A/N: I know I said this is a one-shot, but I just really couldn't help myself. x)
I hope this will be the last chapter, unless, you know, a bazillion people review and motivate me to write more. :D
Once again, I own nothing – and please review my beautiful people!
xxxxxx
Saturnine – Part II
After a nice, warm, lengthy bath, and feeding her pet tortoise Bass, Maura decides to hit the sack. The day has been a long and emotional one and she can't wait to go to sleep and temporarily clear her mind off everything. Of course, she regretfully thinks to herself, there's no doubt on her mind that she'll have dreams. Dreams about her friend, dreams about their past and the moments they spent together, dreams about the day she was killed, and dreams about that day. The day that felt like it had one-hundred hours instead of just twenty-four. If she isn't mentally disturbed while she's conscious and living and breathing, she's disturbed in her dreams too. She knows she'll wake up to remember everything she dreamed of.
Arms sore for reasons she knows not about and body begging her to crawl into bed already, Maura slips into bed, feeling clean and fresh from her peaceful bath, and closes her eyes to try and fall asleep. However, the task proves to be of no avail for the time being, and she soon finds herself lying there, tired as she was and unable to fall asleep. She feels frustrated – so much that tears of frustration begin to fall from her eyes because of her inability to fall asleep.
Her mind, though reeling with hundreds of thousands of thoughts that would drive any normal person to the highest point of insanity, begins to drift back to the events earlier that day. She closes her eyes and she can see her friend's tombstone and the letters engraved into it that join together to form coherent words in her mind. She knows it by heart and she can't erase it from her memory. The words that are engraved into the tombstone flash across her mind and she mentally repeats them to herself.
The last part of it reads: "You will be dearly missed," and now this is the part that she endlessly repeats over and over to herself. Jane, you will be dearly missed; Jane, you will be dearly missed; Jane, you will be dearly missed…. I miss you so much, Jane! She wishes that by calling upon a person's name, that person will show up again; but she knows it's impossible – if her best friend has been dead for three months, unless, of course, her friend had somehow secretly come back from the dead and kept it hidden from her, she wouldn't come back now. The more the insomniac-resembling doctor thinks about, the more she swears she can suddenly see Jane Rizzoli standing a few feet away from her in her bedroom.
She squints and continues to look on, trying to get past her seemingly blurry vision. "Jane?" she painstakingly says aloud, wondering if this is for real. "Jane, is that you?"
From the shadows, a deep husky voice, which Maura can detect from miles away, replies, "No, it's Rod Serling. Of course it's me, Maura. What, you can't even recognize your best friend's own voice now?"
The sarcasm makes the tired doctor smile. It really is Jane. She pushes away the fact that she's tired and gets up from her bed to greet her friend. She doesn't ask her how she's even standing in her bedroom or how she got in or anything like that. Instead she hugs her hard and she feels her nose tickling, which is a sign of tears that are to come. They threateningly cling on to her eyelashes, ready to fall, but miraculously don't – not for the moment anyway. "Jane!" she says sentimentally. "Oh, Jane, I've missed you so much!"
"I miss you too, Maura," Jane laughs and they pull away from each other. "We have a lot of catching up to do, don't we? How long has it been, Maur? Three months?"
"Yeah," Maura giggles through her response feeling nervous. She wants to pinch herself to see if this is truly real but forgets to do so. "Three months." She takes another good look at her friend and remarks, "Wow, Jane, you look great!" For a dead person, she wants to add, but can't bring herself to do so. In an instant, the thought flees from her mind and she's back to concentrating on the presence of her deceased friend. At least, she thought she was dead.
"This is how I always look, Maura," Jane answers in her typical matter-of-factly kind of way. "Anyway, come with me. Let's just… walk around and chill out for a while."
Maura can't say no, especially after she hasn't seen her friend in what has felt like an eternity, and before she can even wholly comprehend what's happening before her – although she feels she never truly will – they're suddenly walking along a very green, very lively, very lonely forest. Jane is still by her side and Maura can't believe her luck. When she comes to think about it merely slightly, she's never really been that unlucky, except for three months ago.
They're still walking along the forest, which Maura has to admit, is really nice. She isn't too crazy about the outdoors and such, but she could see herself residing in a place like this. Hell, if she could ask for a house to be built in the center of that forest, she would – and have Jane live right next to her.
"You know, Maura," Jane says, breaking the deafening silence between them, "I never got to say good-bye properly. You know… on that day."
"It's okay, Jane," Maura answers, telling herself that it truly is when she herself defies it simultaneously, "you didn't know what was going to happen. It's not like you're a psychic or something."
"Yeah, but still…" Jane says and trails off for a few moments as if lost in her train of thought. "You never really know what you've got until it's gone, you know? I should really have appreciated my friends and family members a lot more than I ever did. The worst thing is to leave suddenly and unexpectedly and know you'll never have the chance to say a proper good-bye to any of them. It really sucks."
Maura purses her lips and reflects on what she's said. "Well… I guess you're right. A proper good-bye couldn't have hurt anyone. It would have been better. But I guess it doesn't matter now, right, Jane? I mean – you're here and all."
Jane sighs sadly. Maura's really out of it, it seems. She doesn't seem to catch on to her sigh and downcast face – and if she does, then she's really good at hiding it. They continue to walk with another silence forming between them and Maura begins to feel like she's on cloud nine. She feels happy again, just being able to share another moment with her friend whose life was so abruptly taken from her that she couldn't even say good-bye to anyone before she died. As they continue to walk, they near a small river, but an annoyingly blinding light begins to shine through and hits Maura directly in the eyes – enough so that she has to shield them.
Jane speaks, her turn to now break the silence. "Well, Maura, I have to say, I really liked seeing you again. I feel kind of complete now."
Maura is still shielding her eyes and trying to look at Jane at the same time, but her face begins to blur and soon starts to fade away, although she can still hear her. "Jane? What do you mean by that? Are you leaving or something?"
"I was never technically here, Maur," Jane says, and it's evident – at least to her, it is – that her voice begins to adhere to some kind of sadness. "But anyway, I'm just glad I got to see you again. And you should feel flattered. I haven't seen my mom, or my dad or my brothers. Or anyone else, really. Just you."
The light is becoming even more blinding and now she can barely see her friend. What the hell was happening? These things don't just happen. "Jane?" she begins to say before she is interrupted.
"Maura, I know you miss me. I miss you too. But I have to go now. And so do you. You have a life to live. You have dead bodies to dissect. You have a turtle to feed and care for. You have people to meet. And you have to move on. That doesn't mean you'll forget me or that I'll ever forget you – it just means that you're going to finally put the memory of me to rest and live life and be happy like I want you to be." She smiles but Maura doesn't catch it because she's shielding her eyes to the point where she can barely see her and because Jane's fading anyway. "Go dissect a dead body in my honor or something."
Maura can suddenly feel herself slowly and gently being dragged out of her restful sleep. Restful sleep. The words sound nice when they're strung together. She tries to tell Jane to wait and not leave, and finds herself unintelligently mumbling the words in her sleep. She cracks her eyes open and has to shield them because of the light from the sun's rays peeking in through her window's curtains. When her eyes fully adjust to the light, the realization that she was only dreaming hits her. When she looks at the clock on her night table, she realizes it's early in the morning.
She's still in her bed in her bedroom; and she knows this when she looks around. She's not in the forest anymore and Jane isn't by her side. She knows that her tombstone is still at the cemetery and that she's still buried under there. She was only dreaming.
Instead of burying her face in her pillow and crying about how real that dream felt and feeling depressed that Jane wasn't there anymore and would never be, she smiles to herself. Jane had come to see her one last time, even if it was in her dreams. She came to say a proper good-bye because she couldn't before. She came to reassure her that she was fine and Maura now knows it. She came because she wanted to let her know that she has her full permission to move on and let her rest in peace. And she came because she wanted nothing more than to see the Queen of the Dead happier than ever before.
Maura can live with that.
The smile never leaves her face and at night, she lights up a candle and sets in next to a bottle of beer in Jane Rizzoli's honor.
A/N: Question of out curiosity for everyone: Who do you guys like better? Jane or Maura? Why? I personally like Maura better because she's sweet, cute, funny and girly. Don't get me wrong, I like Jane and her sarcasm, but I like Maura better :)
So anyway, review, people, and many thanks and cookies to those who already did! YOU ARE LOVED. :D