1.
Detective Rizzoli comes back to Boston Homicide on a chilly autumn night almost six months later. It is Maura's thirteenth case as Chief Medical Examiner, and as she ducks under the police tape, and heads towards the house, she is thinking only of how well she has gotten along in Boston, and about how possible it is that this job could become one that she chooses to keep for a long time.
As she walks up the driveway, she sees Detective Frost burst out of the front door and walk hurriedly towards the lawn, his face pale.
Some of the officer's standing nearby begin to snicker, and Maura watches sympathetically as Frost heaves once and is sick, barely missing his shoes. Maura stops momentarily on the gravel path, several feet from the young detective. "Breathe deeply, through your nose, when you can," she calls softly. "And move away from your vomit, so the smell doesn't affect you so."
Frost gives a weak nod, and shuffles to the side several steps, pulling in deep breaths, and Maura moves on, to the front door. He is a good detective, with a keen eye for detail and an active, inquisitive mind. He is the one detective on the force who has been consistently kind to her since her arrival, and she wishes briefly that she could find a way to help him get rid of his queasiness. She'd never found the correct way to bring it up, however, aside from scowling coldly when any of the officers made smart remarks in her presence.
The victim, a man in his mid-forties, is posed in the sitting position on the couch in the living room. He is bound with duct-tape, and his throat has been slashed almost through to the other side. This, it seems, is what made Frost vomit. Maura sighs, and puts down her bag. She had hoped, upon taking this post, that it would put among several like-minded people. She had hoped, foolishly, perhaps, that those who dealt with violence and murder on a day to day basis would share, if not her appreciation for the field, at least a strong enough constitution to endure it.
She hears voices outside, Frost's and one that she can't immediately place, and she leans closer to the body, measuring the length of the slash across the victim's throat. She is turned half away from the door, and only hears the three people enter the room. She does not look around. Almost all of the Detectives have had their rotation with her now, and they know that when she is focusing, she does not bother with unnecessary formalities.
So when Detective Rizzoli speaks, the doctor nearly drops the utensils she is holding.
"What do we have Korsak?"
It's definitely Detective Rizzoli. Maura doesn't look around, initially because she is too stunned to do so, and then because the moment for introductions has passed and it would be improper to turn and stare.
Korsak reads out the name of the man and his age, though Maura is too busy trying to regain her faculties to really hear him. She is aware of Frost, on her left, asking to leave, and then Jane's voice from the other side, like a lightning strike through haze.
"Yeah, Frost. Go ahead."
The CS tech standing next to her fidgets impatiently. She has never taken this long for a measurement before.
"10 centimeters," she says, her brain kicking back into life.
"Thank you, Dr. Isles."
She nods, hearing Korsak repeat her name to Jane. "Have you met Dr. Isles, Rizzoli? She's our new Chief M.E. Beats the hell out of Pike, I'll tell you that much."
Maura takes a breath and holds it. She decides in that instant, that if Jane doesn't remember meeting her at the funeral, then she will not remember it either, not even if it means soaking the hives she gets from lying each night. She will act as if nothing has happened. She will act as though she knows nothing of this woman's tragedy.
It is the kind of courtesy she would want extended to her, were this her first day back on the job after such pain and suffering.
Maura lets out her breath, and turns her head.
Jane Rizzoli is looking right back at her. "Yeah," she says with a half smile that reveals the suggestion of a dimple. "I remember Dr. Isles. Good to see you're still with us." She straightens, and Maura straightens too, her eyes still on Jane's face, even when the other woman looks away. "And saying someone is better than Pike is not a compliment, Korsak."
Korsak grunts.
Maura gestures to Jane's nose without thinking. "You've fractured your nose," she says.
Jane looks back at her. She nods. "Yeah," she says simply.
"It's not disfiguring."
This reveals the almost grin again. "Good to know," Jane says. "Can you pop it out for me?"
Maura hesitates. Yes, she can, but should she?
"It might hurt," she says, though she could kick herself right after.
Jane shrugs like the doctor has commented about the weather. "Okay," she says. "Thanks."
So Maura takes one calming breath, and snaps the fractured bone into place, and when Jane swears and clutches her nose, she forces herself to merely arch an eyebrow and advise on the application of ice.
Later, she will play the events over and over in her head, wondering each time what she could have done. Each time she will come to the same conclusion: It was her fault.
She was the first one to view the crime scene who also had the necessary prior knowledge needed to put the pieces together.
She had spent several minutes alone with the victim in the living room, which had given her ample time to fully process her surroundings. She hadn't done so.
If she had, she would have seen the evidence before Detective Rizzoli, and she would have had time to warn her.
But she hadn't seen the tea cup, and she hadn't seen the taser marks, and so she doesn't say anything as Jane circles the couch, eyes scanning everything.
"Missing wife," she says. "Posed. With a tea cup."
And Maura starts, looking up at Jane to see that the other woman is looking right back at her.
"Is he out?" she asks, looking over Maura's head at Detective Korsak. "Is the Surgeon out?"
She asks the question as though he will know the answer, and Maura is instantly furious. She can't help the words that tumble from her mouth, nor can she help the accusatory tone with which they are delivered.
"Oh my God," she says, turning to look at Korsak as well. "Korsak?"
Jane looks back at her for a second, and if she is surprised by Maura's outburst, she doesn't show it.
"No," Korsak says quickly. "It's a copycat, that's all."
"Still," Maura hears herself say. "You could have given her some sort of warning."
Jane steps up to the body. Blood, the violence of this crime, does not bother her, not even in the face of what must be her worst nightmare.
Murder, it seems, does nothing but fuel the detective's desire for justice. Maura watches as Jane steps up to the body and tilts the man's head to the side, too awed by her refusal to show fear to be irked by the disruption of her crime scene.
"Taser marks," Jane says.
And here is Maura's second failing. She will feel this moment for days after it has happened, the moment when Jane tilts her victim's head.
"Here," Jane is pointing them out to Korsak with her blue-gloved hand. "We didn't release that information to the press." She waits, but no one says anything, not even Maura, who has at last gained control of her tongue.
Jane's face has hardened to stone. She speaks the words that no one wants to say.
"Hoyt's trained an apprentice."
2.
One of the things the doctor likes the best about Boston is the running. The city is built for it, and by the time the spring starts to lengthen into fall, Maura has a routine morning and evening run. She likes the morning route the best, how it winds her down the hill and through the park before circling lazily back towards home.
She always stops in the park, about halfway through her run, in order to stretch. She picks the same bench every morning, running through the same groups of leg stretches, preparing for the final push back around and up Beacon Hill, and she always revels in the early morning quiet. She loves the feeling of potential that each morning brings, the idea that each day is entirely separate from the one that came before it, and she can dictate its trajectory in anyway she chooses.
So it's right, in a way, that on the morning everything changes, the change happens during this part of her run.
Maura looks up mid-calf stretch with the feeling that someone is watching her, and sees Detective Rizzoli standing feet from her, staring. She is wearing a grey t-shirt, the Boston PD department logo so worn it is almost invisible, and running shorts. Her hair is pulled back into a pony tail, and the stray wisps that have escaped the elastic are stuck to her forehead with sweat.
She stands and she stares at Maura, not saying anything, her shoulders rising and falling quickly.
Jane has been running, she realizes, just like Maura was doing before she stopped to stretch, and the sight of the doctor has made her stop.
Why?
Maura hesitates for a moment, and then offers a small smile. When Jane doesn't return it or move closer, she bends again and continues stretching. She expects Jane to keep running, to jog by her without acknowledgement, but there is no sound of shoes on the pavement, and the feeling of being watched does not go away.
Maura finishes stretching, and stands straight. Jane is still there, and when Maura turns, and starts to run again, she hears the other woman start to run behind her.
It should feel unsettling. At the very least, Maura should feel disconcerted. Every time she slows down, Jane slows down too, never pulling level with her.
But it doesn't.
They circle the park at an easy pace, and then head down Boylston, and when Maura picks up her speed experimentally, Jane does too, always keeping the same amount of distance between them. After a while, Maura finds the slap of Jane's sneakers on the concrete comforting. She falls into the rhythm that is most comfortable to her, forgetting to worry about the detective trailing behind her, and when she gets back to her front steps, she stops and climbs the first three before remembering her silent shadow.
She turns, ready to say something, assuming that Jane will stop now too, but she is mistaken. Jane continues on, glancing at her as she passes, her expression difficult to read. Maura watches her to the end of the street, until she turns the corner and disappears.
...
And so Maura stumbles onto this new routine by accident. She goes for her morning run as always, but now she lingers in the park for five minutes, stretching, until Jane Rizzoli shows up, and then they run the rest of her route together.
Always, Maura stops at her house, and always, Jane continues on, throwing the doctor a look that she has decided is somewhere between furtive and challenging. After these runs, Maura goes inside and makes coffee, replaying the detective's expression over in her head, and trying to figure out her motivation.
At work, they don't speak about their morning activities. Maura treats Jane as she would any other detective, and Jane treats her in the same sarcastic, stand offish way she treats Frost and Korsak. She is dealing with the re-emergence of Hoyt, has thrown herself so entirely into the case that twice, Frost has had to wake her at her desk and demand she go home. Dr. Isles can tell from the actions of those around them that they are worried for her health. Korsak stops by her desk each time he has need to pass it, asking in a would be casual way how Jane is. Would she like to go with them after work to the robber?
Jane accepts his offer once, and the next morning when she joins Maura on her run, her eyes are red-rimmed, and her breathing is more labored than usual. She doesn't accept Korsak's offers after that, and she silences her mother's incessant calls, though Maura can sometimes hear the buzzing that comes from the detective's suit pocket when they are discussing a case.
They keep running.
It doesn't matter if it is raining, or foggy; if they were both in the precinct until midnight the night before, or Cavanaugh ordered Jane not to show her face until the next Monday. Maura arrives in the park at the same time every morning, and Jane is less than a minute behind her, sometimes timing it so perfectly that as Maura finishes her stretches and stands to continue on, she can hear the sound of Jane approaching behind her, and she doesn't even have to look back.
So when Maura wakes up on a dismal Monday morning, to see buckets of rain pouring from the sky, she stares out the window and bites absently at the cuticle of her thumb, wondering what to do.
Today is a scheduled day off for both Jane and Maura. What if the detective has decided to sleep in? Maura pulls off her sleep shirt, and reaches for a sports bra, shaking her head. Jane never sleeps in, and she has never decided not to run, no matter the weather.
But as she is pulling her running shirt over her head, a clap of thunder makes her jump. She steps into her shoes and moves too look out the window by the front door. Little rivers are running down each side of the street outside her house, and the sound of the rain on the pavement is loud, even with the door shut tight.
"Are you going out in this, Jane?" Maura asks the air. She can't explain exactly why, but she knows that if she doesn't run today, and Jane does, something between them will end.
So she goes. She pulls on the lightest rain jacket she has, laces up her shoes, and steps out into the downpour.
It is miserable. She is instantly soaking wet, and her sneakers feel as though they gain a pound with every step. She almost turns back several times, and by the time she makes it to the park, she is almost positive that Jane will have stayed home.
Anyone outside in this weather has to be insane.
I must be insane.
Maura finishes her stretch, and looks up in the direction that Jane normally comes from.
And there she is, dressed in her normal running outfit, looking just as stunned to see Maura as Maura is to see her.
They stare at each other for a long moment, until another roll of thunder causes Jane to start and look up at the sky, blinking rapidly against the rain that falls on her face.
Maura doesn't realize that she has formulated a plan until she turns and starts running. She sprints off in their usual direction, faster than she ever has before, and she can hear the wet splash of Jane's shoes on the pavement behind her, keeping pace.
She pushes harder, straining, pulling away just slightly, hoping that the detective follows, that she doesn't assume that Maura is trying to end their ritual.
The rain is falling harder now, and colder too. It beats against Maura's skin like a million miniature nails, and by the time she turns onto her block, her arms and legs feel numb with cold. Her clothing is soaked through.
But behind her, she can still hear Jane, breathing hard, just keeping up. And so the rain could be nothing at all.
She stops running when she reaches the front steps of her house. Just stops dead on the sidewalk and turns in time to see Jane slow in confusion.
Maura puts out both hands. Stop.
Jane stops.
It is another four miles back to the detective's apartment. Maura knows that now that she is familiar with the city. And, because she is also more familiar with Jane herself, she knows that there is no way that the other woman runs only another four miles. Not when so many things are chasing her.
Maura won't have it. Not in this weather. She puts her hands out to stop Jane from running past her, and when her silent command works, she gestures at the door to her house.
"Come inside," she says, quickly and firmly, as though they are not only colleagues but close friends. As though they have been running together for more than a month and not just near each other.
Jane blinks at her, and raindrops fall from her lashes. She shivers visibly.
"Come inside, and warm up," Maura says, in the same firm tone. "Just come in and warm up."
She turns then, and ascends the five short steps to her front door, reaching under the mailbox for the hide-a-key as she goes.
By the time she has turned the lock and pushed the door inward, Jane is three steps behind her.
...
3.
"A little girl has his heart."
.
Jane stays in Maura's house for the entire morning, and much of the afternoon. Maura gives her a towel as she steps into the hall, and then a second a moment later, when it becomes clear that her mane of hair cannot be dried with just one.
And then, speaking as minimally and as easily as possible, she offers coffee, dry clothes ("a little short around the ankles, perhaps,") and, most boldly, a shower.
Jane accepts all of these things with barely any hesitation, even the shower. Maura shows her where the guest bedroom and bathroom are located, explains the way the independent shower heads work, and then walks away before Jane has a chance to close the door.
The shower runs for a full half an hour, and Jane appears in the living room trailed by a mist of shower steam, looking tired, and possibly content.
"Thanks," she says to a spot on the wall near Maura's shoulder.
"Not at all."
Maura had showered quickly and returned to the living room to seat herself at the small desk near the entry to the kitchen. She'd been looking over an autopsy report when Jane had come in. "Can I get you anything to eat?"
And that is how the first day went. Jane left at dusk, half turning in the doorway like she wanted to say something, but not quite managing.
Maura hadn't pushed her. "See you at work, Detective."
This had earned her a small smile. "See ya, Maura."
.
Now, two weeks later, at the close of the case, Hoyt again behind bars where he belongs, Jane sits at the end of Maura's couch in her own sweat pants, her hands wrapped tightly around one of Maura's mugs.
"I'm sorry?" Maura puts her own coffee down.
Jane swallows, but doesn't take her eyes off of the television. "A little girl has his heart," she repeats.
Maura stares at Jane's profile, trying to understand what has brought about this sudden confession. She folds her hands in her lap. "A little girl?" she asks.
Jane nods, still not looking at her. "She's seven. 'Zo was always small," a breath, "for his age."
Maura pulls one leg up onto the couch, thinking. "It's been long enough," she says quietly, "that there is very little chance of rejection at this point."
Jane turns her head sharply, but her expression is not angry. "How little?" she asks, as though this is what she's been wanting to discuss since that morning.
"Less than 2% of transplants fail after more than eight months," Maura says. "It's likely that at this point, there's not even any discomfort or shortness of breath."
Jane's hands around the mug are white to the fingernails. "Good," she says, looking back to the television.
Maura looks back at the screen as well. They are watching a movie that Jane has picked out. It is not her night to do so, but Maura insisted. She'd just been so glad to open the door and find the detective on the other side, stepping in with a little duck of her head, as though a shrug could mask the bandage on the side of her neck, or the deep dark bruise on her cheek.
Hoyt is back in prison, Maura had had to tell herself repeatedly. Jane is okay. The worst is over.
"When he was four, he found out what I did for a living." Again, Jane speaks out of nowhere. Maura does not jump, does not allow herself to show surprise or to do what she really desires, which is turn fully around to face Jane and ask, Why are you confiding in me? She just reaches for her coffee and takes another sip. She nods.
"He asked me if I ever shot and killed people. And I'd sworn to myself that I'd never lie, you know? So I told him that yes, sometimes Mama had to shoot bad people who were dangerous." Maura sees her frown, and perhaps it is at herself, because she says next, "He was too young for me to say that, I think. I don't think I should have told him right then."
Maura makes a noncommittal sound that makes Jane raise an eyebrow at her.
"Children understand much more than we want to admit to ourselves," she says softly. "Just the fact of his asking meant that he was ready for the answer you gave."
Jane looks into her mug, like her son might appear to her in the form of tea leaves. "He made me promise not to kill anyone unless I really, really had to," she says, her voice just a little bit heavier than usual. "Two reallys," she says after a moment. "We always used to say two so that it meant something."
Ah.
Here then, is the reason that Hoyt is back in prison, and not buried in a standard issued, pine box. This is the reason that Jane spared his life, when he is the person who did not spare her son.
Maura puts her coffee down, and then reaches out her hand, sliding it along the upholstery of her couch, the way she would when greeting a skittish cat.
Jane doesn't seem to notice. "He had a good heart," she says, "And I promised him." And she reaches out and grasps Maura's hand, hard.
"And now a little girl has it."
She isn't crying, but she looks like she is close enough to it, that anything Maura says that is not exactly the right thing will push her over the edge. It will push her over the edge and away and they will never be able to find one another again.
Maura squeezes Jane's hand. She reaches out her other hand and squeezes with two.
"Jane," she says quietly, and she waits until the dark head turns to her, deep chestnut eyes meeting her own. "Would you like to meet her? If you could?"
Jane swallows hard, but she nods her head up and down until Maura moves closer and cups her cheek, stilling her.
She will stay the night, Maura knows. She will collapse in the guest room bed, and Maura will sit in the armchair in the hall until her breathing is even and deep. It is another tradition they don't talk about.
It is another thing they both need.
"Could you look for her?" Jane asks. "Do you think they'd…" she trails off, forcing herself not to get ahead of herself. Not to hope.
In truth, Maura has already found her. Months ago, after she'd reviewed Connor's autopsy, though she'd done it for her own sanity, without any thought of Jane.
"Yes," she says simply.
Jane takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes. She says, "There should be a place where only the things you want to happen, happen."
"Yes," Maura nods. Jane leans into her hand.
"Yes."
