Author's Note: Sorry for the length of time between updates, but RL has been very insistent on having my attention the last several weeks.


Pain.

It pulled her out of unfeeling oblivion, clanging along her nerve endings like an alarm clock with no snooze button. It centered somewhere below her ribs, but radiated out to the tips of her fingers and toes, pulsing dully in her temples in time with her heartbeat.

What happened?

She couldn't remember, couldn't push past the pain to think, couldn't even summon the energy to open her eyes. And her mouth tasted like a horse had pissed in it. She tried to groan, to swallow against the taste and the dryness, and the pain was joined by the first jolt of fear when she realized that there was something in her mouth blocking her from swallowing. The jolt blossomed into terror when she tried to reach for her mouth and found her hands restrained.

Hoyt.

The single syllable ricocheted through her hazy consciousness like a stray bullet, the pain taking a sudden and distant second place to the need for escape. She jerked upward against her bonds, a wordless growl all that could escape around the obstruction in her mouth.

Getawaygetawaygetaway

Hands trying to push her back down, voices speaking, the words slipping off the panic like water rolling from an umbrella. The questions of how he had escaped from prison, how he had captured her, were buried beneath the terror as she found herself facing weeks of nightmares that she'd fought her way past now brought to hellish reality.

"Jane? My God, what's happening to her? Janie!"

Ma?

She hadn't thought that it was possible for her to be more frightened than she already was, but in that instant, her fear doubled, trebled, swelled impossibly, because the son of a bitch had her mother, had Angela, was going to use her to get to Jane. Fury joined the fear, flight shifting to fight, and she lunged against both the restraints and the hands, rattling the frame she was secured to, snarls ripping from her throat. She forced her eyes open, but they felt gritty, gluey, the lights of the room too bright to let her make out more than shadows looming over her. Hoyt and another damned apprentice? More than one?

Killyoukillyouallyoubastardsdontyoutouchher!

"Hold her and get me two cc's of Nembutal!"

"Damn it! She bit me!"

"Stop it! You're hurting her!"

"Jane! Jane, listen to me!" Maura's voice was low, urgent, but it cut through the din like a hot knife through butter. "Jane, it's not him. It's not Hoyt. You're in a hospital, sweetie, you're safe, and he's still rotting away in his cell. It's...not...Hoyt." The last words were measured, intense; Jane could hear any number of emotions in the doctor's voice, but fear was not among them. "Nod if you understand me."

She made herself nod, her mouth working around the obstruction as she screwed her eyes shut and pried them open a few times until her vision cleared, turning her head until her still-bleary vision found the doctor crouched beside the bed. Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair hung limp, and her makeup was a mess. Jane could still hear her mother crying.

"You shot yourself, Jane, do you remember?" Maura's voice broke on the words. "Bobby Marino? The attack at headquarters?"

She felt her brow furrowing as she tried to reach past the haze and pain, and the sound of her mother's sobs. Bobby? Bobby Marino was a narcotics detective. She'd worked with him. He -

Oh, shit.

The door to her memory crashed open, images flooding away the haze. Gunfire and broken glass and blood. Bobby shooting the last of his accomplices, then turning the gun on her as she stood between him and Maura and -

Her mother was crying.

No.

Frankie staggering in, face pale. Stretched out on one of the tables, face damp with sweat, whimpering as he tried to draw breath. Holding tight to her hand. Coughing up blood. Maura's face, strained and frightened as she fought to save his life.

"He needs a hospital. He needs surgery. Now!"

Her mother was crying.

Frankie.

No!

She'd shot herself to stop that bastard Marino, to end the standoff and get Frankie out of there, but it hadn't been enough. Frankie was dead, her little brother was dead, she hadn't saved him, and her mother was crying. She surged up again, the emotion ripping through her now sharper than terror, deeper than rage: a searing pain that utterly overwhelmed the physical discomfort of her injuries and a grief that seemed likely to tear her asunder.

"No!" She tried to scream it, but all that could escape around the tube was the strangled howl of a wounded animal. Not Frankie, not my little brother, it was supposed to be me, God, please, please, please make it me and not him! The hands were again trying to push her back onto the bed, but she barely felt them, jerking violently against the restraints on her wrists without noticing when something on her right gave out with a creaking protest of abused metal.

"Jesus Christ, she's breaking the fucking bed! Where's the goddamn Nembutal?"

"Jane! Oh, my God, Jane! Maura, what's happening?"

"Move! Move and let me in there now!" Arms around her, not restraining, just holding on, and Maura's voice in her ear. "Jane, Frankie's alive, he's fine. He's on the floor below this one and your father's with him. He had surgery, and he's going to be fine. He's alive, he's fine." Maura kept repeating the words, over and over, and slowly, their meaning sank in. Her struggles slowed, then ceased, and she turned her head to search Maura's face, seeing the truth behind the words. Maura wasn't lying, because Maura couldn't lie. The relief that flooded her was no less intense than the grief had been but her sob was choked off by the damn tube in her throat.

"You have an endotracheal tube in place," Maura responded to the question she could not utter. "If you will hold still, the doctors will take it out. Can you do that?"

She nodded again, and a gorilla on the opposite side of the bed from Maura promptly ripped out the tube, along with what felt like half a lung.

"Ooww! Fuck!" She glared at the gorilla, who glared right back, blood gleaming from a bite mark on the side of his hand. Did I do that?

"Language, Jane!" Her mother was beside Maura now, and if the doctor looked like hell, Angela Rizzoli looked like walking death.

"Gimme a break, Ma," she mumbled. "Got shot." The multiple adrenaline surges of the past few minutes were wearing off rapidly. The pain was reasserting itself, along with an exhaustion that made even talking feel like an insurmountable effort, but she had to try. "He's really okay?" She wasn't questioning Maura's honesty, not really. She just wanted to hear the words again, needed to hear them.

"He's fine," Maura assured her. "He's in better shape than you are. They'll probably let him come up to see you in a day or two. Do you want some ice chips?"

"Beer." She wasn't overly surprised when a spoon was held to her mouth instead of a cold bottle of Sam Adams, but she slurped up the ice anyway, and God, it tasted good!

"That's all for now," Maura told her after two more spoonfuls. "Intravenous fluids are maintaining your hydration, and too much in your stomach too soon could trigger reflux or regurgitation."

"Puke," Jane translated for her mother, then glowered at the restraints on her wrists. "Off."

A guy in scrubs beside the bed didn't look eager. "She still has the IV line and the urinary catheter in place," he told Maura and Angela, "and if she becomes combative again -"

"She won't," Maura said quickly, before Jane could tell the asshole that she would become combative if they didn't fucking untie her and stop talking about her like she wasn't there. "I'll stay with her and make sure she doesn't pull any lines out. You won't, will you?" This last was directed to Jane herself, and she nodded gratefully.

"Promise," she said. The doctor – or nurse, or whatever – didn't look any less doubtful, but he leaned down and removed the restraining straps first from one wrist, then the other – then emptied the contents of a syringe into the port on her IV.

"Nembutal," he informed her as he stepped away. "For the pain, and to help you sleep. And to spare the furniture," he added under his breath as he left, taking the broken rail of the bed with him.

"You need to sleep, baby," Angela said, taking up her hand. "You were hurt so bad, we didn't know if – if -" The tears were starting to flow again, and she'd never seen her mother look so old.

"Don't cry, Ma." She could feel the Nembutal starting to pull her down already, and while a part of her wanted to fight it, she couldn't honestly remember why, so she let her eyes drift shut, mumbling, "Don' cry. Frankie'll be all right. Maura said so."