A/N: So a while back someone on tumblr prompted me to write a post-Bianchi PTSD type story. I veered off a bit and focused on a broader look at how I would picture Jane 'dealing' with something like Bianchi - but from an outsider's POV. (To the person who asked for this: I'm really sorry if this isn't what you had in mind!)
TO NOTE: I don't think there's anything particularly triggering below, but there are a couple lines (not in great detail) about what happened while Jane was with Bianchi, so if that part of the episode bothered you, you may want to sit out on this one.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, no money etc. etc.
"The worst part was the shoes." Her toes wiggle against your shins as her sentence fades. She sits across from you, beer in hand. Her fingertips stumble over the label as she shudders in an exaggerated, near playful way.
You can't help feeling like this is a test and she is everything you don't understand. She defies all the things you know about people, and you are always learning, always taking notes, but she still manages to catch you off guard, and wrong.
This is the part that you have never understood. Here in The Aftermath – it is a strange place.
She – Jane, Detective Rizzoli – has a way of making it look effortless, making trauma look like paper cuts. And this is no different.
You do your best to play along – making some asinine comment about Dr. Pike, about freezing your eggs. You are queen of the non-sequitur, of the seemingly random facts, but even so you are struggling to keep pace.
Her ups and downs leave you stumbling.
The world is cruel and you never get her honest and without walls, but there are moments, here.
There are moments when her breath hitches and her eyelids flutter. She looks at you through tight lips and caving shoulders. The smiling and laughing doesn't erase the bandages on her wrists, nor the echo of her pleading voice that still ricochets between your ears.
You wish, not for the first time, the circumstances different.
The gray, cotton blanket tossed over both your laps, the normalcy of her sitting opposite you – it almost feels like comfort. You can almost trick yourself into forgetting.
But the key is in the phrasing.
Almost.
When you close your eyes she is sprawled out on a stranger's bed and begging for rescue.
Almost.
She is tugging and tugging on metal in vain and your heart feels like it's in the hands of a god you don't believe in, like it's being compressed by steel walls in every direction.
And that word again, almost, flashes like neon on the underside of your eyelids.
You almost lost her, again.
As her laughter fades once more in the space that follows is a silence that bores too much thought. The emptiness creates a void that presses into all of the crevices of your heart.
You almost want to tell her all of the truths resting right on top of your soul. But it is late, and you are not ready for this fight.
…
It is five am and you are staring at the ceiling of your bedroom. The moonlight shines through your window, casting everything in eerie shadows that makes your heart stutter in your chest.
Sleep has only come in waves and intervals. You have never been a dreamer, but your subconscious is running rampant tonight.
The natural groaning of the house only adds to the unsettled feeling in the pit of your stomach.
It tells you to go to her – but you do not listen to your intestines and if she is breaking apart in your guest room then she is doing so on purpose.
And you will give her that.
…
Jane is sitting in her chair at the bar in your kitchen.
The muscles in her jaw dance as the pen in her hand shakes against the crossword in the newspaper. Even here, as you step down closing the robe tighter around yourself, you can see how tired she is, how worn she it.
"Morning." Her voice is sandpaper rubbed raw and too much whiskey. And maybe you should have gone to her, maybe you should have done more, been better, smarter, looked for better clues, realized those texts weren't just a wrong number – something, anything.
You feel her eyes on you, as you walk to the coffee machine. You want to reassure, you want to reach out but you are a doctor without healing hands and you know if you turn you will get lost somewhere along the way. Her stare anchors you, grounds the shaking of your hands, the hammer of your own emphatic heart.
You lack the words to express the things you wish you could say to her. They are trapped in your throat – a bad accident of missing consonants and upside-down vowels – code you don't have the energy to decipher this morning. So instead, you pour your coffee and try to tell her with your eyes that you aren't going anywhere. You are there if and when she needs you.
…
It takes days and weeks, but eventually the light comes back into her eyes. And when she looks at you those butterflies free from that locked space inside of your chest cavity, they seep into your veins and you absorb them into your bloodstream. You feel warmth for the first time in weeks as your fingers graze hers over the popcorn, and when she smiles that warmth radiates through your entire body and settles in your heart.
You fall into the familiar, into her jokes, into that smirk, into the swing of her hips – falling and falling into a never ending sea of Jane.
But, it happens one night.
She has fallen asleep on the couch, leaning just barely. Your heart thuds like rapid fire in your chest, your bones ignite when she shifts, every molecule in your body feels alive and awake.
Soft tendrils of obsidian fall onto your shoulder. Her cheek rests on the thin material of your shirt, tufts of warm breath hit your skin, and the worry lines dismantle from her forehead in one slow contented sigh – like you are her best pillow.
You don't know what to do.
Your breath hitches – stuck somewhere between two different worlds of yes and no, of fear and want.
This isn't new but you have yet to develop a contingency plan.
You center yourself on internal chants of inhale-exhale and just as you do this for the fifth time, just as you finally relax into the moment, into her, something changes.
Her nose scrunches, her cheek pushes into your shoulder harder and a noise escapes her. It lasts ten seconds at most. Her eyes snap open, dark and haunted and full of sorry's like she's been caught red handed, alarm bell ringing, knuckle deep in the cookie jar ten minutes before dinner.
She stands nearly stumbling into the coffee table. A clumsy grab at her coat and a half-mumbled excuse of the time as she is putting one of your heels on one foot and one of her boots on the other. Her equilibrium is off kilter, and you haven't realized just how tired she is until now.
You stand. "Don't go."
She looks at you, and it's like you're seeing her for the first time. You can read everything in her body. The dark circles under her eyes, the tremble of her fingers, the bowed back.
She is tired and sad and angry – and you want to take it away, to fix it. But you don't know how.
"Please stay." Your voice is full of vigor and pleas.
"Maura…" She blinks hard, takes a breath, and schools her features as if the last five minutes never happened. "It's late and –"
"Jane." Your voice holds no room for games. You are no-nonsense and full of purpose. She does not respond. You are playing by a rulebook she hasn't read and every wall she has is up.
Her jaw tightens, her fingers flex.
And just as you begin to think she is not going to break on you tonight, she begins to tremble.
You are standing three feet away from her, but even so you can feel it growing in your own bones.
It is a slow building crescendo.
Then suddenly like a balloon too full, she bursts.
A scarred hand covers her mouth like she can shove the noise she made back in by sheer force of will. Like her knees aren't threatening to give way to the pressure on her back. Like she is not ripping at the seams and breathless.
This, this is new.
Your mind stalls, stuck on sounds and visuals and you blink unthinking.
Her arm wraps itself around her stomach. Her knuckles are white against her blazer as she fights this with everything she has. But you both know it is a losing battle. And you are forced to stand there watching a sinking ship.
Finally, you stop trying to listen to your head and instead listen to the beating of your heart, the voice in your gut that says go to her and you do.
A/N: Thanks for reading!