Sorry for being late, but there was no chance to stay long enough awake to fire up my laptop yesterday…work sucks sometimes…
I also have to move "Cuts Like A Knife" into season one…
Mistakes are on me ;)
See Author's Note (Chapter one)
Jane's condition was the same as the whole night and morning. Not better but also not worse.
Maura's POV
Frankie had woken up for five minutes half an hour before Angela came into Jane's room. It wouldn't be correct to say she was happy but she was better now, how much better as you could be with one child out of the most danger and one child still in a life-threatening condition.
"Have you slept at all, honey?" she asked me.
"Have you slept?" I just asked back and this conversation was over without another word. She knew as well herself that I wouldn't fall back asleep until Jane was better or my body forced me to.
"But you should eat, you don't need to have appetite but if you don't eat you will be at the end of your tether rather quickly," she added matter-of-factly a minute later and I knew she was right. If I wanted to be here for Jane I had to keep myself as much as adequately supplied as possible.
"Has there anything changed?" She asked. I shook my head, looking at her and her state of devastation hit me all at once. The warm-hearted, lovingly, caring, always positive woman was gone and a worn out, pale and distraught stranger with dead eyes looked at me.
Suddenly I felt guilty. I sat there and felt sorry for myself, for my incapacity to help Jane, for the possibility to lose her and here was her mother who had carried Jane right beneath her heart. Had spent amounts of nights worrying about a sick baby, toddler, child, teenager and now once more standing in a hospital fearing about two of her three children, injured in the line of duty.
Adding to all of it there was Tommy, expected to be released from prison before everything went down yesterday, never making it home because he had gotten into a fight. Like his parents. Jane had told me how Frankie had come to her, fearing there might be something wrong with their parents.
Witnessing it on my own after the Boston Marathon, they were welcoming like ever, nice and caring towards us but they barely spoke to each other. Sometimes a couple have their times, Jane had said, but thinking about it and looking at the shadow of my mother-at-heart I knew there was something more.
She slumped down on the abandoned plastic chair on the other side of the bed and I wetted the washcloth again and handed it over to her, nodding inviting. There comes a time when there are no more tears to spill and we both had already reached this stadium, at least for now. Her face looked like she already had lost the last bit of hope but the words she whispered, half of them were mumbled and I didn't understand them, appeared to me more of the state of denial.
Jane should eat more on a regular basis and that it would be good for her to listen to me much more about her chosen food. To work lesser overtime and getting more sleep at night.
My mother cared a lot about Jane and not only because she had helped us to get closer to each other, because she liked her really much. Maybe she loved her even. I had never seen my mother act around someone like she did with Jane and even my father just adopted her right away.
The week in France was like the childhood I never had. We did everything together as a family. We shared every meal, not in the dining room like always. No, we ate on the terrace, without a 'to-perfection' laid table. We had a barbeque, an absolutely non-imaginable. My father got all excited about Jane's explanation how to do a real good barbeque the right way. My mother drank beer from a bottle and Jane and I slept one night in a tent behind the guesthouse. The four of us even played board games every night after the second day.
I couldn't stop to be amazed how she just whirled through my parent's life, never accepting a no for an answer and just did what she liked to do and pulled everyone with her. I found myself asking if I had been more like her, if then my childhood could have been different, warmer, but maybe than everything would be different, maybe we even hadn't ever met.
My mother squeezed my hand once and got up from her chair. She grabbed Angela's shoulders and whispered something to her ear. She told me they would go for a coffee and had asked Angela for permission to visit Frankie. She hadn't ever met Frankie before and I was once more overwhelmed with the appearance of my mother's sense of family, suddenly.
I don't know for how long my mother was gone as Dr. Slucky appeared with Jane's latest blood tests. He sat down in the chair where my mother was seated through the morning and he explained the results to me like I was a five-year-old. Didn't he get I was a doctor too? And his continuous 'we' was hardly to endure.
I started to wipe her face once more and left a lingering kiss on her forehead. I sat down and my hand instantly found its place on Jane's thigh. "She still doesn't response to the antibiotic," I whispered defeated to my mother who had appeared in the threshold.
"Oh Maura," she rubbed with both hands over my shoulders. "I wish I could ease the burden on you."
"You do already enough with being here for me, for Jane."
I laughed without humor. "I am at the point I would consign my soul to the devil if she only would get better."
"We were once there too," my mother whispered. "As we got you I was so afraid of being a worse mother and when you were eight month old you ran a really high fever. We sat beside your crib for three days and nights and I found myself praying to everyone I didn't even believe in. For, don't letting you die because of my mistake. Because of I didn't notice that you were sick before it was nearly too late."
I saw her swallowing visible. "You know your father was always more sentimental towards you." A genuine and warm smile graced her face.
"You were so tiny, just a day old as you arrived and you looked so lost in this huge crib. Your father cradled you the whole night through in his arms and felt asleep on his chair in the library with an original edition of the Grimm Brothers on his lap and you against his chest."
"He let you rarely sleep in your crib until the day you got so terrible sick. He would most nights carry you around the house until you felt asleep and then he brought you into our bed."
A single tear rolled over her cheek. "Then he had to leave for a week and I was alone for the first time and I didn't realise it. You cried so much until you felt asleep exhausted. I thought you missed him and I was so wrong. The night before he came back your little face glowed with heat and I called our doctor and your father rushed back home."
She wiped her face. "Hope is the last thing to die, but something died in both of us in those nights. I blamed myself for you being sick, for being the worse mother I never wanted to be and I truly thought that if I wouldn't be around you and let other people, better people than me, raise you it would be better for you."
I laid my head against the collarbone of my mother.
"After I met with your father leaving from my installation we lay in bed and talked the whole night. He confessed that after you got better he dissociated himself from you because he couldn't stand to lose you. He told me that he hates himself for reacting like that. He said he saw his only chance to survive was to estrange himself from you and so he got attached to his job."
She kissed the top of my skull. "We both know we lost you that day and we know the pain we caused you is irreversible but we got another chance, because of Jane. She gives you everything we never did and I would stand every day for the rest of my life against the storm she becomes when it comes to you, if it means to be a part of your life only for a few hours. I love you, dear. I loved you since the moment I held you for the first time."
If there were tears left to shed I would have cried a river. For the first time in my life I had an answer that I had at least craved the last twenty years for. It wouldn't make my pain melt into thin air but it was something I could work out. Maybe it would never leave me until my last breath but being with Jane had erased the loneliness and most of my insecurities. Adding the growing relationship with my parents there was only one thing missing. Jane, overcoming her injury.
There was a light knock and a middle aged blond woman introduced herself, Jane's nurse for the day. She had already gathered all information about Jane's condition at the nurse station and had asked me if I felt well enough for a short briefing.
"Maura darling, why don't you have a shower and take some minutes just for yourself. I am going to help with Jane in the meantime."
I was about to protest but I knew she was right, like everyone. I needed to eat and to shower and I needed time to just breath for some minutes, despite the fact that I would preferably crawl underneath Jane's skin and stay there for the rest of my life.
"If it makes you feel better you can leave the door ajar. So you still will be within hearing."
I grabbed my bag and walked into the bathroom, closing the door. I trusted my mother to inform me immediately if there were any changes.
For the first time I saw myself in the mirror and if I was shocked as I realised how Angela had looked what I spotted there wasn't any better. My skin was paler than ever, my hair drab and dead, same as my eyes. If I didn't know that was me looking back, I wouldn't have recognized myself.
It wasn't that I cared for my visual appearance anymore but I pointed out my emotional state.
"This is what you look like when you are going to lay on your own table, Dr. Isles," I whispered to myself.
"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory." My mother had said. Memories, they are everywhere. Most of them are good, but they hurt nonetheless.
Hot water was running down my skin. Despite the fact that this day could have become easily one of the darkest in the history of Boston, the end of it was one bubble of love and trust.
It had been another proof for us, a proof of trust. Wanting to save people from harm, it was on me to decide to do the save thing or the right thing.
The save thing would have been forwarding the responsibility to the governor, my first intention. To shoulder the liability for nearly half a million humans seems too heavy for just Jane and me.
The right thing was to trust Jane, to trust her competence and her 'gut-feelings' and our capabilities to work hand in hand. Even as I trust her blindly it was a monumentally decision to make. If we screwed up or were wrong with the smallest thing it could be the doom of thousands of innocent people.
It was Jane who convinced me to do the right thing. Not because she explained it to me, because she showed me, because she was confident and brave and strong and stubborn as always. She wasn't afraid of being rude to me, her brother or to anyone else, she even wasn't afraid to pick a fight with the governor.
I know I shouldn't be proud of her for behaving like that, but I am. I was never prouder of her. This is Jane. For the right thing to do she would risk anything she has to offer, she would stand up against anyone, even against me and that's exactly why I love her so much.
A shiver ran down my spine as she lifted her hands to show them Rod Garvey, the same hands that are caressing my hips now.
It was a hell of a day, performing autopsies with a box cutter on a camping table was nothing I had ever dreamed I would be doing, but after solving the case Jane made up for everything.
Even if I knew she had only agreed to the marathon for my benefit she was the one who proposed to finish the run.
It was already dark as we passed the last mile. We turned left, Heartbreak Hill. She looked over to me with a mischievous grin on her face.
"You had your orgasm already?"
I laughed about her remark, me comparing the endorphin release while running to a sexual one.
"Yeah," I grinned back, arriving on the top of the hill we started to sprint, racing each other. Jane was a step faster than me. Angela and Frank waiting for us, holding a crime-scene-tape as our finish line.
Running into a cheering family, waiting with warm words and lovely hugs is an experience I have Jane to thank for. As we hug, we were both laughing and she whispered into my ear.
"Well I am glad, I don't think I'll move ever again when we get home."
We decided for a shower and against a bath, afraid to drift off to sleep laying in the hot water. Jane kissed my neck softly.
"You know, I didn't not tell my mother about us because I am ashamed or worried or some…"
"If I were you I wouldn't have told her either. If my mother would behave around me like that I would not allow her to be a part of my life." She kissed my neck again.
"I have to admit I started to like her as she joined us at the Robber and there is always my mother. She adores you. She has enough love to give for another ten kids. It is barely a week since she left, give it some time and if you are ready to tell them I will be there. I love you."
It may sound insane but after the shower and dressing into my own clothes I felt a little more myself again, even with protective clothes I had to wear over my own.
As Jane's doctor showed up my mother left to check on Angela. He informed me about adding another medication and five minutes after he left again, Barry entered the room. He sat down beside me and sighed heavily.
"The first time I met her I was so excited I tripped over a carpet and landed lengthways in the hallway," he giggled.
"We had an armed robbery and were searching the house of the suspect and found a body in a freezer in the basement. She was back there already a legend all over the BPD. The day my Lieutenant told me that I was promoted to Homicide and would be the new Partner of Hurricane Jane Rizzoli I spent two hours puking in the restroom."
He smiled widely. "If you ever tell her that, I have to hide your body in your own morgue but the moment I went into the bullpen I wanted to kneel down in front of her. I know that may sound crazy. She was like a superhero to me, she is still and I didn't get it that I was so lucky to be partnered with her. I was so nervous. I was afraid not being able to keep up with her or letting her down." He turned from Jane towards me.
"You know, she is my role model and after what she did back there at the head quarter she will be forever my hero. It doesn't contain the pain and I wish nothing more as that I could switch places with her but what she did was one hell of a sacrifice."
He took my hand.
"I wish I could claim something, like you two share, for my own. I never believed in things like soul-mates and the love that can do everything but you both showed me that it is possible and that there is always hope. Maybe we wouldn't have known each other without Jane but you should know that whatever you need you only have to name it."
Barry stood up and kissed me slightly on the top of my skull. "She will be stirring up this place in no time, you will see. Jane Rizzoli never gives up."
"Did he ask you out already?" my mother asked while I wiped Jane's face and startled me. I hadn't heard her coming in again.
"Barry? He is like another brother to Jane," I told her totally confused. Barry is a very handsome man but that's it. I like his loyalty towards Jane and he is one of few people I feel totally comfortable around.
"No Maura. I mean that doctor."
I looked puzzled at her. "Excuse me? Why would he do such a thing?"
She tipped her head to the right. "I have eyes, Maura. He was nearly crawling into your lap and he didn't really look at the results."
I waved my hand towards her. "Whatever." I leaned over Jane and kissed her forehead. I really didn't know if she was right about him but it didn't matter also. He was Jane's doctor and all I wanted him to do was his job and strongly advice him not to try to flirt with me over the body of my comatose girlfriend.
"How is Frankie?" I asked her.
"He is doing fine," she answered then smirked. "He asked me, I quote, to cuddle the shit out of you." She caressed over my left cheek. "Well they did obviously all get the same charm. He is a very handsome young man."
I pressed my face closer to her hand. "He is, but I got the splendid specimen of the Rizzoli kids."
We were in Jane's apartment packing boxes. After the handymen had finished the en-suite bathroom we had started to move my belongings into the new house. We had both agreed on the idea of copying the bath from my former place.
The bathroom was what had helped me to decide for this place as I moved to Boston. The rest of the house wasn't what I would have described as warm. The kitchen was already implemented and even as it was stylish it appeared to be cold. The black and white had a sterile effect. But back then I wasn't in need of a home. I just needed a place to sleep.
The new house was far more a home. The main floor was mostly composed of a wide living area. An open kitchen with a breakfast-counter was on the left side of the room, beside the entrance the living room area and at the far end we had decided for a large table with enough room for the entire family to find space.
A guestroom, a guest bathroom and the pantry were out in the hall. Upstairs on the left was our bedroom with an en-suite bathroom and a separate toilet, a walk-in closet and a yoga room. On the right side a study and another guestroom including an own bathroom.
We or more suitable I had encouraged Jane not to sell her apartment. Except for Angela none of the other seemed to have figured out already that we were a couple. Although I hoped every day no one asked me the right or in my case the wrong questions. It was a lot of fun to act more obvious, but not too noticeable at work. Jane assumed that everyone was too scared to ask or openly say something about it.
When we were going to tell them or if they figured it out finally, Jane would offer Frankie to move into her apartment for half of the rent a place like Jane would cost. In the meantime we would move Jane's primary things over to our house and store the remaining boxes in her bedroom beside the wardrobe.
Well that was before a delivery, Jane had apparently forgotten about, failed to went smooth. She had ordered a new bed, back in the beginning of December. Before the change of our relationship. The delivery man left the whole packages in front of Jane's building and refused to carry them up to the third floor and before we could react Angela, who was helping packing up Jane belongings had required Frankie and Detective Frost to help.
And well… they didn't help us anyway. Instead they helped Jane's new neighbour to move in. Riley Cooper. Angela started to carry half of Jane's kitchen into Riley's apartment, because according to her mother she didn't need the items anyway. Somehow the whole situation started rolling by itself and at some point something happened that Jane got really pissed off, at me.
Before someone could get going with the packages we caught a new case. A gruesome homicide, with a bride slashed minutes before her wedding in a chapel. And apparently the part that Jane was angry at me tipped our co-workers more off than our effort of showing more closeness to each other, especially Detective Frost.
He and Detective Korsak dropped half whispered sentences about trouble in paradise and lovers quarrels all day long and if we hadn't been waiting for this to happen I would have possible missed all those hints.
I didn't know what I had done to Jane that she was so overly sarcastic and cold towards me, so suddenly. That was until Detective Frost, pretending to lower his voice so I couldn't hear them, which was impossible as loud as he was, asking Detective Korsak if he thought Jane would ever let herself being inked.
Then it drew on me. She was jealous, because I had gotten all excited about her neighbours tattoo. Well sure it is on me to touch and admire another woman like she is a piece of art with my girlfriend witnessing. Sometimes I feel like smashing myself. Well done Dr. incredible featherbrain.
I gathered my papers to start the autopsy as Jane walked into the morgue and after not finding me there she came over to my office. Somehow I was surprised of her attending to the examination, but I shouldn't have. Even when she was moody or mad at me like now she was always professional, after all it wasn't the victims fault.
I walked slowly over to her, holding her gaze. I took her hands in mine and let my thumbs caressing over her scars.
"It wasn't my intension to make you feel uncomfortable. You know me, when I am fascinated by something I just can't help myself. If this Cyprinus carpio had been a picture at a wall my reaction would have been the same. I am sorry, Jane. I didn't even realize what I had been doing wrong because I didn't think about it. I love you and only you."
Being already in my scrubs and my work-slippers I had to stand on my tiptoes to kiss her. As my lips touched hers I could feel her wrapping around me in an attempt to support and I knew she wasn't mad at me anymore. Enjoying our moment we both didn't hear Detective Frost and Detective Korsak walking into the morgue.
"Until the day all impossible things on earth will be happening at the same time, there will be definitive no one I want even to look at me. No one can compare to you in any way," I whispered against her lips.
"Do you think we could maybe close this case until then?" Detective Korsak asked pointing with his thumb over his shoulders towards Anja.
"Or… you could get a room and spare us your pillow-talk," Detective Frost added.
"Well…technically this is my room," I showed around my office. "Despite that this is not my property."
There was a space from some seconds of an awkward silence and then both Detectives were as normal as ever. The only remark towards our relationship was a comment from Jane's partner towards her former one as they left. "You think they can behave just some minutes, left alone, to get that autopsy done?" They both chuckled, letting the door falling close.
We got the examination going and given the opportunity to have a bride lying on my table I got a little bold and tried to charm out some things out of Jane. Just like she simply is, she denied having ever a fantasy about her future-dream-wedding. But as I had secretly already thought, she had one. Getting married at Fenway.
We had been back at Jane's apartment after closing the case and were both in a difficult mood. The background-story, why Anja had being murdered, was getting to all of us. The night on Saturday we just had crawled into bed, without any conversation, snuggling up against each other as close as we could.
The new mattress still lying on the floor in the living room Jane dropped onto it and after getting us a glass of red-wine I sat down on the edge. Trying to lighten the mood I challenged her.
"So should it be some kind of hint that you haven't any beer but wine in your apartment?"
Jane laughed. "Don't get light-headed there. It just happened that Frost and Frankie obviously have drunk all my beer."
I put my glass down beside the mattress and scooted up, lying onto my back.
"It's so disgusting that they put her in a wedding gown to auction her off," I couldn't help myself to voice my thoughts.
"That's the part that disgusts you?"
"No. All of it disgusts me," I answered honesty. I never came that close to cases until I started to work in Boston and with Jane. I shook my head slightly, trying to shake off the pictures of all this mortally scared girls.
"So, you must have had a wedding fantasy when you were little," I stated. "Come on. Every little girl has one."
Jane was silent for some minutes, just looking at me. As she started to talk her sight went to the ceiling.
"Okay, it wasn't really a fantasy. It was… I had this dumb idea that I would say my vows at Fenway over home plate in a Red Sox Jersey."
"It's not dumb. It's not exactly elegant, but at least it's colourful," I laughed, thinking of a little Jane staring wide-eyed from the ranks down, dreaming.
"And we would have the reception over the pitcher's mound and we would serve foot-long hot dogs and frozen lemonade. And the guests would throw peanuts at us instead of rice."
There was something about her talking that let me want to make her dream come true.
"Can I come?" I asked whispering, my sound was oddly serious. She looked over to me and we stared in each other's eyes. She smiled brightly at me before she turned from her back to face me fully.
"Maybe," she whispered.
Well I had something different in my mind for our wedding as Fenway, but the memory was always something that makes me smile.
"I want to marry her," I whispered, half unaware that it was audible and not only in my head. My mother padded my knee and smiled.
"We need to talk about something. I need a fav…," before I could speak any further Jane's doctor came in without even bothering about knocking. But after he explained in a million words that the love of my life was finally responding to her medication he could have walked in on me being naked and it wouldn't have bothered me.
Although for the very first time I felt sorry for all the people around me who had to stand my 'googlemouth' where some words would have done it, as Jane had often stated.
Sooooo…the next chapter will contain another flood of back-flashes and although it is already finished I thought it might be fun to integrate YOU.
If you have any ideas then give it to me! O.o
As DM or review. If you want to stay 'incognito' post it as guest.
Thanks again for all of your support.
Have a nice weekend and week ahead of yours, see you next Saturday.
rizzlesshipper4ever