a/n: this fic is partially based from the song 'dollhouse' by melanie martinez because i always thought there was way more to the rizzoli family than what we got to see on camera, plus they aren't exactly happy families in the book series so my imagination just wandered and this was the result! please leave a review if you enjoyed :-)
trigger warning for mentions/implications of domestic violence.
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Lies are such a big focus in her family that it's hard for Jane to even begin to comprehend what's fact and what's fiction.
On the outside, they're just your average Boston Italian-American family, a mother and a father and three children, but she's not a stupid girl and Jane knows their dirty secrets won't stay hidden for much longer. She can tell people are starting to see through the facade; she sees the raised eyebrows and she knows her mother has noticed that as soon as they're in earshot all the conversations between the neighbours seem to fade into silence. There's only so far foundation will go, Jane knows this and she's sure Angela does too, but it doesn't stop her mother from doing her very best to make it run a good few miles more than it should.
From a distance, she knows her parents couldn't seem more ordinary. Just a happily married couple, trying to make a comfortable life for themselves and their kids. No one would think to look beyond the smiles and to the fights and the shouting and the bruises, both old and new, that litter her mother's body as a constant reminder that their outward happy appearance is based entirely on pretence.
To outsiders, the Rizzoli family are close to perfect, but behind closed doors the song has a different tune entirely.
/
Jane can't remember when she realised that her daddy wasn't the superhero she painted him out to be for so many years.
She was nine, maybe ten, when she first noticed the ring of her bruises on her mother's arm. She remembered Mom's nervous laughter at her questioning and being told some story about how she'd bumped it in the dark, but Jane knew there was no mistaking the finger marks where someone had held on way too tight. She'd heard her parents arguing before, about money and bills and what have you, but she'd never imagined their fights would turn physical. For years after that, she refused point blank to believe her daddy was that kind of man. Men who raised their hands to their wives belonged in late night TV dramas. They were rough and tumble gangsters, thugs from big cities like New York or Miami. Her dad wasn't like that. Her dad was a good man. No, Jane told herself. There had to be some reasonable explanation for the bruises that kept appearing on her mother's arms and back and face and legs.
It wasn't until later, when she was twelve or thirteen, that her dad's false promises stopped ringing true. Business had hit a low and money was tight for them, which only seemed to fuel his anger even more. The fights became more frequent, and it seemed like it was every night she had to hold a pillow tightly over her ears to block out the yelling. Her mom's bruises just kept coming and coming, worse every time, and it was impossible for her to ignore it any more.
Sometimes, though, she could push it to the back of her mind. When she thought of her dad she still didn't associate him with violence, but rather a hard-working man who put his family above everything else. Every time the niggling thoughts came back that maybe he wasn't that good of a guy after all, her mind was flooded with images of him smiling proudly in the front of the church at her First Communion, or singing karaoke at Christmas, or eating take out pizza with her and her brothers after a baseball game. If she closed her eyes and wished hard enough, she could almost forget about the fights and pretend that her dad loved her mom and would never hurt her.
It only took one glance at the deep purple bruises on her mother's arms that she didn't have enough make up to hide for Jane to come crashing back to reality.
/
It wasn't until she was sixteen that she finally worked up the courage to tell her mother that she needed to leave him.
It had been a bad one that night; he had come home drunk as he so often did and of course it was his long-suffering wife who bore the brunt of his anger. After getting a good few punches and some coarse words in, he had sloped off back to the pub to drown his sorrows at the bottom of another beer glass and for the first time in her life, Jane hoped he didn't come back. She didn't know what had sparked him off this time but she knew her dad and his fuse had definitely been getting shorter recently. As her brother Frankie hoovered up the glass from a vase that had gotten smashed in the commotion, she held a wet paper towel to the gash on her mom's forehead to try and quell the bleeding.
"It's worse than it looks, honestly," Angela persisted, but Jane shook her head. No amount of pressure was making the blood stop pouring. She was definitely going to need stitches this time.
"Mom, you need to go to a hospital," Jane told her firmly, already knowing what the answer would be.
"No! No, there's no need for that. I'm fine. It's just a flesh wound," Angela protested, before pulling herself to her feet and out of her daughter's grasp.
"You need to go to bed," she told Jane, "And so does your brother. It's late. Come on. I'll tidy this up myself."
The two siblings exchanged a glance. This wasn't the first time they'd had to clean up the mess in the wake of Hurricane Daddy's destruction, and it wasn't the first time their mother had been insistent that everything was picture perfect with blood streaming down her face either.
"No, Mom, we're not going to bed." Frankie surprised Jane with his firmness. Her brother was no pushover, that was for sure, but normally he wasn't so upfront.
"You need to leave him!" Jane was surprised for a moment at the harsh words before she realised they'd come from her own mouth. Truthfully, she'd been thinking it for years but never put it into words to avoid making it become real. Now, there was no hiding from it. The truth was plain to see.
Angela sighed.
"You don't understand, Janie. Things might not be brilliant just now but your father and I love each other as much as we love you and your brothers. He just gets angry sometimes because it's hard for him to find decent work at the moment. He doesn't mean to hurt me."
"Yeah, keep telling yourself that," Jane snarled, having reached the end of her rope. Enough was enough. If her mom didn't leave now he was going to end up killing her sooner rather than later.
"I don't know how you can be so blind. This has been going on for years and it's not just you he's hurting. I can't sleep at night because I can't bear to hear you crying, and I know for a fact Frankie's worrying himself sick about you as well. Tommy's having nightmares and that's not even the tip of the iceberg! You need to leave him!" Her voice had reached a pitch she didn't even think it was capable of getting to and she could tell by the look on her mother's face that she was going too far but she couldn't stop. The words just kept pouring out, all the thoughts she had repressed for years finally bubbling over and coming to the surface.
"Mom, it's killing you and none of us can stand to sit back and watch this any more. He's a fucking monster!"
Her words were cut off by a sharp slap to the cheek. Her mother's face was coloured with rage and her eyes were alight, bearing into the deepest recesses of her soul.
"Do not speak to me like that again, do you hear me?" her voice was low and angry and in that moment Jane knew she'd gone too far.
"I am not having my life dictated to by a child. You may think you know best, madam, but you don't have a clue. And I'll be damned if I stand here and let you speak that way about your father! I'm giving you one last chance to turn around and take that butt of yours right up those stairs and I don't want to hear a peep from you for the rest of night!"
Like a good daughter, Jane did as she was told. It was only later when she heard her father come home and apologise and promise a fresh start only for the same thing to happen the next night that she began to think "Stand By Your Man" sounded better when Tammy Wynette sang it.
/
Their portrait paints a picture of an ordinary happy family, but Jane knows if you looked close enough you'd be able to see a faint outline of the scar on her mother's forehead from the vase and how her father's grip on her arm looks too tight to be comfortable. They've done a good job of hiding their secret over the years, because in the Rizzoli family if things go unspoken they're as good as non-existent anyway. It's why her father's gotten away with it for so long.
Jane wonders how much longer it'll be before his lies finally crumble into oblivion and he has no stone wall to hide behind.
She hopes, for her mother's sake, it's soon.