A/N: We do have some mature (euphemistic) discussion in the first half of the chapter and some unpleasantness to get out on the table. I might give it more of a PG-13-ish rating? If you have any concerns, please feel free to PM me.

Chapter Nine

Maura had never realized how much time Detective Jane Rizzoli spent with her eyebrows furrowed in confusion or raised in surprise. In the last ten minutes, they had been doing a kind of frenetic dance between the two extremes while Maura mechanically recited everything that had happened after the morning she had made the decision to stay behind at the village while the rest of the medical team returned to their main camp.

"OK." Jane held up one hand and leveled a respectful look. "OK, I just…need to make sure I've got this. The rebels who attacked the village, that was the Rwandan death squad that's led by Mp…that guy. He was sick…"

"Shot," Maura interrupted. "Unrelated incident, a different raid the day before."

"Unrelated except that's why they were looking for a doctor, so they kidnapped you to treat him. They took you God knows where up into the hills, blindfolded, and when they finally let you see him, you realized he might not make it."

Even before Maura had understood why she had been taken to the rebel base, she sensed there were some larger forces at play. The gunmen had the air of men who answered to someone else and they were all too aware of what could happen if they couldn't answer satisfactorily. When the slightly built man in glasses and a makeshift camouflage fatigues had entered the meeting tent, she had instantly realized from the way the others responded that this was that man. He hadn't carried an ivory-handled .45 or worn ornate epaulets and medals like so many posturing dictators and warlords before him, but Maura recognized a calm, sinister violence in his smooth, unlined face

"So this second in command told you that if you can't save Mpiranya, he was going to gut you like a pig?"

"Wart hog, actually," Maura said. "They're common to the sub-Saharan region."

"OK…whatever, wart hog. And then just in case you didn't believe him, he stabbed you?" Jane's voice was cracking now, whether from shock or outrage Maura couldn't tell.

"No, stabbing would be a penetrating puncture," she demonstrated with one hand, "whereas a slice moves along the surface of the dermis in a more or less direct line."

"Did he hurt you with something sharp and pointy?" Jane ground out each word.

"Yes."

Jane gave a quick convulsive swallow. "How bad?"

Maura suspected from the way her friend's hands had twitched that it was all Jane could do not to punch something, even if it was only a throw pillow.

"There's nothing you can do about it." As soon as she uttered the words, Maura realized her mistake. It was against everything in Jane's nature to simply sit by while someone else hurt, much less a loved one, and for Maura to remind her that she was useless was nothing short of cruel.

Gingerly, Maura stood and raised the hem of her sweater, then peeled back the dressing to reveal the six-inch length of neat black stitches that ran down the left length of her abdomen from just below her ribs to the top of her hipbone. The skin was still red with irritation but beginning to close at last

"Wow." Jane opened and closed her mouth before repeating, "Wow. That's pretty badass."

A small hard laugh caught Maura in the throat. She hadn't thought of it that way until now and there was something unexpectedly funny about it. "Will that get me into the BPD Scar Club?"

"Lifetime membership. And you're sure he didn't hit any organs or anything?"

"No, the blade tip barely reached the subcutaneous layer. Flesh wound," she clarified. "They were just trying to scare me."

Jane laughed unsteadily, still staring wide-eyed at the stitches. "I don't know about you, but it's working. My God." Impulsively, she leapt up and pulled Maura into a hug that was just tight enough to reveal just how scared she was. Maura closed her eyes, remembering again how frightened she had been herself, when a sudden jolt of pain lanced through her and she bit back a very undignified yelp.

"Whoa, what's wrong, what's wrong?" Jane stepped back quickly, hands raised.

Maura took a deep breath, exhaling the first bright wave of pain and letting it roll through her and away. "It's all right, I'm just a little bruised up. I got hit with a rifle butt once or twice." More, actually, much more, but Jane was starting to look murderous and there was nothing that could be done about it at this point.

Jane's eyes narrowed as she took Maura by the shoulders and firmly turned her around. There was no point in resisting, so she pulled her sweater up again to expose the massive bruising that spread across her back and ribs. The resulting stream of profanity told Maura that it looked worse than it had the night before.

"That bad?"

"You know how you said you hated Lakers colors? Well…sorry." Jane coaxed her to let the sweater drop, then to sit back down.

Maura curled back into her end of the couch and pointed back over her shoulder at the television. "Oh, I forgot. Did you want to see how the game ended?"

"Nice try. Celtics 111, Lakers 102, Larry Bird MVP." Jane found the remote with one hand and turned off the set. The silence that fell seemed unnaturally loud. Jane was fidgeting with the remote, seeming to gather herself for something that did not want to be said. "So if you weren't raped, which I'm really happy about by the way, the, um, bodily fluids?"

Even now Maura's mind flinched slightly. She had alternated between repressing and replaying the moment, searching for some rational way to explain what had happened. That rationality had anchored her until now, but having to say it out loud might expose some crack in the logic. But this was Jane—the one person who would understand, and whom unaccountably she hadn't wanted to tell.

"In a wolf pack, you have an alpha and he leads until he's too weak; then the next strongest wolf takes his place. You were right, I did recognize Mpiranya and I know what he's been accused of—over a half million people died, and the rapes and torture as well. He's been terrorizing that region for nearly two decades and his men live in fear of him too. When he looked weak, the second in command had to make a show of force to keep them in line. He cut me as a sign to the men of what would happen to people who didn't respect Mpiranya's authority, and he also established himself as the strongest contender. Then he made it clear that they weren't to touch me yet either by…" Unexpectedly, her throat constricted. Maura swallowed and tried again, surprised that a simple biological process was suddenly impossible to articulate. "He…"

"He marked his territory," Jane said quietly. "On you."

Maura nodded, surprised that her eyes had started to sting. There's nothing to be ashamed of, she told herself, as she had a hundred times, but the emotional pain was raw and unexpected. There was no logical reason for it and that had scared her as much as anything that had happened. "It was a threat I suppose, to let me know what was going to happen, to frighten me into trying my hardest. I'm sure that if they hadn't needed me to operate on Mpiranya that they would've done much more than that from the start."

"Maura, I'm so sorry…I know it could've been worse, a lot worse, but Jesus, I…" Jane gave up trying to speak and moved across the distance between them to slide one arm around Maura's shoulders. "I'd give anything to be able to trade places with you."

Maura closed her eyes against the sudden welling of tears, fighting not to let them spill over against her will and be absorbed against Jane's shoulder. Don't break down, whatever you do, don't break down. That will only upset Jane even more. "You probably would've kicked his ass," Maura said when she trusted her voice again.

"No, I would've shot m'mouth off and gotten killed in the first two minutes. You're a lot smarter than that. You knew they needed you and you used that to stay alive. What happened when you operated?"

Maura had considered giving her usual speech about not being a surgeon and only working with the dead, but had decided against it under the circumstances. "I found three bullets and I did what I could, but he had lost a lot of blood. It wasn't easy of course," she said quietly. "I won't lie. It crossed my mind to refuse to treat him after everything he had done, but I would've had to break my oath."

"You know I would forgive you for that, right?"

"I wouldn't be able to forgive myself."

She remembered the dismay she had felt seeing the makeshift medical area, supplemented by what little of her own equipment they had thrown into the truck before setting fire to what was left of the village. There had been scalpels at least, and she had taken a very unprofessional pleasure in the pain that the raw rubbing alcohol had caused when she washed out the wounds. Her own side was burning, the trickling blood soaking through her jersey which had already seen better days. She had knotted the hem tightly around her waist as best she could to act as a bandage and keep her hands free. It had been hard enough to concentrate, and then she had heard the guards talking.

Maura sat up, pushing her hair back out of her face as she surreptitiously wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand. Jane hadn't moved and was watching her with dark, worried eyes. "Do you remember Ian?"

Jane nodded with a patient expression that seemed to say, How could you expect me to forget your international smuggling snuggle buddy?

"The guards spoke French to me, it's the common trade language, but I learned enough Rwanda-Rundi from Ian to be able to understand what they were saying to each other, and that's how I knew that it wouldn't matter if Mpiranya lived; they were planning to kill me anyway. Do you know what image came to me in that instant? It was of being here, in this house, with you and your mother and your brothers and our friends. All I could think about was walking in the door to have dinner like we'd planned, and I knew if I could see you again, then everything would be all right. It was like you were there with me in my head the whole time, telling me to stay alert and be smart. Jane, I wouldn't have made it without you."

"Forgive me, Dr. Isles, if I say that from a completely selfish perspective, thank God you can't get me out of your head."

"The feeling's mutual." She raised her glass in a mocking impromptu toast only to realize it was empty. Instantly, Jane scooped up the empty bottle and was back from the kitchen in moments, holding out a Cabernet Sauvignon in both hands for Maura to approve the selection.

"You know," Maura said carefully, "I don't think there are any guidelines for choosing a vintage for this kind of occasion."

Jane agreed that alcohol, of any variety, would be appropriate and insisted on wrestling with the corkscrew. Maura thought the cork broke somehow in the process and a sliver fell down into the bottle but decided it was the least of her problems tonight. She waited until Jane had filled both their glasses again before she said, "When I finished the procedure, I knew I didn't have long. Even if I didn't manage to escape and they shot me, at least it would be better than staying for the inevitable." She didn't have to say what would have meant.

Even knowing the outcome, Jane's voice was rough with apprehension. "What did you do?"

They had taken her shoes and her phone when they had put her in the open truck bed and blindfolded her. The phone she understood, but it took a few minutes, her brain frozen with fear, to understand that without shoes she couldn't escape, or at least that was what they would have thought of any other foreigner. They had no way of knowing how many articles she had read on barefoot running and the natural advantages of the strike pattern, or how many weeks and months she had spent training to build her foot muscles to run the next Massachusetts Marathon. Confident that she was cowed and helpless, the guards had stepped away to share a cigarette, and she had heard Jane's voice in her mind telling her to run. Run now.

"Barefoot," Jane exclaimed. The wine was utterly forgotten. "You out ran them? Barefoot?"

"Fortunately, none of them were Kenyan. What? Why are you laughing at me?"

Jane was covering her mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking. "It's either that or throw up!"

"The two functions are similar in many regards."

"You just can't help yourself, can you?" Jane sighed. "Does this explain why you've been going to work in flats, because you tore your feet up? Thank God, I thought there was something seriously wrong with you."

Her feet were in fact still in pain, and seeming to get worse as time passed instead of improving. She had been able to cut a winding path down from the hills, avoiding roads, until she reached a major highway and flagged down a farmer on his way over the border to Tanzania. He had stopped, possibly just for the novelty of a limping, barefoot white woman standing alone in the middle of the road.

"So congratulations." Maura smiled and found it was less difficult than before. "You were nearly correct—you should be a detective."

"Nearly?" Jane snorted. "I got 95% of it, thank you, and I have never been so happy to be so wrong about the other 5%. So then you got to an airport? What about your passport?"

"You should always keep a photocopy of the main information page on you at all times when you travel internationally." Sometimes Maura was amazed that Jane could function at all in society. "Fortunately, my airline also had service out of Dar Es Salaam so I changed my flight, traded my watch for some shoes and a new shirt, and came home the same day as planned. And here we are." With that she took another sip and realized she had nearly finished the glass already, so she carefully set it aside. Tomorrow morning would be hard enough as it was.

Jane blinked hard. "Well, you're alive, so, yeah. But this is you and this is me, OK, Maur? I'm not angry, I promise, but why didn't you tell anyone what happened? You didn't do anything wrong, you know that, right?"

And why hadn't she? When she contacted the team coordinator in Burundi to let them know her change in plans, why hadn't she told them everything? Why hadn't she gone to the nearest embassy or found a UN team? Why hadn't she thrown away the jersey instead of just wearing another shirt over it? Some part of her had utterly frozen, panicked at the thought of having to disrobe, to think about what happened much less talk about it. She had known one thing only, that she had to get back to this house and to the people she loved, and that if she could do that, then she could survive.

"I'm not sure." Maura shook her head at that, feeling an indefinable distress begin to rise up inside her again as she tried to make sense of her choices. "All I could think about was getting home and back to work. It was like I was on auto-pilot. I knew that if I could get back, then everything would be fine again and that was all I could think about." She felt something tightening inside, her mind starting to raise barriers to protect her from something that she couldn't even see yet but that was approaching, hard and fast. "And then when I landed, it was like life just started up again and it didn't seem worth…" Opening up? The chance that she would finally feel something and that would be so much worse than what she was already going through? "Worse things happen to people every day and they don't survive. I could have gotten this scar just as easily at work if I slipped with the cranial saw."

Jane was staring at her in a way that Maura knew meant she had just said something worthy of a cyborg. "Maura, I know you know this, but you've been through something extremely traumatic. Your mind isn't like a bone that you can put in a cast and let sit and it fixes itself. Yes, you were very lucky, but you don't have to actually get blown up by a bomb to get PTSD."

Maura felt unexpectedly stung, or perhaps emotions were simply unfamiliar after the sheer dead numbness of the last week. "I think I know the signs and symptoms of PTSD."

"And you also know that a doctor should always get a second opinion and not operate on herself. Just think about it—we tell each other everything, so when you need help most and you decide not to tell me, then that says something's really wrong. I would've gotten on a plane if you'd called. Of course," Jane said grudgingly, "that would mean getting a passport and I probably would've had to kill someone at Homeland to get it pushed through."

But would you have come? The thought came so silent and sly that Maura blinked, surprised at herself. She looked down at her hands, then at Jane's as they rested on her knees; the tight and twisted scar that Hoyt had left was shining in the overhead light. That encounter had changed Jane Rizzoli, leaving a scar inside even more pronounced than the ones on her hands. She abhorred weakness and victimization; she shied away from those who had been closest to her and kept them at a firm, if not always polite, arm's distance. Maura knew without asking that if she failed Jane and became that victim she despised, then Maura would lose everything she had come to cherish most—her work, her friends, the Rizzolis, and ultimately Jane herself.

But the truth was out now and there was nothing to be done but settle accounts and see what was left to collect. Maura steeled herself.

"You couldn't partner with Sgt. Korsak anymore after what happened with Hoyt and it's never been the same between the two of you. If I had told you what happened, then it would mean something changed between us too, and…" Do not cry, she thought fiercely, you have nothing to cry about. "I know we haven't talked as much about what my life was like before I moved to Boston, but it's not something that I ever want to go back to. I didn't have friends, I didn't have anywhere to go for holidays—I saw my family every few years, if that. My idea of a pet is a tortoise, for God's sake. If I told you and you looked at me the way you looked at Korsak…" Maura floundered to an inelegant halt.

Jane was still listening intently, actually allowing her to finish, which was a sure sign that she agreed—nothing would keep her from interrupting when she didn't.

"Yes," Jane said simply. "Things are going to be different from now on. For starters, you're going to stop telling yourself insane bullshit like that. You're not weak, Maura, and you're not a victim. You're the strongest person I know, and if managing to escape one of the most dangerous wanted fugitives in the entire effing world doesn't prove that then…then maybe you got hit on the head at some point and you just don't remember. Second, in case I forgot to mention it this week, I'm an idiot. Not working with Korsak again was my problem. I was the one who was embarrassed—it had nothing to do with him. Maura, I am never, ever going to push you away."

Maura knew that she should be feeling better for what her friend had said, but her mind was to numb to absorb the depth of what was being offered. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I hear everything you're saying, but I just can't stop thinking about what will happen now."

An energy began to rise in Jane's eyes, the kind of slightly manic way she got when there was a new case and a problem to solve. "OK, you have to process, you're a woman."

"So are you!"

Jane shook her head in an amused, long-suffering way that ordinarily would have made Maura roll her eyes in protest. "Not like that, I'm not. What are the five stages—disbelief, hatred, shock, blackmail, surrender?"

Maura closed her eyes. "Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is turning over in her grave right now."

"Do I know her?"

Maura shook her head in resignation. "Not everyone goes through the same stages in the same way. I just…don't know what I feel. It's not exactly something I ever thought would happen and that's how I cope with the world. I think about it and I make sense of it, but nothing makes sense."

"I know that's your mind works, but sometimes things just don't make sense." Jane had an apologetic but resolute note in her voice. "I just don't want you to wind up getting more hurt because some of this stuff got stuck inside. You know we can talk about anything. What can I do?" The quiet, growing desperation in Jane's voice nearly made Maura wince.

"There is one thing that's helping," she said. "Would you stay again tonight? I know it's inconvenient but the only time I can sleep is when I know someone else is here and you're the only one I trust. I can't seem to sleep in the bed just yet, which is completely illogical, but if I could just sleep through the whole night, it would…"

"I'm staying." Jane was smiling at her in the gentle, humoring way she had. "You think I wasn't planning on that already after the last two nights? I'm not going anywhere, Maur, whether you believe it or not. Now you know I love your weird French food and that sauce was amazing, but they used five tons of onions, so go brush your teeth."

"Those were shallots—they're a close relative of the garlic family."

"Is that supposed to make it better? Go, woman!"

As if her mind had suddenly been given permission to collapse, Maura stumbled through her bedtime routine, brushing with mechanical motions and changing into the first pair of pajamas her fumbling hand found in the drawer. By the time she shuffled back to the living room, pillow in hand, she barely noticed that Jane had tuned in C-SPAN with the volume set low for white noise. And if that wouldn't put her to sleep, Maura considered, nothing would.

Jane was trying to smile but couldn't help looking worried. "C'mere, lie down before you fall over." She had already set her cell alarm and kicked off her shoes, the unfortunate black half-boots that Maura had tried to talk her out of multiple times, then stretched out along the couch. "Only thing is we have to get up early in case Ma comes in for breakfast."

"Do you think she would interpret this as an indication that we're in a relationship?"

Jane's chuckle bordered on a groan. "Well, she sure as hell won't think it's because you got kidnapped by Rwandan war lords and have a bad case of Pavorti noctarelles. I've got enough problems without her starting in."

Maura cocked her head to one side as she thought about what she knew of Jane's mother. "I think Angela would be very accepting. And she did call me the daughter she never had," she added matter of factly. Jane's face flushed and she let out a strangled protest. "It would effectively double her probability of grandchildren, if we both did in vitro at the same time. Who would you pick for a donor?"

"Maura."

"I would choose Paul Sereno. Brilliant paleontologist, University of Chicago, very rugged. It's rare to get that kind of bone structure and intellect in the same chromosomes."

"My God, now I know why you never took naps as a kid—they could never make you shut up. Lie down before you face plant on the coffee table."

Conceding at last, Maura settled on the couch and slid under the blanket, mindful not to place any strain on the stitches. There was more than enough room for them both and she reached behind her, finding Jane's hand to lock their fingers together and bring one arm securely down across her body. The effort of having to hold so much within, keeping up a façade of normalcy, had sapped her to the bone. Now as she was folded into a place of unquestioning warmth, shelter and protection, her mind finally understood it no longer needed to shield itself and she could simply slip away, the exhaustion rising like a tide.

"I'm going to take care of everything. You know that, right?" Jane's words came to her quietly and without any hesitation or doubt. They were a promise and a vow that she was safe now and always would be.

Before she could say yes, Maura was asleep, and this time there were no dreams.


A/N: Not to break the mood, but if you haven't Googled Paul Sereno (particularly from the early 90s), and are so inclined, you really should.