The October morning is grey and chilly, and the squat apartment buildings flash in and out of sight like an old fashioned movie.
There is no one else in the entire subway car except for a mother and her young son down at the other end.
She's not sure what time it is, but the sun is not up yet, and the mother is dozing against the subway window, her son held firmly between her knees, standing up. Unlike his mother, the little boy is wide awake. He strains against his mother's knees reaching out for a quarter on the floor of the subway that slides further and further away with each jostle of the train.
She watches him struggle, reaching out as far as his short little arm will let him, but his mother frowns without opening her eyes, reaching her own hand out to pull him back, locking him more securely between her knees.
She is too far away from the duo to hear what the mother says to her son, but it makes his round little face go grumpy and resigned. He slumps down between his mother's knees, his head, resting on her thigh in a perfect imitation of dejection.
She chuckles, and with a tiny curl of her index finger, she lifts the quarter into the air. At once the little boy's head shoots up. He glances at his mother, and from her seat, she can see him consciously make the decision not to wake her. His head swivels back to the quarter, and with a little jerk of her finger, she makes it bounce a little. like a ball.
His eyes meet hers suddenly, and she grins at him, the cheshire cat. He gawks, and she makes the quarter zoom into her outstretched hand.
And he is a child. A little human boy, under five years old, who still believes in magic, or she would not reveal herself. He looks deep into her eyes, and for a second she feels whole again. she feels the connection that comes with bringing someone else joy.
She smiles at him, holds out her hand palm up, raising her eyebrows to show that he should do the same. He does at once, a look of eager anticipation on his face.
out of the window behind him, the top of a ferris wheel. The wooden curve of a roller coaster. The end of the line. She can either get off here, or ride it back to the other end.
Again.
The little boy makes an impatient noise, and jerks her thoughts back inside the car. She grins and makes the quarter loop twice, before settling gently in his little hand. The boy bounces in excitement, his chubby fingers closing over the shiny circle protectively. He looks back up at her, eyes round and wide and reverent. She smiles again, standing as the subway comes to an end. She waves at him over her shoulder, and he waves back as she slips out the doors onto the platform before his mother can do more than stir sleepily.
The air outside the subway is cold. She knows the seasons. She understands that she will need to find a coat. An actual place to stay. Someplace warm. She'd stayed at a women's shelter outside of Baltimore. The half healed scar running down her chin into her shirt, served both as admission ticket and protective blanket. She got new clothes, a good pair of boots, several nights of uninterrupted sleep. And no one asked her questions. They tsked and called her poor dear. Her silence was taken as fear. Perhaps an abusive boyfriend or husband.
She read what she could of their thoughts.
She let them believe.
The boardwalk is empty, which makes her relax a bit. It must still be very early. The sky is still grey like slate, but lightening all the time.
Her boots make a long hollow sound on the wood underneath her feet. It's just another place in a long list of places she's been but she can't shake the feeling that being here brings her closer to her doctor. She scans the little shops, still covered in their chain grates, and then looks the other way, out to the ocean.
Even in October, even in the industrial glare and backdropped by such outrageous commercialism, it is beautiful, rushing forward and then falling back. Even and measured.
She sighs. She balls her hands up. She pulls her sweatshirt closer around her, and she thinks of Maura.
...
Maura.
The doctor opens her eyes, but does not move. Her name is still ringing in her ears, like someone has whispered it into her ears.
She looks around her bedroom, but no one is there. It is just her. Like always.
Six months.
It has been six months since all traces of the race of super humans called Invitcum was wiped away. Six months since the doctor found out that she is not only a failed Invictu, but that she shares a strong and strange connection with the only surviving specimen.
Shared. She shared a connection.
Six months since she fell in love with her Invictu. one hundred and 184 days since Jane sacrificed herself to give the doctor, Barry Frost and Vince Korsak a shot at a normal life. As if any of their lives could be normal without her.
Dr. Isles shakes her head, trying not to wallow in self pity. She sits up and reaches automatically for the light switch on the wall near her head.
She flicks the light switch on, and then off, and on again, and when she sits very still and silent, she can hear a car engine rumble into life down on the street. She smiles despite herself, listening as Barry Frost guns the engine of his police car once before screeching off down the block. She still thinks he'd requested New York City because he knew that's where she was going.
Though she still cannot completely forgive him for his part in Jane's self sacrifice, she is comforted by this little routine they seem to have fallen into. He comes by every morning at the ends of his rounds, to check on her, and as soon as he sees her bedroom light come on, he heads off.
At first it had made her uncomfortable, as she was sure he was acting on some dying wish of Jane's, but he hadn't stopped, and now...well she hates to admit it to herself, but it's a little like Jane is looking after her too...through him.
The doctor tries her hardest to push this thought when it comes. It is irrational, and she doesn't have the time or the space in her mind to deal with irrational things.
With Dr. Faulkner and the Director dead, there was nothing stopping either Frost or Dr. Isles from going back to their previous assignments. In fact, Tufts had offered the doctor Ian's old job.
She'd declined.
She'd picked up and moved to New York City. She bought a handsome brownstone on the upper west side, and gotten a job as the head of the trauma center at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital on 57th street.
On the days when she is trying to deceive herself, she is almost able to convince herself that she is better suited for New York, and that her medical prowess and cool head are better suited for an ER in the city. That this is why she moved. Why she could not return to Boston.
On days when she does not have the energy for pretense, she knows that she is in the city because it is close to Jane's family, and there is something settling about that, even if they never knew the woman she knew. On days when she cannot pretend, she knows that she is scanning every face that comes through her emergency room.
She is looking for Jane.
The doctor's alarm comes on, jerking her back to the present. She slaps at the snooze, and focuses on trying to recall her dream. She'd been...on a train...or in a subway? Dr. Isles closes her eyes, trying to remember the rest, but the images are hazy, like half of a memory, and all that comes back is a shiny silver coin, a quarter maybe, suspended in mid air, and the top of a ferris wheel...but where? She rubs at her eyes. London? There's a ferris wheel in London, but this one hadn't looked...
The doctor shakes her head, pushing the covers back, stretching her feet over the edge of her bed. Something small and hard falls from her sheets onto the bed. Dr. Isles bends down to pick it up, and her heart speeds up a little, though she could not put her finger on why, exactly.
She is holding a shiny silver quarter.
...
It is windy.
She watches the shops start to open up.
When the man selling water and hot pretzels isn't looking, she lifts one of each out of his cart, walking away quickly.
The pretzel is hot and the water is wet, and she eats them both without complaint.
She rolls her shoulders, and puts her hood up.
She got to the city yesterday. She should not have come, should not have followed the invisible pull that drags her towards the doctor like a magnet. She should run in the opposite direction. She should hitch a ride to the other end of the country.
But she looks out at the ocean, stretching away from the beach like a great green blue blanket.
And she finds she cannot go anywhere.
Her heart beat is all for one thing. It tied her to life through months of pain and suffering. Through hospitals and confusion and nausea and pain, pain, pain.
There had been so much pain.
She puts up her hood against the wind. She listens to the waves.
...
The doctor cannot get warm. She leaves her jacket on underneath her lab coat and nods to the security guard at the door as she swipes her card through the reader.
"Mills," she says, her voice clipped and professional.
"Doctor," she's not sure he knows her first name. Or her last name for that matter. She's is definitely sure she doesn't care. She does not want to get to know anyone.
The residents are all at the front desk, talking amongst themselves when she walks up, and when the young man who is facing her glances up and sees her walking towards them, he nudges the girl next to him and mutters something.
The muttering, whatever it is, spreads like wildfire though the little group and as she nears them, she is just able to make out what they are saying before the warning dies.
ice queen...ice queens is coming...whoo, cold in here.
It would almost hurt if it didn't make her feel so god damn mad. She's not sure if her anger is directed at the residents, these children, for presuming they know anything about her, or if it is directed at a more vague type of indignity, in that no matter the city or town or hospital, no one seems to be creative enough to branch out.
"Ridiculous," she says now, loud enough that they can hear her. And it is more than a little satisfying that they all look terrified, regardless of what they might say behind her back.
"Sorry?" Says a mousy looking little girl on the end. Girl. The doctor is aware that she can't be too much older than this woman, but right now, with her big terrified doe eyes and her long brown hair, she doesn't look any older than fifteen.
"I said, it's ridiculous," Dr. Isles says, turning so she can address them all, "that I can see by the board that at least four bays are occupied, and yet you have all found time to sit and chat about your weekends and your feelings." Her voice is cold and mocking. She barely recognizes it.
Six months.
"Oh...I-I-I'm sorry, Dr. Isles," the girl stutters, and the doctor thinks she really should learn their names, if only to make it more efficient when she yells. "Bay two and three are all set, just waiting on ins. information, and bay-um-bay- um seven...they, like, want to speak to an attending...and that's, like, you."
Dr. Isles rolls her eyes. "They- um - like - they - um?" She mimics now, and a boy on the end sniggers. "Is that how you talk to your patients? No wonder they want to speak to an attending," She turns away, mostly because she does not want to see the way they are about to trade looks.
"Double check the vacated rooms, and make sure that two and three have signed all the necessary forms. No more debacles like last weekend," she says without looking over her shoulder, and she can hear them scurry away. They fear her. Good; they should.
She takes a deep steadying breath before pulling the curtain back on bay seven. She fixes her face into what she hopes is a pleasant, professional smile.
"Hello there, my name is Dr. Isles, I'm the head trauma surgeon here. What can I do for you today?"
A woman turns to her, and when she moves, the doctor can see that she's holding tight to the hand of a little boy. He can't be older than four. He stares up at her with wide brown eyes.
"Dr. Isles, thank you for coming to see him. This is my son James. He was having trouble breathing..."
Indeed, James' breath does seem to be coming a little fast, but when his mother lifts him up to the examination table, the doctor can see that it is nothing to be worried about.
"James has asthma?" She asks, affixing her stethoscope into place.
The mother nods. "I took him to Coney Island this morning. I promised him we could walk along the beach for his birthday. And then I dropped him at his preschool. But when I got off the train there were all these messages to come back...James couldn't breathe, his little lips were blue..." Dr. Isles tunes the woman out and listen's to the little boys heart. It beats steady in his chest. There is minimal rasping, but even as she listens, it's fading.
"...and by the time I got there, the ambulance had taken him here...and I didn't trust those children who saw to him when we first-"
"James, did they give you anything in the ambulance?" Dr. Isles does not even realize that she's cut his mother off.
"Yes," he says clearly. "I puffed on some things for ev er," he swings his legs. "Can I go home now?"
The doctor smiles distractedly. "In a moment...unzip your jacket for me please."
He does as he's told, revealing a bright orange t-shirt underneath. Maura glances at it, and then finds she cannot look away.
She's looking at a ferris wheel.
She's looking at the ferris wheel from her dream.
"...It's because that god damn daycare lady is always smoking. She knows that this boy cannot be around-"
"Where is this?" Dr. Isles is not any more aware of her social faux pa this time around than last. And she spins the little boy on the table to face his mother. "This ferris wheel? Where is it?"
The mother frowns, first at the doctor and then at her son.
"Cone Island," the little boy says quickly, grinning. "My favorite place in the oon na verse. I love tha beach."
The beach.
The doctor whole body feels numb. "How do you get there? Is that near here?" She does not care if she sounds crazy, and judging by the way the mother looks at her, she must.
"Um...the orange line, usually," says the mother carefully. "Dr. Isles? My son?"
But the doctor is already turning away. "He is fine. Water...no exertion for the next 24. He's fine. Get him a pump to carry on him...I have to go." She is already out of the bay, pulling off her white jacket. The two interns at the desk look up at her curiously. They have never seen her leave in the middle of the day. Not in the months that they've known her.
Six months.
"I'm leaving!" She says, unnecessarily.
"Oh-okay..." says one intern, a man with blue blocker glasses. "When will you be-"
"I don't know. I don't know." She is breathless. She is almost to the front of the ER when she hears someone call her name.
"Dr. Island! Dr. Izzles!" She spins and it is the little boy...James.
She doesn't know what makes her stop. He catches up to her, holding out his hand. "Can take this...for making me breathe better? It's magic anyways. promise." He holds out his hand, and Dr. Isles feels the floor spin underneath her.
He's holding out a shiny silver quarter.
...
She's here.
The brunette doesn't move. She closes her eyes and she tries not to cry at the way her body seems to relax. Like she's been pulled and pulled and finally the vice that's holding her has begun to loosen. She doesn't turn her head, just stays on her bench.
Her doctor is here. Of course she is here. It was only a matter of time.
She looks down at her hands, scarred and half useless. She runs one long finger over the scar on her neck. Thinking of the ones that mirror it.
What could that woman want with her now. Not a human. Not a hero.
Not anything.
A tear slips out from under dark eyelashes, instantly cold in the wind. She should get up and she should move. She should not be seen.
She can feel her doctor getting closer the way one reels in a fish on a line. And what could she give that woman now, besides disappointment and heartache. A thief and a beggar and so horribly, horribly ugly.
She should run. But she doesn't. She stays on the bench, and she waits.
...
The doctor rides the subway. She passes the man selling water and hot pretzels.
Her heels click hard against the boardwalk, and she stops, breathing heavily, looking out at the ocean.
What had Jane said, before dropping her to safety out of a window. Be strong.
What was the last image that she pushed? A beach. two women. hand in hand. The doctor moves to the railing that separates the boardwalk from the sand...she looks up towards the wooden roller coaster. the strip of beach is empty.
"Jane," she says quietly. and for the first time in 184 days, she reaches out. "Jane? were you here?"
She feels foolish and hopeful and sick and settled at the same time. "...Are you here?" She can barely summon the willpower to hope for it. "Where are you?"
She turns her head, and looks down the beach.
There, sitting on a bench, not facing her: one narrow, slanted frame. Long, dark, windblown hair.
"JANE!"
She's running. And the heels she has on are not conducive to sprinting up a beach, and so she kicks them off.
And the jacket she's wearing whips in the wind behind her like a parachute, slowing her down, and so that has to go too. She's running and yelling and praying that she doesn't wake up. That this isn't just one more dream that's going to end with her in her bed, pillow wet and alone, sobbing out to no one.
All those nights. more than one hundred of them. crying and hoping. giving up hope. trying to move on. failing.
feeling empty. feeling nothing at all. being called ice queen, and doctor roboto, and heartless bitch, when the real truth was that her heart was beating inside someone else. Someone who didn't even have the decency to come directly back to her.
And then the bench is ten feet away from her. And the woman turns, and stands.
And it's Jane in the eyes and the hair and the height. Jane in the way the arms wrap around her and pull her close.
Jane in the way that she is finally breathing. Finally home.
And Maura pulls back from the embrace. She looks into two dark beautiful eyes that she thought she'd never see again, wet and sad and happy and scared.
Maura pulls back, and slaps Jane hard across the face.
You guys think that I would write a character death? I thought ya'll knew me...*shakes head*
anyway, if you're confused that's okay. the next chapter will have a lot of your questions answered. INCLUDING YOURS GUEST ABOUT HOW JANE KNEW ABOUT THE SEX IF SHE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TV WAS. that gets answered explicitly...so if you're still reading...just read one more chap. lol.
Love you guys. even in your rage.
happy reading
tc