Author's Note- Truly a miracle. Two chapters in a week. In a day no less! Don't you feel lucky ;) I had to break it up somewhere, it was just too long. :P
Disclaimer- Don't own the show. No profit had. Blah, blah, blah- the usual technical jargon.
Chapter Twenty-One-
Jane didn't dare speak after Frost. She felt like they were in a precarious bubble, one that would pop at the slightest provocation. Instead, she spared a single smile for her partner and pinned Maura with her most cocky, challenging grin. She was a cop, dammit, and that meant she stared the bad guys right in the eyes without flinching. Especially to save a friend.
Taken aback, Maura slowly looked between the two of them, the agony of indecision clear in her eyes.
Then just at Jane.
She seemed torn. Between them and her father, between right and wrong. Between fear and something like resignation- it wasn't clear. But it seemed to consume everything she was and replace it with this hollowness that was heart-breaking to even look upon.
Taking a chance, because of that look, Jane made another attempt to get through to the doctor. "Please, Maura? Won't you trust me?" She slowly unfolded from her spot on the floor, standing with her hands held out in a way that was as nonthreatening as she knew how to be.
Maura took a half of a step back and her back hit the wall. Her whole body was trembling like a leaf.
"You love your father." Jane acknowledged and shook her head, her only concession to her inner 'what the f". "I get that." Sort of. "But can you really stand there and say nothing, knowing that someone else could get hurt? Like that man last night? A creep, one who should go to jail, but not someone who deserved to die. You don't deserve to have that weight on your shoulders. We-" She gestured at herself and the two men in the room, "-may be cops, but if we don't have the right information going ahead with our investigation, a lot more people are gonna get hurt. People like you. Like your dad, your mother, even Vianne and the girls that she works with. The ones you said who were like you."
The woman before her closed her eyes, making more tears fall down her cheeks in a great rush, as though fleeing the violent emotions running through the doctor.
"If your father's not the killer... who is?" When she still didn't get an answer, Jane got a little frustrated, but managed to keep her voice calm and quiet. "What are you so afraid of? What's going on that has you so terrified to talk to us? We're the police. We help people."
"Not all of you." Maura turned away. She brought her arms up to cross in front of her body like some kind of protection, dashing her hand up at her tears before folding it back tightly, but she didn't completely turn her back again.
Jane waited, barely daring to breathe.
Finally, a whisper left the woman's lips. "He's being blackmailed. My f-father."
"Blackmailed?"
Maura didn't look up at them. "S-someone got information on him. Damaging stuff- from a long time ago. So long, it didn't even matter anymore, but still... If it got out... if my mother knew..." An entirely new shudder ran through her.
Jane found it disquieting.
Frost spoke. "What was it?"
"It's not important what it was." Maura barked, piercing him with a glare so fierce and intense, he quailed slightly before it. "All that matters is that you understand. This. Would. Ruin. Him. My mother- she would never understand. Our image... her image- it means everything to her. It would destroy them, destroy everything. It would break my family."
"Iz it not breaking them already?" Vianne asked quietly from the corner, where she was leaning against a wall and had been gazing out the window as though she wasn't paying attention. "As it iz destroying you?" Her look was all intense sadness. All understanding. "I know of many women who enjoy zis life. They set the rules, they get to chose. It suits them and zey have no desire to be 'saved'. It has suited me for quite a long time. I sense though, that you are not one of them. Each time I have seen you, you look a little less... well, just less. Smaller. Frailer. And I not known how to help you. I will say this though. This life is killing you. Slowly, but surely."
Impressed at her guts, her ability to put it all so plainly, Jane nevertheless took a step back from the french Madame and the doctor, in case Maura exploded.
Instead though, Maura just seemed to crumple. She looked away again, and held herself tighter. "As long as I come, as long as they're happy- as long as I show up and just do what I'm told, we're safe."
"'Safe' has never sounded like more relative term." Korsak murmured, scrubbing at his face and setting his puffy eyebrows on end.
"So," Jane summarized, "You mean as long as you keep having sex with whoever your father wants money from-"
"I mean exactly what I said." Maura cut her off. "You don't- You don't know a-anything about me. About him. About... You don't know what will happen. If he-" She stopped and swallowed, clearing her throat. She seemed to be having trouble breathing.
"We'll protect you." Frost said, with far more authority and conviction than his status and experience probably warranted.
Still, Jane was grateful that in this, he seemed sure.
"No. You don't understand. You need to stop. Jane." Maura's voice grew softer, more feverish as she stepped forward, finally reconnecting the two of them and crushing Jane's hands in her own. "He'll kill you. He won't just punish us. He'll kill- all of you."
Now Jane was getting confused. "Your father?"
"No- the man. The- blackmailer." She whispered the last word like she was afraid of being overheard. "You don't know what he's capable of. What he'll do. If he finds out that I so much as spoke to you- if he finds out who you are- who you all are? Who you're working with-" She gestured at Vianne and then at them. "Cops? In his business, or worse, in his way?" She stopped to look them all over and each one of them felt the weight with which she delivered the next words. "You'll die."
"It's our job to be in harm's way, Maura." Jane waved that away.
"No! I mean it, Jane!"
"We can protect ourselves." Korsak said. "We can protect you."
Again, Maura stopped, seeming so utterly frustrated that she was rendered momentarily inarticulate. Eventually, she turned to Vianne. "Please, Madame, stop them. Ils vont mourir. Ils ne savent pas qui ils sont jusqu'à contre- il va les tuer."
The older woman frowned at Maura, her brows drawing inward. "Me?" She looked at the doctor with some pity. "Je ne peux pas."
"You work for him! You know that he'll do!" Maura shouted desperately.
The room went still. No one even seemed to be breathing except for the sharp intake and outtake of Maura's panicked breaths in the hotel room's stale air.
Suddenly, it all clicked. "Mauvais." Jane finally broke the silence. Of course. He was the same person. The killer and the kingpin, the one who set young girls up to die and killed others, just because of whatever connection they had to Maura Isles. So, that meant that Maura... "You- You know who Mauvais is, don't you?" Before Maura could even open her mouth, Jane had caught her upper arms, shaking her a little. "I knew it! Who? Who is it?"
Maura was shaking her head emphatically, trying to pry herself away.
"You know. Maura! Give me a name!"
"No!" Maura shouted, giving up on getting loose and instead grasping her arms right back in turn, using her nails to drive home her point. Her voice became a wail. "No! I know what he'll do, I know what he's capable of and I won't do that. I'm not going to send you running straight into that."
"Maura-" Jane growled.
"I won't let him hurt you, Jane!" The doctor growled back, tearing away from her grip at last and turning her back as harsh sobs pounded from her chest. She put a hand on her chest as though they physically hurt.
Or maybe like the stress from this night was shattering what little control she had left of that breaking.
Jane wasn't going to stand for being turned away from again. She wasn't going to let Maura shut her out, not when so much hung in the balance. Not when it was Mauvais that had Maura under his thumb. She grabbed Maura's hand as she retreated and didn't let go. ""Let us help you, Maura. Let us help your family get out of this mess. Let me save you." She held tighter.
Even when Maura turned on her and pried at her fingers to try and get her off. "Jane!" Maura was more than frustrated now. Her body vibrated with emotion: anger, fear, desperation- all in a seething mass visible through the hazel of her eyes.
It was beyond anything that Jane had ever seen before.
"He's dangerous." She hissed, grabbed Jane's hair, and held as though to drive in her emphasis. "He's a monster!"
Jane wasn't about to be intimidated. "I've face monsters before."
"Not like this." Maura said bitterly, giving up her grip on Jane's hair and touching her cheeks instead. Tenderly. She seemed to hesitate for a moment, then took a breath and plowed on. "When my father- when he- It wasn't what he wanted. It wasn't what he ever would have wanted, but... I was all he had. Don't you see?" Maura grabbed a hold of Jane's shoulders now.
She felt the weight of years in that single hold. Like she was the only thing keeping Maura on her feet after so long of trying to hold herself together.
"He made some bad investments, my father, lost... so much we were on the verge of losing everything. All of my mother's wealth from her parents, his company, our home- all of it. So when his silent partner offered to cover him, he couldn't say no. No one else was going to give him the money on good faith. No one else was going to help him. And all his partner wanted..."
Captivated, and not in the good sense but more in the morbid fascination sense, Jane couldn't move. Not even if she wanted to.
So many emotions moved across Maura's face it was breathtaking... and heart-breaking. "All he wanted- was me." Maura finished. "I was fifteen. Old enough to understand what losing the company would mean for my father. If we gave him what he wanted, if my father gave him one night with me- it would fix everything."
Jane couldn't breathe. No matter what she did, there no longer seemed to be enough air in this room. She couldn't think, couldn't feel anything, but the sudden white-hot rage that burned up from her insides and screamed it's agony up into her ears louder than a lion's call.
"He sold you."