How much longer can you survive?

You never thought it would last this long. You honestly never thought Maura would say yes.

But you were wrong.

When they came to Sunday dinner, Maura flaunting her engagement ring, it was like the whole world stopped. Your whole world stopped. Ma rushed over to gush with her, Frankie congratulated them, Korsak and Frost wished them the best. And you? You stopped. You came so close to passing out, part of you had wished you had. Because then she would've rushed over to you, cared for you, and you could've pretended she loved you, even if only for a moment.

When you went home that Sunday night, you cried for hours. You drank a week's worth of alcohol in one go. You craved a cigarette more than you ever had in the twelve years since you quit. You wanted to go for a drive, you wanted an easy lay, you wanted anything that would help you self-destruct.

Instead you show up early Monday morning on zero sleep, still mildly intoxicated, downing coffee like there'll be a global shortage. You shudder at your desk at the thought of how they spent the night. Celebrating most likely, physically if you know Maura. And you know Maura. You know her better than you know Korsak, than you know Frost, your family. Better than you know yourself.

As long as you don't see them together, it's bearable. You can breathe when it's just one of them. If it's just Maura over a dead body you can pretend that she isn't engaged to your brother. When it's running into Tommy at the grocery store, you can pretend the knife in your heart isn't there.

Sunday dinners are the worst. Two more after the engagement announcement and you know it can't go on. So you request to be on call on Sundays, knowing that Cavanaugh talks to Ma and that if you requested to be on duty on Sunday evening purposefully, she'd kill you.

You'd briefly considered it.

So thank God, more often than not, you don't have to go. When dispatch calls you and offers you the choice to go to a cut and dry suicide to sign off with the ME assigned, you agree. Now they call you first in rotation for the pleasure.

It's honest to God boring, but it's better than being cooped up in Maura's house, watching the happy couple and the happy family that surrounds them. You love both of them, you do, but you still can't. You just can't.

You stay late to work on paperwork instead of hanging out with Maura. Not all the time, that would arouse suspicion. But often enough that she offers less now, scheduling more time with Tommy instead, as it goes.

If Frost or Korsak notice, they don't let on. They're swamped too. Always a backlog to work on, so you're never really not busy anymore. Cavanaugh notices the extra work, extra effort you're putting in. He never says anything outright, but you can feel the pride as much as you hear the question in his voice when he addresses you.

BPD doesn't have an employee of the year award, but he tells you he's put your name in for an achievement award. It comes with a cash bonus. You smile and thank him and wonder if it's in poor taste to have it sent straight to your favourite brewery.

You haven't used alcohol as a crutch, but you haven't abstained completely either. Alcohol loosens tongues and could end in a dangerously truthful confrontation given your family's penchant for barging in when the desire strikes.

They haven't done that in a while. But you figure it only means you're due.

You're not mad at them. You could've stopped it. Both of them came to you and basically asked permission. You told Tommy to make her happy, and he'd promised he would. He was her choice, so there wasn't anything more to be done. And you didn't have a reason to say no. So you'd said yes. You just didn't think it would last.

Instead, the guilt, the frustration, the anguish is all yours and yours alone. Fuck.

For the who-knows-how-many night in a row, you punch your pillow until you're spent. Then you drag a sweater of hers from under your mattress, and cuddle it while you beg for sleep.

Days go on and on like this.

While you survive, your brother and Maura have picked a date and started making the arrangements for their wedding. The last time you'd spent some alone time with Maura, she'd prattled on about flowers and their different connotations almost the entire time.

With every option she'd explained, your heart grew heavier in your chest until you thought it might drop onto the hardwood of her kitchen. You left before Tommy could make it back.

In the car on the way home, you'd wept bitterly. How fine an actor you must be if no one could tell how dead you feel inside, if not even Maura could see that you were wasting away.

Two months before the wedding you get the call. The FBI want you to join a specialized unit in serial killers. It pays well, but you'll need to move to Washington, to HQ. It might kill you, leaving your family, leaving Maura, leaving your partners and the only place you've called home your whole life.

But staying will kill you, no questions asked. You call them back after a couple of days to accept. They tell you they'll handle everything, you just need to pack your bags in time for orientation in three weeks.

You don't tell anyone. You use a couple vacation days to find an apartment in DC, Cavanaugh doesn't say a word other than you deserve a couple days. You tell everyone else you want to go see the monuments at the last Sunday dinner you hope to endure. Maura looks sad at the thought and you can't help but remember happier times for you and her.

"I'd like to see the world. Go sightseeing, experience all there is to experience," you'd said one day in her office, playing gently with the globe she keeps there.

She'd smiled widely. "We could start local, in the U.S.," she'd said, no question about the two of you going together. "Hoover Dam, DC, Mount Rushmore."

You'd grinned back. "I'd love that. You could be my tour guide."

Happier, easier times. You don't really care about where you move to, but the realtor who shows you around finds you a pretty decent place a few blocks from HQ, fully furnished. You sign the lease with a hole in your chest. It'll work. There's a coffee shop on the ground floor, for the benefit of everyone around you.

You pack a few things you want to bring with you, but you're not intent on much. Some clothes, a few knickknacks that have accumulated from your time with Maura and the BPD. A short stack of photos. It amounts to a couple of duffels. One box full of kitchen stuff. And that's it. Your existence consists of those three things. It makes you feel small.

When you go into work on your final day, you stop and chat briefly with Cavanaugh. Your new bosses said the paperwork went through, but apparently Cavanaugh wasn't in the loop. He didn't take it well. You apologized, but you weren't really that sorry. You didn't think he'd be aware. That's how the FBI works, a fact you'd always hated. But it had worked to your advantage, because you could slip away tonight and no one would be the wiser.

You could feel Cavanaugh watching you as you went back to your desk and interacted with the boys just as you always had before. And when the day was done, you tucked a few of the trinkets you'd kept around your desk in your pocket before heading home.

You did a final sweep of your apartment. You've barely eaten, barely slept, hell you've barely been able to breathe lately. But you decide that you should attempt to eat something before your new job in the morning. Your flight's the redeye because you don't sleep much anyway. So you ordered takeout for your final evening in Boston. You sat on your floor, a beer in hand and waited, trying not to think about the reasons you were leaving.

You can't escape them though. Can't escape the knowledge that Maura will become a Rizzoli, but without you. You curse Fate lightly for having a shitty sense of humour. You'd always wanted her to be a Rizzoli. Always wanted her to bear your last name with pride.

But you'd always imagined it with you, not Tommy.

When the knocks sound on your door, you need a minute to gather yourself before answering. But instead of a lanky, pimply teenager with pizza, there is one sincerely pissed off Maura Isles on your doorstep.