Chapter 9- Farewell - And A New Beginning?

Rating: T to be safe.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Warning: Rizzles fluff alert!

Boston PD, elevator

With their suspect safely locked away in one of the PD's drunk tanks (he had kept insisting that he was the murderer of Debbie Paddington and therefore refused to go home), the Homicide detectives and the NCIS team had decided to call it a day. Right now, they were going down by elevator.

"What the hell?!" Jane exclaimed when they arrived at the ground floor and the elevator doors opened.

"Language Jane," Maura reminded her friend, but then she noticed the two patrol cops dragging a corpulent black-haired man through the hall. "I thought you locked our suspect in a drunk tank?"

Jane's brow furrowed: "Yeah, I thought so too... Let's go ask them."

The man who looked so similar to their suspect turned out to be a 'normal' citizen who had driven into a speed trap. Unlike Ziva a few days before, he hadn't been very cooperative, i.e. he'd first refused to hand over his driver's license and then thrown some really bad insults at the patrol cops, so they had decided to take him to the precinct.

"The guy's shitfaced drunk," one of the patrol cops explained. "We're gonna put him in a drunk tank so he can sleep it off."

Korsak nodded: "One of the tanks is already taken, but the other one should be free."

"Okay, thanks." The cops walked off, dragging the drunken man along, while the Homicide detectives and Team Gibbs made their way through the hall.

They were almost at the door when Gibbs suddenly stopped in his tracks. "What's wrong, boss?",Tony asked from behind. Then he heard it, too: "Where are those drunk tanks?"

"Basement," Jane replied. "Just where the shouting's comin' from."

Everyone who had a gun drew it, orders weren't necessary. The detectives and the NCIS team carefully moved downstairs, went around a corner and saw the origin of the shouting:

The two patrol cops where fighting hard to hold back the drunken man, who was yelling at the drunk tank their suspect was in. "He's tryin' to strangle the other guy through the bars!" one of the cops panted when he saw the cavalry approaching.

Inside the drunk tank

With the help of Ziva, Korsak, and Jane, the drunken man had eventually been pulled away, handcuffed, and dragged into the second drunk tank. It seemed like adrenaline had sobered him up a bit, but his enragement hadn't subsided.

I'll spare you the exact words he threw at everyone around, let's just say they were everything but G-rated and about half an hour later, the story of Debbie Paddington's death was told:

In college, her and Richard Winston- the drunken man- had been a couple. However, Debbie had dropped Richard for a young Marine and soon after that left college to join USMC herself. Richard had never quite gotten over it and wanted to kill the Marine, should he ever meet him.

Then one evening, Richard showed up at Debbie's door, saying he felt like talking about the old times. They took a walk to the harbor and Richard got to know that Debbie's boyfriend was currently serving in Afghanistan. So much for killing the Marine, but in this second, Richard said, he had decided to shoot Debbie (Though he didn't know why he had taken his gun with him if he hadn't planned to kill her from the beginning).

The walls of the drunk tanks were thin, so the suspect- Davy Miller- had heard everything being spoken in the tank next door. When Richard had eventually fallen asleep, the detectives and Team Gibbs had left for Davy's tank to hear the rest of the story:

Richard and Davy had attended highschool together. They looked so much alike that they were often mistaken for twins, and Richard took advantage of that: Whenever he was given detention or had to write a test he hadn't studied for, he made Davy go there in his place- sometimes by paying him, sometimes by threatening to beat him up if he didn't do it.

And that's exactly what happened years after their highschool time, when Richard shot his ex-girlfriend dead. He payed Davy for covering him, which worked pretty well until the James Bond cinema ticket in his jacket gave Richard an alibi for the time Debbie was killed and drunken Richard himself drove into a speed trap.

Homicide Squad Room

"Jealousy... One of the oldest reasons for crimes," Gibbs remarked. "What are you gonna do now?"

"Well, Richard's still sleeping it off. Davy's been taken home, promising to think about if he wanted to appear as a witness in Richard's lawsuit," Frost reported. Gibbs nodded: "Case solved." And to his team, "We're going back to D.C. tomorrow at 0700."

Tony made a face: "Seriously, boss? Tomorrow's Sunday- OUCH!"

"Really, Agent Gibbs, you ought to stop doing this. Slaps on the back of the head can cause severe brain damage," Maura pointed out, causing Tony to give a half smile: "Thanks Doc, but that won't help. This is Gibbs we're talking about."

As if taking the word 'Gibbs' for a cue, Cavannaugh stepped into the room. "I've heard the case was solved?"

"Yes sir." Korsak explained what had happened in the basement and the Lieutenant repeated Gibbs' words from earlier: "Case solved, indeed." He turned to the NCIS team, extending his hand. "Thank you very much for your help."

"That's our job," Gibbs replied, shrugging. They shook hands, then Gibbs shooed his team out of the room- except for Abby, who was going to spend the night on Jane's couch.

A cemetery in Washington D.C., the next afternoon

The sun was shining from a clear blue sky. Way too nice weather for goin' to a cemetery, Jane thought. But I just can't say no to Maura.

-Flashback-

The night before, Abby had asked if Jane and Maura wanted to come along to D.C. to visit Kate's grave. Jane hadn't been really happy about it - first, she thought Maura would only get sad from seeing the place where her sister was buried, and second, she hated going to cemeterys. "If Maura wants, I'm in, too," she'd eventually replied.

And Maura did want 'to bid Kate farewell', as she put it. Which is why Jane found herself in her doctor friend's car, on the way to D.C, at half past freakin' seven on a Sunday morning. God, I must really like her... Well, yeah, I do. As my best friend, that is. What people in police academy said 'bout me batting for the other team was just a rumor. But the more Jane kept telling herself that, the less she believed it.

-Present time-

"There we are," Abby declared, indicating the tombstone in front of her, and cleared her throat. "Hey Kate, it's me, Abby. How are you?... Fine? Glad to hear that. Guess who else is there?... No, Tony's got a date and Gibbs is probably in his basement working on his boat, but everyone else is standing next to me. McGee, Ziva - and two visitors from Boston." She stepped back to make room for Maura and Jane.

"Hi, uhm, Kate." God, I feel so stupid talkin' to a dead person! "Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston Homicide. Gibbs and his team helped us solving a case, and Abby found out somethin' about you and our M.E., that's the blonde standing next to me." Jane's heart skipped a beat when she realized that Maura was holding her hand. "Maur?" she whispered.

No reaction, at least none directed at her. "Abby ran a test on our DNA and-" Maura swallowed- "we match. We are twin sisters, to be exactly, but we never got to know each other because..." She turned around to Abby and quietly asked, "Did Kate know she was adopted?"

"As far as I know, she didn't," Abby whispered back.

Oh no. "...because we were adopted by two different families immediately after birth", Maura quickly finished her sentence. "Thus we grew up thousands of miles apart, you here in Washington D.C. and me in Los Angeles. Well... yes. I'll come visiting again."

Jane's home, Sunday evening

"Wanna watch a movie? Cavannaugh said it didn't matter if we're late tomorrow morning."

Maura looked up from her position on Jane's couch, her eyes red and puffy from crying nearly all the way back to Boston. "Okay. But nothing too sad," she muttered.

"What about this?" Jane held up a DVD of The Lion King.

"I've never heard of that movie, what is it about?"

"Well, there's a little lion, Simba... actually, it's a cartoon for kids. Totally un-scientific and pretty sad sometimes, now that I think about it. Maybe we should watch somethin' else."

Maura shook her head no. "I'd like to watch it. We can stop if it gets too sad."

"You sure? Okay." Jane inserted the DVD into its drive and sat down on the couch, carefully taking Maura into her arms.

The movie enrolled and since she'd been warned before, Maura held back her comments about male lions not teaching their cubs how to hunt in real life and so on. Instead, she remained still, enjoying the warmth of her best friend's embrace and gradually relaxing a little. And then the scene with Nala and Simba at the waterfall came on.

The first, "Caaan you feel the love tonight?" had Maura sighing quietly and snuggling closer to Jane. The second one had Jane hugging her friend even tighter. The end of the song didn't matter, Jane just kept singing: "Caaan you feel the love tonight? Hey, don't cry, I know I'm a terrible singer, but..."

Maura had somehow managed to turn around in their embrace and silence her friend with a kiss. "Yes," she simply whispered, before placing another kiss right on Jane's mouth.

The part of Jane's brain that hadn't turned to mush yet thought something along the lines of, Thanks Abby, then it shut off as well and the only sense still functioning properly was feeling.

When they came back to the real world, the movie was over. "Guess we have to watch it again sometime," Jane stated, just to say something while her body and brain where still recovering from the experience. Then she remembered something: "What did that 'yes' mean? That I really can't sing or...?"

Maura was smiling through her tears. "I was referring to what you were singing, not how."

"Is that the Maura Isles way of saying, 'I love you'?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because-" Jane started kissing Maura's tears away-, "I love you, too."

Abby's lab, NCIS, Monday morning

McGee froze in his tracks in the doorway of Abby's lab. "Uh, Abby? How many Caf-Pow's did you drink?"

"That's a victory dance, Timmy," Abby explained. "Jane texted me that Dr Isles and her watched The Lion King yesterday evening and finally admitted their love for each other."

"So it worked?

"Oh yes. Who d'you think we should set up next? Tony and Ziva?"

A/N: Whew, it's done ;) Thank you all very much for reading and reviewing this story :)

UPDATE 03/31/2013: If you haven't read it yet, there's now a sequel to this fic entitled, 'Four Years Later'.