The Null Space
By IncendioVerum
Summary: As the dark waters continued to swirl below her, Maura Isles had an unexpected epiphany. Unfortunately, it was too little, and way too late. As the hours passed and the weight of loss began to settle upon her, it became painfully clear that Jane Rizzoli had taken both of their hearts with her down to the murky depths of Boston Harbor, and the M.E. would never be the same. [Rizzles]
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters you recognize here because they already belong to TNT, Warner Bros, Rizzoli & Isles, Tess Gerritsen and other people much cooler and prettier than me, lucky them. If you sue me, I have nothing but a ton of grad school student loans to share, a 15 year old SUV and a few Xena collectibles. I get nothing but good vibes from exercising my creative writing skills in this way. This is a work of fiction, though certain places and entities are obviously based on real life. I promise to put your peeps back on the shelf after I'm done playing with them.
Rating: According to the guidelines, this story feels like a strong T with M moments, depending on your interpretation. Chapters with notable M content will be labelled as such.
Spoiler alert: Set during / post R&I season 5 episode 12 so spoilers for the entire series pretty much, though for the purposes of this fic I will tone down the implied suitability of Jack as a functional partner for Maura compared to the canon in this last episode and pretend that Maura doesn't meet his daughter or have that disastrous attempt at communing with tweens in general.
AN: The Inspiration for this story comes from the last scene in the summer season 5 cliffhanger episode. If you haven't seen it, go watch it and then come back. Back? Great, here we go. As Maura is looking down at the water, you can see the foam around the two impact points from Paul and Jane somewhat naturally form a heart outline in the water. I was struck by the visual analogy; that Jane had figuratively taken Maura's heart down with her when she went under, and it was at that moment that Maura (finally) realized just how entwined her life was with Jane's life, and how heavy the weight of that knowledge is as the next few events unfold. Yes, there be angst ahead. I'm heading in a #rizzles direction, for those of you who need to know this ahead of time, though Jack needs to be addressed in a manner that makes sense to the story arc. Note original title was Hearts on the Water, but there seems to be a similarly titled fic floating around recently so I decided to change it to something more Maura-esque and erm... geeky. Forgive the math analogies.
AN2: Yes, I do tend to write longer descriptive sentences. No I won't apologize for that. ;) I encourage you to read slowly and really savor the description to its fullest. Taste the words, if you will.
Without further ado:
Chapter 1: In which Maura misplaces Jane
The energy around the deserted bridge clicked over from potential to kinetic as the pathologist witnessed the towheaded fade of the county prosecutor unexpectedly lurch and duck, accompanied by an unintelligible bark from the detective.
Jane? Maura blinked, her eyebrows furrowing in concern. A hard splash soon followed, sharp against the evening quietness.
"Jane." What's happening? Alarmed, The M.E. forced her body into motion, stepping around the cars. Less than a second later a perpetually unruly ponytail jerked, tossed and then descended beyond her sightline.
Hours later, when the brass demanded her full statement despite her obvious grief, she wouldn't even remember the words that passed her lips in the moments after she watched the distinctively wild hair dip below the balustrade support on the bridge and a subsequently delayed splash hit her ears.
"Jane!" Reality set in and suddenly Doctor Maura Isles realized why her entire world had just dropped out from beneath her, literally. Her feet propelled her quickly onto the walkway as she rushed forward around the metal structures between her and where the pair had last been standing.
"Jay-?" The absence of both parties at eye level caused her breath to catch, and she immediately looked down into the dark channel underneath. The M.E.'s brain fairly exploded with thoughts of gravity, displacement and time and Nine point eight meters per second per second times twenty seven, no forty seven feet, or more…oh Jane no! Horrified, she gripped the railing for dear life, alert eyes scanning the muddied waters critically for any movement. Two intersecting patterns of displacement in the water stuck out under the shadows of the rusty bridge, the recent disturbance causing a distinctive froth on the waves but there was no other sign of life beneath the surface.
"JANE!" She screamed; the panicked cry ripped from her throat by an otherworldly force that was every emotion unleashed all at once from the petite medical examiner. She watched, transfixed, as the sea-foam floated into an obscene semblance of a stylized heart, tracking the impact point of the despondent prosecutor and the valiant detective who had so bravely stepped out on that ledge to plead her case and save the heartbroken man from himself.
"JAAAAAANE!" Her desperate shriek tore through the night air but was met with an eerie silence. "Where are you…" she pled, desperately searching the dark currents for any type of movement, her ears on fire straining to hear any indication of splashing, gasping, struggling. "JANE. ANSWER ME. Are you alright?" After long seconds of hearing nothing but the rhythmic lapping of waves, it struck the M.E. that she needed to get help here right now. "Oh God, oh God, oh God. Please be okay…" She mumbled absently, tearing into her jacket pocket for her cel phone. "JANE, HANG ON!" Maura bellowed.
The M.E.'s mind became deluged with information about anoxia, hypoxia, water temperature, barotrauma, tidal timetables, currents, shipping lanes, hospital routes and time. Not enough time. She was losing time. Jane was running out of time. A rising dread began to emerge from her intestines as she felt more seconds slip by waiting for her phone to find enough signal to connect.
She glanced down again, but the frothy heart shape on the water had already begun to dissipate, absorbed back into the gentle ripples of the outgoing tide. "Jane..." she breathed, as two salty droplets escaped from her eyes and trickled down the planes of flushed cheeks. "Jane please…. please come back up." She pleaded to the universe.
It was at that moment Maura Isles had an epiphany. Not the pretty sort in which the heavens opened and bright lights abounded, accompanied by an ethereal chorus and waves of happiness overflowing everywhere. This was the quiet sort. The damning sort. The sort that felt like a bottle of the rarest, most precious wine had been thrown into her unprotected chest… glass silently shattering, stabbing her heart muscle straight through as a thousand tiny shards sliced into her flesh, the alcohol burning every cell it came in contact with as the dark red hues of absolute truth dripped out, staining her clothes, her skin, her soul.
This wasn't just Jane, sinking in the dark somewhere below. This was her Jane. The person Maura loved, above all other people. Her Jane, who was the only person in Maura's entire life who dared to push past the icy Queen of the Dead persona she had perfected to keep everyone out over the years. This unconventional, blue-collar, bull-headed and incredibly complex person had come into her life and completely blown through her personal walls like they were paper with her patented combination of rakish charm, teasing satire and her gentle, scarred hands.
This was her trusted Jane, who was the only person allowed to touch Maura when she was upset, the only person she had ever truly bared all of herself to emotionally. Jane had been the only one she had trusted enough to share all of her fears and insecurities with, who put up with her incessant need for facts and her inability to lie with infinite patience and well-timed humor. Jane was the only one who took the time to reassure her and support her when Maura's shortcomings and self-doubt tripped her up. Her Jane, who had fiercely defended Maura through all of her parents' painful dramas, including getting right up in the face of the most dangerous man in the Irish mob and practically claiming Maura as her own.
This was her beloved Jane, who had rescued her from the quiet, clinical, emotionally distant existence she led, and had given her a warm and affectionate surrogate mother, and protective goofy surrogate brothers; an entire family of cacophonous compassionate Italian spirits that filled her immaculate home to the brim with messy, complicated, beautiful, vibrant life.
This was her treasured Jane, whose solid arms she had fallen into countless times, seeking comfort, seeking salvation; needing to anchor herself in the strong and steady heartbeat, burying her nose in the scent of lavender and myrrh, and listening to the distinctive husk that could speak of nothing and yet somehow always managed to say everything that she needed to hear.
Jane is the only person who chose her first, who continues to choose to put Maura first, every time, in every situation. The only one who she trusts her life to without a second thought, and the ONLY person who consistently proves to her, day after day for the past five years, that she is valued, and desired and needed, and so very loved for being exactly who she is.
That the quirky doctor loved the brash detective was common knowledge in the precinct and fairly obvious to anyone who came across them on or off the job. The recognition that she was in love with Jane, and probably had been for quite some time should have fazed her, but it didn't. If she were to examine all of the evidence, it would show conclusively that Maura had given her heart over to Jane a while ago, though how deeply Jane felt about her, how deeply she could feel, was still a mystery, and the one conversation that she hadn't dared to initiate with the detective, lest it damage their friendship.
It was not these thoughts which petrified her. It was the knowledge that Jane had become so deeply ingrained to the M.E.'s life, so necessary to her daily existence that without her presence Maura doubted she could even breathe properly, never mind continue to function with any degree of normalcy.
She and Jane had become so intertwined, so inseparable in their shared dimensions, so integral to each other's well-being that she knew the absence of one would have devastating consequences on the one left behind. There were too many intersecting lines, too many vectors between them for there not to be an irrevocable change in the constant of all of their lives with the deletion of Jane's matrix from the equation. The doctor blinked, hot tears coursing down silently, and shuddered a breath. "Please don't leave me Jane," she whispered, shaking her head bleakly. "Not like this. Oh God, not like this."
Her phone bleeped finally, bringing her back to the urgency of the moment. Maura clamped down on the terror and tried to rein her focus back, planning her next few actions with clinical detachment, allowing the what-ifs to be compartmentalized into different parts of her as her brain tried to analyze the situation.
But the only thing her heart could process was that her best friend… an amazingly selfless woman who had shared friends, family and everything else in her life with a lonely, socially awkward doctor… this cranky, intuitive, protective, overly sarcastic and deeply sensitive person… her favorite person, had just willingly and blindly jumped over 50 feet down into the dark, murky depths of Boston harbor, and had not resurfaced in well over 3 minutes.
The doctor hit the number to call in to BPD, already forming orders to bark to dispatch, even as she began to seriously plead with a God she never believed in before now for a small but extremely important miracle… because somewhere down below, Jane Rizzoli's breath was slipping away, and there wasn't a damn thing Maura Isles could do to save her, save them.
The medical examiner in her was excruciatingly aware of the statistical odds given the situation and was prepared to respond in the most professional manner possible. But the rest of Maura was beginning to drown in her own way, absolutely terrified that she had just witnessed the accidental death of her beloved detective, a woman that all of Boston thought was unsinkable.
AN: Thanks for reading. I know this scene is light on dialogue but that will change next chapter. Feel free to leave me some feedback regarding your thoughts, what you'd like to see, how you're feeling about these moments in the lives of this dynamic duo. The majority of scenes in the story arc are already planned out (or half written) but I'm happy to address something if y'all think it's needed. I would very much like some active reader feedback on this one. I'd like to challenge myself with a goal of one update every week or two, until the story resolves itself, and/or until the rest of season 5 begins to air, which looks like February ish. Stick around; it's going to be an interesting ride, though it'll be a while before we find out what happened to Jane. ~IV
