A/N: Thank you for all your follows and reviews. I really, really appreciate it. Now, are you buckled in? Let's go for a ride.
"So… this Hermann guy - worked at SolCorp what? Three years?" Jane asked. The way her nostrils flared gave her the look.
The look, as Frankie had so termed it, was the combination of need-for-justice and killer's instinct that gave his sister's brow a downward arch and her eyes an extra shade of black. "Yeah. Guess he was pretty high up in sales. When he found out that the company was downsizing and he was bein' cut, the place's old security detail said he lost it," he answered. "Had to escort him out and call the cops."
She swiveled in her chair in response, lost in thought. The bullpen was warm as February's chill raged outside - Jane found it ironic that the sun was out, and bright. "I'm not saying I get what he did, because I don't. But solar's growing, contending with the traditional power companies. Why did they start to fail? If I were him, I'd be askin' these questions."
Korsak, in his usual brown suit and tie, pointed to her in approval. "You think he dug something up on the victim?"
Frankie moved to the computer behind his sister's to sign on, and Jane nodded. "I mean, how else do you explain that going off on some guy that wasn't even his immediate supervisor? We're talkin' distant coworker at best. Definitely higher up," she explained.
"So you're thinkin' he found something he didn't like about our guy and that's why the company eventually tanked," said Frankie, searching for confirmation as he typed away. "Company wasn't very big yet. Doubt they had the resources to launch a full scale investigation when it capsized."
"And if Hermann took whatever Perez did personal, there's a good chance he's the guy we're lookin' for - the guy with Perez's wife."
"Why isn't Ma taking me?" Elena asked Maura simply - transparent the way only a child could be. Her tone held no judgment, no real disappointment, but the bluntness of it hurt her mother's heart for a moment. They walked hand in hand through the parking lot of the sporting goods store on an early Saturday afternoon, the early-October sun of just a few days ago giving way to the mid-October gloom they walked through. They wore matching coats to ward off the cold, and matching jeans, dark against their skin.
Maura took comfort in this, and in the fact that Elena meant nothing by what she asked. "Because your Mamma got called into work today," said with a smile that started off forced, but became genuine when she saw it reflected back at her in Rizzoli miniature. "So, we are here to pick out the kind of glove you like."
"But it's not Christmas yet," Elena insisted with a far off hope. Would she really be getting her promised glove today? The thought made her bounce with excitement. By the time they reached the storefront, she bobbed up to the door and snatched it open for her mother. Maura saw Jane in the pull of the handle and the hand beckoning her inside, and when the smell of leather and glove polish hit her nose, she swore her pericardium had shrunk.
"No it isn't. Whatever glove you like, we're going to take pictures and send it to your mother, so that she can send them to Richard," Dr. Rizzoli explained. Her voice rose over the quiet radio play and speech of other shoppers.
"Who's Richard?" Elena was just in earshot, having bolted beyond cleats and scorebooks toward the rows and rows of baseball gloves against a wall.
Maura waited to jog up to her daughter before answering. "Richard is your Mamma's glove connection. His work is to make custom baseball gloves at a company."
The little girl waved her fingers over so many of them, reverently as though they would disintegrate with the slightest carelessness. Her jacket swished when she moved her arms, providing the timid soundtrack to this little venture. Timid was the last adjective Maura thought that she would ever use to describe her child, but if there wasn't a first time for everything.
She had experienced love at first sight before, with Jane - though she'd had no idea then. Never had she seen it, been on the outside looking in for such a wondrous, supernatural moment, until now. Elena Giuliana Rizzoli, all of 81 months and a few days, found her match. Well, her type, Maura supposed she should amend, as the girl had stone-cold halted in front of the wall of infielder's gloves. Like Jane, Elena regained all her boldness when she knew what she wanted. She grabbed Maura's hand, and pointed to a Wilson that hung right at the woman's eye-level.
"You want to try on this one, my love?" she asked, looking down into dark brown eyes. On the one hand, she felt elated, proud to be part of this milestone. On the other, she felt woefully incomplete. Jane should be here; this is her moment.
Elena's swift nod that made her ponytail swish to and fro convinced her to forge ahead. She grabbed the black and brown glove, still stiff, and placed it on her daughter's left hand. "Now, do you prefer catching with your left? Or your right?" she asked, realizing that she had assumed glove position based on Elena's preferred writing hand. Part of the reason she had accrued the Giuliana Ballgame nickname was her ambidextrous t-ball playing: Jane had declared her a sports prodigy on the spot. Thus, since she hit on both sides, and fielded with both sides, Maura guessed the choice should be hers.
"The left," Elena whispered, still in awe, and flexed the leather on her hand. Her enamored eyes said it all.
"Good," said Maura, hearing Jane in her head. You're my Natural, Giuliana Ballgame. She wondered for a moment if she should say it, but then decided that it would only sound right coming from her wife. Instead, she pulled out her phone and took enough pictures of the glove to make Jane dizzy.
"I got the emergency coffee text. What's goin' on, Girl?" Nina Holiday, in a cute black vest and lilac short-sleeve button up, shuffled into Maura's office with two coffees and a pastry bag in tow.
"Oh thank God," the Medical Examiner exhaled. She motioned for the coffee without getting up from her chair, as politely as her upbringing allowed, and moaned when she took a hearty gulp. "That's good."
Nina sat across from her, her tight curls swishing as she turned to make sure no one was walking in. "Did you not sleep?"
Rain pelted on the tiny window above Maura's desk. "I got called out to a body last night around midnight. Turns out, Jane was also working the case. Thankfully Angela could come into the main house while Elena slept, but she had to work early this morning for deliveries, so I had to run home and drop Elena off at school. And after it taking forever with the rain and the forensics, I've been on my feet all morning - this is the first I'm getting to sit," she let the story out in a rush, "and I have the autopsy in… a half hour," she finished with a glance at the clock.
"Well damn, sounds like a long night," Nina offered, "and not in a good way."
"I wish it was in a good way," Maura replied, clearly picking up on the double entendre. She grabbed her half of the croissant that Nina had brought for the both of them, taking a bite while twirling her hair around her other forefinger.
Nina had been there as a friend and a shoulder when she asked Jane to move out. Obviously, the woman was invested in the both of them, but she offered honest opinions and no judgments. Maura respected her for this. "Well, not saying you were wrong, but you did kick out your one consistent source of orgasm 'bout eight months ago."
"Don't remind me," sighed Maura. "I'm not saying I was wrong either, but not having sex with her is very difficult."
"I can imagine," Nina replied with a chuckle. "Can't we just keep that part and ditch the rest of the relationship?"
Maura laughed openly, something she did almost exclusively with Nina now. "I'd be a much happier camper, that's for sure."
"I'm sure she would be, too," the intel expert commented. "Some mornings that mood is just downright foul."
"That has nothing to do with whether we're sleeping together or not, trust me," Maura raised an eyebrow as she brought her cup to her lips with both hands. It should have sounded acrid, but mostly it was playful.
Nina seized the moment. "So, how are you? You know, with everything going on. Last time I checked in you were getting a plumber," they both paused to shiver at that error in judgment, "how'd that go?"
"Terribly. I called the worst plumber in Boston, apparently. He quoted me hundreds of dollars and at least a week's worth of my bathroom being out of commission. And of course, when Jane came over on Friday to drop off Elena, she went up there and found the problem immediately. Not only had he tried to wrestle nearly 500 dollars out of me, he completely misdiagnosed the issue. This gave my wife plenty of ammunition to gloat."
"Of course," said Nina, rolling her eyes, "how bad was the ribbing? Did she rub it in the whole time she was fixing it?"
"Well, she didn't fix it. And she didn't really rub it in, either. It was sort of a tense moment," explained Maura.
Nina nodded solemnly. "So, you didn't answer my question," she prodded. "How are you?"
"It's hard. It's hard not to ask her to come over when it's cold and late, or when Elena wants to practice for little league, or when," she paused, trying not to cry, but failing when her voice broke and one rebellious tear dropped to her napkin, "when I need the plumbing looked at. It's hard because she's trying so hard."
"With therapy and everything?" Nina asked gently.
"Yes, with her therapist, and with Elena. God, she loves that baby so much. But, you know? I'm… I'm moving towards being okay. I think that night was a step backwards, considering we almost kissed, but not everything can be forward progress," answered Maura with a sharp inhale and a firm nod, as though to rally herself to the side of optimism.
"She loves you so much too, Maura," Nina said it, simply because she felt it needed to be. She worked with Jane up on the third floor; she knew exactly how the detective suffered. Then she realized what she had heard. "Wait a minute! You almost kissed?"
Instantly Maura turned red. She rose up from her chair, looked frantically at her watch, and set her coffee down. "I've really got to get started on that autopsy. Lunch tomorrow?" she threw the question backwards while she burst through to the autopsy suite.
"Oh, trust me, we'll be talkin' 'bout this, Dr. Rizzoli!" Nina shouted back as she got up to clear her trash from Maura's desk.
"Maura, Kent still hasn't given me the results on - Why're you sweating?" Jane stood in front of the slab with her victim on it, while Maura was elbow deep in the abdominal cavity. "It's freezin' out, and it's freezin' in here."
The medical examiner contemplated not answering truthfully, but decided that that was more trouble than it was worth, especially when Jane didn't bother to hide her New England accent. The accent itself was slight, but the intimacy implied by Jane's unguarded speech made things more… complicated for her body. "Nina came by with coffee this morning and we started talking about sex."
Jane sputtered. "I… what…?"
"It's been awhile," Maura clarified. "As you well know." She took out the stomach to study what was inside.
"Yeah but I'm not sweating buckets over here."
"I've been thinking about it, is all. Sweat is a natural response. You should back away unless you want to smell the decedent's stomach contents."
"Jesus," Jane cursed, doing as was suggested to her. "How you can go from… you know, to undigested food in the same breath will always be a mystery to me." her face crinkled in disgust when she caught the strong odor anyway. She turned and ran a hand through her wild black hair, trying to regulate her breath.
"How it is so hard for you to just say the word 'sex' will always be a mystery to me," her wife countered. "Looks like the last meal was a cheap steak. Depending on diet and genetics, red meat can stay in the stomach undigested for a long while. This could prove tricky."
"Blegh. And it's because I was raised Catholic, Maura, you know this," said the detective, unable to help the grin from spreading when she caught Maura rolling her eyes.
"Well, you certainly had no problem doing it, despite your inability to say it."
Jane blushed. "Yeah well. We're a complicated folk."
"Indeed. I need to finish up a few other things here, and then I have a meeting. I thought I was going to start this autopsy around ten, but as soon as Nina left, I got caught up with some of the criminalists," Maura explained. It was nearly 2PM, just a half hour before Elena let out of school. "Could you ask your brother to pick up Elena Giuliana? I know he said today was his day off and I hate to bother him, but I just can't leave."
It sounded innocent enough, especially if the person listening had not been privy to the current Rizzoli family situation. Jane looked wounded, as if a bullet had clipped her heart. "I can do it, Maura. I've got nothing goin' till I get those forensics anyway."
Maura hesitated. "I… I don't know how comfortable I feel-"
"You let me do it last week!" Jane cut her off, countering her point before she could even finish it.
"That is because a parent needed to do the observation and I had that consultation with the Assistant Medical Examiners. You know I had no choice," Maura spat back, instantly defensive.
"Well I think the fact that I brought Elena back home in one fucking piece should be grounds for giving me another shot. I swear to Christ-" Jane began, but closed her eyes and inhaled loudly in attempt to summon all her therapist's advice for these moments. "You know what? I'm sorry. And, I get why you don't want to trust me. But you know there's no one that's gonna fight as hard to protect that kid as I am. You know deep down that she's safe with me."
"I don't know that she is, Jane, that's the problem," Maura said, all the fight leaving her. "But go. Pick up our daughter. I should have some results for you by the end of the day."