Author's Note: All right, time to start reposting this one. Like 'Judge, Jury & Executioner', it is an alternative follow-up to 3x01, but it will be veering much further into AU territory, and will be largely missing the humor that is alternately my favorite thing and biggest complaint about the show. I can't seem to find the motivation to rewrite 'Blue Blooded', but 'Crossing Lines' and 'A Rizzoli Childhood' are both included in this story-verse.
No Rizzles planned, and while the ladies and their reactions to the strain on their friendship will be important, other characters will be key, too, because I adore the entire cast and the miracle of chemistry they have achieved. You could put any two characters together in a scene and have something worth watching; not something that can be said about every TV show out there.
This story, like the show, will be about friends and family, friends as family, and what you do for the people that you care about, set against a backdrop of crime. It's going to be a long haul, because I'm digging into some deep emotions of my own to power this, and I want to get them right. And because I have my stories in the Dragon Age universe that I am determined to finish.
As always, Rizzoli & Isles are the property of Tess Gerritsen & TNT. My eternal gratitude to them for creating the characters and to Angie Harmon, Sasha Alexander and the rest of the cast for bringing them to life.
Detective Jane Rizzoli stepped out of the elevator and hesitated, staring at the doors that led into the morgue. She really didn't want to go in there, but Frost was tied up in some kind of database search, and they needed the ballistics report to move any further on their latest homicide.
The morgue was a time-honored hurdle for rookies: find the nastiest, most decomposed corpse possible, line 'em up for the autopsy and watch them fall out, puke or faint. Jane had done none of the three, though she could still remember the smell of the guy who had blown his brains out and spent three days in an un-airconditioned Boston flat in August. She had taken a grim sort of pride in her accomplishment, and never ducked out of any errands to the morgue, but it had just been a place, part of the job that had to be done.
Then, for a while, it had been someplace that she liked to come; not homey, exactly, but comfortable, welcoming. The dead were still generally messy and smelly, but there were answers there...and good company...and ...
And now, it was quite simply the last place that she wanted to be, and putrid corpses had nothing to do with it, but she still had a job to do, and the morgue was still a part of that job.
Suck it up, Rizzoli.
Squaring her shoulders, she pushed through the glass doors into the autopsy suite, by-God not thinking of the day that Bobby Marino had dragged her out of here by the hair, leaving Maura poised protectively over a wounded Frankie: the day that she'd thought had sealed their friendship forever.
No such thing as forever, Jane. Didn't Pop teach you that, bailing on Mom for that bimbo?
And now, he wanted an annulment. Sorry, Angela, but our marriage didn't really count. And the kids? They don't count, either. Bastards, just like their dad.
She was getting pissed, which she really didn't need to do if she wanted to attempt a civil conversation with the Medical Examiner. Turning away from the empty autopsy suite, she headed for the M.E.'s office, hearing voices within, already through the open door before she realized that she recognized both voices.
Aw, crap.
Dr. Maura Isles was seated at her desk with Tommy Rizzoli standing behind her, massaging her shoulders. Both of them were looking at something on the computer screen and smiling; both smiles vanished as soon as they caught sight of her. Tommy had that half-guilty, half-defiant look that he wore like a second skin these days, and Maura just...looked. No expression, no hint of anything, but Jane could still feel the temperature in the room drop about twenty degrees.
It hurt. And she hated that it hurt. How long had it been since Maura had smiled at her? Since she had smiled at Maura? Hell, since she had smiled, period?
Answer: three weeks and two days. Since the day that she had shot Patrick Doyle before he could shoot her. Everything since then had been shit, and she had no idea how to make it right, or even if right was possible any more.
"Detective Rizzoli." Maura's voice was toneless. "Did you need something?"
"Dr. Isles," Jane replied in the same vein. See, I can do 'Don't-Give-A-Shit', too. "I was wondering if you had the ballistics report on the Kapersky homicide."
"I'll just...go." Tommy was edging from behind the desk and toward the door, now wearing the expression that had become common to anyone in the vicinity when the two former friends interacted. It bore a remarkable similarity to a bomb-squad technician approaching an unknown device that was ticking.
"There's no need, Tommy." Maura turned a warm smile to Jane's brother, then faded to ice-queen mode when she looked back to Jane. "Detective Rizzoli won't be here long. When I have the report, I will inform Detective Frost."
And that was how it was. Jane had hoped that digging up what information she could on Maura's birth mother might have made amends, and when she had asked Jane at the graveyard to tell Pike that she wanted her chair back, the detective had dared to hope that the breach between them could be mended. But for the last two weeks, everything went through Frost or Korsak, and when she did speak to Jane, it was in that distant tone that made her gut clench and her temper flare just like it was doing now.
"Yes, there's no need to leave, Tommy," she heard herself saying in a tone of saccharine sincerity. "Since Dr. Isles and I are no longer friends, I no longer have to worry about our friendship getting screwed up when you fall off the wagon and wrap her car around a telephone pole." She felt a flare of guilt when she saw his face harden, but damn it, he'd been sucking up to Maura shamelessly since the shooting, as though the fact that the two women were estranged might give him a shot at a date with the doctor. "You might want to keep in mind, though, that her old man could order your legs broken if he doesn't like you."
She saw that one hit home, felt a bitter twist of triumph at seeing the indifferent mask drop from Maura's face. Before she could speak, however, Tommy was bearing down on her with blazing eyes.
"I've been out for six months," he grated at her, "and I haven't touched a drop. What do I have to do to get you to cut me some slack?"
"You were dry for nine months before you ran down Father Crowley," Jane shot back. "Stay sober a year, and we'll talk. In the meantime, finding a damn job would be a good start."
"That's what I was doing before you interrupted," he snapped. "Maura, I'll see you later."
As he stalked out, Jane pinched the bridge of her nose, screwing her eyes shut tight. It really was not fair to have to face both of the two people who were best at pushing her buttons at once.
"God, you are such a bitch."
Her eyes popped open to find Maura glaring at her. "You think coddling him is gonna get him to turn around? That's what screwed him up in the first place! Ma spoiled him rotten from day one!" Even when he was getting into fights, stumbling home drunk, she'd made excuses for him, let him get away with anything.
"He's made mistakes!"
"He ran down a priest," Jane countered hotly. "On his third DUI, after yet another promise that he'd never drink again! That's not a mistake, that's a felony, and he was so damn drunk, he still doesn't remember it!" Jane drank, but she never got drunk, and Tommy was the reason.
"And of course, the great hero, Jane Rizzoli never makes any mistakes?" The scathing sarcasm cut deep; the connection, the almost instinctive understanding that had made their friendship so easy and strong had turned on itself. They each knew where the tender spots were, and they just could not stop taking shots at them...and hitting.
"Not when a perp is pointing a gun at me!" That shooting was clean, and she would stand by that decision to the death. Paddy Doyle had turned what should have been a cut and dried sting operation into a clusterfuck of a shootout, killing the suspect, shooting an FBI agent, and coming within a heartbeat of shooting Jane or Frost. She'd seen it in his eyes, flat and cold, like a snake ready to strike. "I make a mistake then, and I'm dead. Or maybe that's what you'd prefer had happened?" She'd turned those moments over in her head a million times, looking for any other way things could have unfolded, anything else she could have done, and come up empty.
"I would have preferred to not have Agent Dean show up," Maura replied icily.
"He had more business there than Doyle!" Jane snapped back, fire against ice. Maura hadn't said that she wouldn't have preferred Jane dead to Paddy Doyle wounded, and that made the anger and hurt twist even tighter in her chest. Anger she could handle, the hurt was something else entirely, something that she had never had a tolerance for. Physical pain was easy, but emotional pain...you couldn't block it, couldn't dodge it, and while physical injuries were generally inflicted by foes, emotional wounds could only be caused by someone you trusted, someone you had opened yourself up to.
She'd put her career on the line for Maura, by not speaking up as soon as she knew about the M.E.'s connection to the Irish mobster, and that he was making contact with his daughter. She'd damn near lost her job in the aftermath of that shooting, and Gabriel Dean...well, she'd definitely lost that. No matter how sincere his apology, no matter how much she knew that she would have likely done the same thing in his shoes, she knew that she would never know one-hundred percent that he hadn't come back to Boston and her bed just to get information on Paddy Doyle. He'd betrayed her, and worse: he'd made her betray Maura. Her personal and professional life was in a shambles because of the woman in front of her: the woman who wouldn't even say that she didn't want her dead.
"You know, I really don't have time for this." Yes, she was retreating...fuck, she was running, because she really, really wanted to smash something all of a sudden, but she couldn't have raised a hand against Maura if her life depended on it. She had to get out of here. "I have a job to do, and if that ballistics report isn't complete, I'd say that you do, too."
Maura's voice followed her out the door. "At least my job isn't shooting people!"
Don't do it. Don't do it. Her body spun back around, seemingly of its own volition. Shit. Why couldn't she stop this? "No, that's your father's job." Some inner part of her cringed at the mocking lilt in her voice, but the Rizzoli temper was in the driver's seat now, guarding the hurt like a mother bear with an injured cub. "No, my mistake: he uses an icepick. Have a nice day, Dr. Isles."
She bolted for the elevator before Maura could come up with a reply that she knew would just goad her further. The door slid shut behind her, and instead of pressing the button, she backed into one corner and leaned there, hands on her knees, trembling with anger and shame and grief, drawing slow, deep breaths, one after the other, forcing it down, controlling it, damn it, until her pulse was no longer thundering in her ears, until the shaking subsided. She was Jane Rizzoli, a cop with a job to do, and cops didn't let personal issues get in the way of doing the job.
Cops didn't cry. Jane Rizzoli didn't cry, damn it. She wouldn't. Not any more.
She hit the button felt the elevator start upward.
One look at Korsak and Frost told her all she needed to know.
"Don't do that to me again," she growled, stalking to her desk and glowering at Frost, who was trying to hide behind his monitor.
"C'mon, Jane." Korsak was not so easily intimidated. "We just thought that if you two talked, you could work things out."
"Not gonna happen," she replied wearily, shuffling through papers, willing herself to focus on them. Christ, but she felt like she'd just gone ten rounds with Ali and Frazier back to back. "She hates me, so get used to it. You two had better deal with her if we want to get any actual work done." She glanced back at Frost. "Tell me that database search wasn't just an excuse."
"It wasn't," Frost said hastily, adding with a hangdog look, "but it came up dry. Kapersky isn't listed in any of the known gangs in the area, no criminal record."
Jane scowled. White male, nineteen years of age, found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in a parking garage, and with enough meth residue in his clothes to get a football team high...but no drugs or money on him. "Aliases?"
"On that now," Frost replied promptly, ducking back behind his monitor with the relieved expression of a man who had just dodged a bullet, and Jane felt shame heating her cheeks. Vince and Barry were more than colleagues; they were her friends, and they had just been trying to help. Not their fault that she had screwed things up beyond recovery.
"Thanks, Frost," she told him quietly. "I'm just gonna...go over the witness statements again." All two of them. Neither had actually seen the shooting, but maybe, just maybe, there was a detail that was hidden in their words, some little something that they could grab onto. If not, they had to hope that the ballistics of the bullets that had killed Kapersky were on file. If not, it was going to be a shitload of legwork with little hope of actually finding a suspect, let alone getting a conviction. She wouldn't be losing much sleep over this one; she'd seen what meth did to people, and as far as she was concerned, drug dealers shooting each other was a form of urban improvement.
Christ, when had she gotten so jaded? These days, it sometimes felt as though she had been born that way. Maura had kept her balanced with that damned unsinkable optimism that was so incongruous in someone who spent their life in the middle of reminders of human failures and mortality, but...
Will you stop that? It's done, it's over. Back to our regularly scheduled programming. She had lived for most of her life without the friendship of Dr. Maura Isles, and she could damn well live the rest of it the same way.
Yeah, you've pretty much guaranteed that.
Oh, for Christ's -
"Heads up," Cavanaugh called out as he entered, just as Rizzoli was on the verge of exploding from her chair in frustration. "Got a body at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, probable homicide."
"Near Revere?" Jane turned to look at the Lieutenant in surprise, momentarily distracted from the pinball machine on crank that her brain had apparently morphed into. "That's my family's church." Not that she'd been lately, but it had been a twice weekly destination in her childhood, not to mention the parochial school...
"Maybe you can confirm ID on the body, then," Cavanaugh replied. "The caller said that it was one of the priests."