane. But if you get better, we can do anything we want."

"Better? I'm not sick."

"Oh, Jane." Maura squeezed Jane's hands.

Jane suddenly felt exhaustion sweeping over her. She supposed searching eight castles, swimming through moats, climbing around in pipes, scaring turtles, dodging Venus fly traps, and jumping over lava was bound to catch up to her eventually. "You look beautiful, princess," she told Maura.

"You look beautiful too."

Jane looked down at herself. "Are you sure? I'm wearing overalls and a plumber's cap."

Maura giggled a little, although there were still tears in her eyes. "You always look beautiful to me."

"I feel sleepy," Jane said, slowly lying down on the stone floor.

"I'm not surprised. Get some sleep, and you'll feel better. You need to sleep it off."

"Sleep what off?"

"The effects of the mushrooms."

"The ones that made me shrink to fit in the pipes?"

Maura frowned. "Yes. Those mushrooms."

"Okay," Jane said, closing her eyes. "I love you so much, Maura."

"I love you too," Maura whispered, planting a kiss on Jane's temple. "Sleep, my love, and then we'll talk about what to do next."

Jane relaxed, her hand still in Maura's, and let sleep take her.

~R&I~

When Jane opened her eyes again, she felt very different.

For one thing, she wasn't in a castle. She was in a hospital room.

Maura was sitting beside her, still holding her hand, but she wasn't a princess, and Jane wasn't a plumber.

"Maura," Jane said hoarsely.

"Jane!" Maura's face lit up. "How are you feeling?"

"My stomach hurts." Jane looked around. "What happened?"

"Someone gave you poison mushrooms, but you're going to be okay, and Korsak arrested the man who did it. He was trying to keep you from testifying in the Hallden case."

"What day is it?" Jane could see sunlight streaming through the window, and it had been dark when she went out to dinner with Maura.

"It's Valentine's Day."

Jane lifted her free hand and rubbed her face. "I had the weirdest dream."

"You were unconscious for a little while, and we were a little afraid we might lose you. There were signs of liver damage. Then your vitals started to improve and you regained consciousness, but you were quite delirious. You said a lot of strange things."

Jane struggled to remember her dream, and then her heart seemed to stop for a moment. "Like what?" she asked, not sure she really wanted to hear the answer.

Maura forced a smile. "You called me Princess, and you said you were a plumber."

Jane chuckled a little. "Last weekend Frankie found an old Nintendo console at a garage sale, with the Super Mario Bros. game. We used to play it when we were kids, so he invited me over to play it again, and we battled for the highest score. It brought back a lot of fond memories."

"Is there a princess?"

"Yeah, Mario has to save her from this giant dragon-turtle. In my dream it was Bass."

"But Bass is a tortoise."

"Fine, dragon-tortoise."

Maura smiled again. "Jane, you said some other things, and I'm curious to know if you meant them."

Jane felt panic rising in her chest. "Probably not, I mean I dreamed I was Mario."

"You said you were in love with me."

And I dreamed you loved me too. "Yeah. I was stoned, Maura. It's probably because we were having that Valentine's dinner when I was poisoned."

Maura looked down, her face crumpling. Jane watched in horror as the blonde's shoulders began to shake with silent sobs.

"Maura," she said. "Did you…did you want me to be in love with you?"

Maura refused to look up. "I told you I loved you too," she whispered between sobs. "I meant it."

"That was…that was real?"

Maura nodded.

"Am I dreaming now?"

Maura shook her head. "The hallucinogenic effects will have passed by now."

"Maura." Jane reached out and touched her friend's hair lightly. "I do love you. I've always loved you."

Maura looked up. "You have?"

"Of course I have. Look at you. You're the most amazing person on the planet. You're gorgeous, you know everything, you're loving and kind and quirky…you're everything I could ever want." She swallowed. "You're more than I ever dreamed of."

"Why didn't you ever say anything?"

Jane smiled grimly. "Because I didn't see how a princess like you could fall for a plumber like me."

Maura looked at her in surprise. "But Jane, you're more than I ever dreamed of! You're…I wrote that poem about you!"

Jane chuckled weakly. "Yeah, I guess you did."

"I've loved you for so long! It just felt like you were never going to love me back. I hoped maybe you did, but you just hadn't come to terms with your feelings yet, so I was just waiting for you to figure it out, but then…you decided to take that FBI job, which means you're going to move away."

"I hoped you would tell me not to."

"That's not what a good friend does. I wanted to be encouraging. I didn't want to be selfish, like I was when you wanted to marry Casey."

"I didn't want to marry Casey. Well, I wanted to want to." She looked into Maura's glittering hazel eyes. "All I've ever wanted is you, and I've been running away from that. It's kind of the only thing I was never brave enough to face."

"I guess I wasn't very brave either," Maura admitted. "I was too afraid of losing you." She squeezed Jane's hand again. "It's the worst feeling in the world, thinking I'm going to lose you."

Jane squeezed back. "Then I won't let you feel that way ever again."

Maura smiled, another tear slipping down her face. "Please don't go to Quantico."

"I won't. I promise. And Maura?"

"Yes, Jane?"

"I'd really like to kiss you now."

Maura broke into a grin. "I would like that." She leaned down, and her lips met Jane's. There was an instant magic beyond anything Jane had felt in the fantasy world of her dream, and she found herself tangling her fingers in Maura's silky hair, her lips molding to Maura's, coaxing them apart. It felt explosive, monumental, and yet, so natural. It felt like something they should have done seven years ago.

~R&I~

"I'll be damned," said Korsak, stopping outside the hospital room. He had come out with Frankie and Angela to see how Jane was doing this morning, but they could see through the window that Maura was lying on the bed beside her, the two women holding each other, exchanging whispered words and smiles in between sweet kisses. While Jane was still pale, she looked considerably better than she had the previous night. Maura looked positively radiant.

"Jane told every single person who came to visit her that she was in love with Maura," Frankie said. "And every time, Maura teared up."

"I really had no idea before this," said Korsak, still hardly believing his eyes.

"Neither did I," said Frankie, "but for her to say something that many times, even if she was delirious…"

"You men are so clueless," Angela said. "Anyway, I think we'd better come back later. Who wants to get brunch?"

~R&I~

Inside the room, neither woman had noticed the visitors who came and then went.

"It's unfortunate that I had to almost die to make this happen," said Jane, "but you know what? Totally worth it. I'd jump a million lava puddles for you."

"Me too," said Maura, resting her head on Jane's shoulder, her forehead fitting nicely in the curve of Jane's neck. "I'm just glad you're going to be okay. There are so many things we can do together once you're well!"

"Like this?" Jane said, tilting Maura's head back for another kiss.

"And more," said Maura, grinning mischievously.

"Damn. I can't pretend I haven't thought about that over the years."

"I've thought about it so many times, I even have a favorite position for us."

Jane chuckled. "I can't wait to find out what it is."

"I'll gladly show you." Maura sighed happily. "But I think the reality is going to be better than any fantasy."

"Of course it will, because it's real." Jane kissed her again. "Happy Valentine's Day, Princess."

"Happy Valentine's Day, my love."