Authors Note: Better late than never, right?
The sun had yet to make its tedious journey over the horizon by the time the train pulled to its final stop in Stuttgart. Jane, despite her best effort, had fallen asleep somewhere in their fourth hour of travel and when she opens her eyes to the hissing sound of the trains braking system, she finds Maura awake and alert and gets the sense that the blonde didn't sleep at all. It gives her an uncomfortable feeling of weakness that she tries to swallow down as they find their feet and she stretches long legs for the first time in seven and a half hours. They're quick off the train and out through the station due to their lack of stowed luggage and the pair navigate their way onto the waking city street outside. Their cab ride is twenty minutes of uncharacteristically animated chatter about sight-seeing in Italian that takes Jane a minute to catch on to, and questions in broken German about locations of monuments directed at the driver. Presumably the liveliness of it all is to sell their traveller story should anyone question an unsuspecting cabbie because the moment they're out of the taxi and walking toward their newest safe house, it comes to a halt.
They operate in a rhythm that is uncomfortably easy. The place Maura has arranged is a small two bedroom apartment on the outskirts of downtown Stuttgart, an old building whose interior had been subdivided within an inch of its life. The bathroom doubled as a laundry and was narrow enough that if Jane were to outstretch her arms and spin, she'd hit all four walls. In fact, she does just that when it's her turn to shower in an effort to lighten the mood, and Maura watches from just past the doorway, hair still dripping wet.
"Honestly, I'm surprised the dishwasher isn't in here too." She throws out mid turn. "I mean, there's so much space, it could have gone in the tub and shared the plumbing."
Maura smirks, locks starting to curl haphazardly as she pats them dry. "There is no dishwasher, Jane."
They share the tight confides of the apartment relatively well, in fact it's almost unsettlingly domestic the way in which they wordlessly divide use of the amenities and the night before they're planning to leave for Bern, Maura even cooks. It's the first thing Jane has heard her grumble about since the binned skirt in Kortrijk, the lack of a freshly made meal that didn't threaten to block her arteries. The brunette isn't about to insist otherwise, just attaches a request for instant coffee to the grocery list and watches as Maura leaves.
Reaching out to a friend and colleague is done in an entirely different manner than Jane may have otherwise operated. The drive from their shoebox in downtown Stuttgart to a narrow street in Bern, Switzerland takes almost four hours in the hot wired Volkswagen and they sit in tense silence for a further two until Barry Frost sees fit to emerge from his lodgings in casual wear that suggests he's taking the morning off. It's Jane who exits the car to meet him on the sidewalk a few houses down, rolling her shoulders to release the frustration. Maura had been firm in her conditions in allowing the entrance of another party into their... well, party. No public transport, no phone call to announce their impending arrival and her presence in the handover.
"Jane?" Barry spots her before she's separated herself from her thoughts. "It is you!" His voice holds a laugh of amusement at the coincidence and Jane completes the final four steps to stop before him and lean into his proffered embrace.
"Hey Frost," she mumbles in return before moving back. "I need to borrow you, so unofficially it's not even funny, for coffee. You free?" The latter is said with a gesture toward the car, and Maura.
Barry frowns in confusion but nods his head before he fully grasps what he's agreeing to, falling in time with Jane as she walks back across the street. "Unofficially?" He asks as she holds open the backseat door for him. "What for?"
Jane closes the door behind him and replies only when she's sat back in the passenger seat. Maura doesn't turn to look back at him until her companion makes introductions. "It's a long story. Frost, this is Maura, Maura this is Frost."
"Pleasure to meet you, Agent Frost." Maura offers politely with a smile, before pulling the car out of park and pulling back onto the main road. Jane isn't entirely sure where they're headed, but she's found enough trust in the blonde to be mostly sure it's not to her death.
Barry spares a look of confusion between Jane and Maura before nodding slowly. "Yeah, you too Maura. Where are we going?"
Maura responds before Jane gets the chance. "Oh, just to have coffee."
Klösterli Weincafe is fifteen minutes from Barry's accommodation and while the interior is bustling with patrons, outside in the chill of a Swedish autumn, the tables and chairs remain vacant. That is where they choose to sit, despite their lack of preparation in clothing and Jane pulls out a laptop and moves her chair to sit beside Frost.
"What's all this about, Jane?" He asks, watching intently as the screen is opened and the machine turned on. They go no further until coffee orders have been taken by a retreating waitress.
Jane sighs. She's run over this conversation a million times in her mind, but never once had she found the perfect way to explain the corruption of their agency and her sudden agent-turned-most-wanted status. "I was given an assignment, the assasination of director Webber–"
Barry interrupts before she can continue. "Damn Jane, that's a big one—congratulations!"
It's difficult to hold in her sardonic chuckle. "Yeah, well bigger it turns out, than even Korsak anticipated. I was sent to track down Maura, but when I did, she showed me a very different story—just, you need to see this for yourself." She turns the screen entirely in his direction and he watches Maura for a moment with an unreadable expression before turning his gaze to the computer.
Ten minutes in, and he's taken control of the pulling up of files. Jane watches, notes with confusion the missing nature of the geotagged folder she'd opened in Kortrijk but doesn't mention it. Maura leans back in her chair with coffee cup perched against parted lips, the very serene image of calm, but Jane is sure it's an illusion. She's extended a great deal of trust in the agent and her judgement, bringing in someone else and allowing for the possibility of disbelief and betrayal.
The thought strikes Jane with discomfort. She trusts Frost with her life, but she had barely allowed herself to consider the opportunity for her friend to call bullshit.
"Holy shit," Barry exhales, leaning back in his own chair with a breath as his hands scrub his face. "Where did you get these? I mean, these date back years and there's assassination approvals in here with pentagon seals on them, for American citizens."
Jane lets out a breath of her own, relieved that he hasn't instantly disregarded them. It did become more difficult to insist on the legitimacy of them when their source was revealed though.
Apparently sensing Jane's hesitation, Maura leans forward and places her coffee down on the table. "I've spent years accumulating them, from officials and politicians. That folder came from the assistant director Webber's personal computer."
Barry's eyes narrow at that, and his voice lowered slightly in volume. "And how exactly did you get files from his personal computer?"
"I killed him," she shrugs nonchalantly. "Well, technically I got the files beforehand, when he left me unaccompanied in his hotel room with his computer."
Jane leans forward, quick to do damage control and silently damning Maura's literal nature and surprising honesty. "Not condoning the killing," she mutters with a glance at the blonde before directing her gaze to her partner. It's information that could have been left out for now. "But he was corrupt, I mean his signature is on a few of those orders and there's email correspondence in there too."
He ruminates this information for what feels like hours, but is realistically the time it takes for Jane to finish her coffee anxiously. "Do they know you've seen these?"
"Yes, she recklessly opened a folder I had forewarned her not to. It was encrypted, and they very quickly tracked the signal to the mall she was in. She will have been visible on security footage." Maura answers before Jane can, and the agent frowns before throwing her hands up in exasperation.
"You weren't exactly a trustworthy source of information at that point, so forgive me for not blinding trusting you on your word."
Maura frowns indignantly. "I gave you everything I had, I told you as much-"
"So what exactly do you need from me?" Barry interrupts, closing the laptop with a click that sings finality.
This was it, make or break.
The brunette doesn't miss her chance to speak this time. "The geotagged file, we need you to decrypt it so it's safe to view."
There's a beat, a moment where she isn't sure her friend is going to agree to betraying his country on her word and suddenly Jane realises why Maura was hesitant to begin with. But Frost nods his head in subtle agreeance and Jane lets out a deep breath and leans forward over the table for a moment to will her thumping heart to still.
"Okay… okay. You know what this means though, right Frost? You can't go back, there's no work or family. Everything is off the grid until we figure out how deep this runs and who to take it to."
Special Agent Barry Frost shrugs without pause. "Hey, the movies make the whole double-agent thing look fun, when else am I gonna get the chance to try it out?"
Maura nods. "It does provide for some unique experiences," she adds in agreement.
Maura chooses not to follow the pair of ex-agents up to Barry's apartment to pack. The Volkswagen Cabrio she'd acquired in Stuttgart with its two doors and small cabin wasn't built for three adults on a long journey, and it had struggled under her ministrations on the four hour drive to Bern anyway. Truthfully, she also needed respite from company, an hour or two of solitude to get her thoughts in order before holing up with two almost strangers for the foreseeable future. Her time with Jane has now surpassed her longest record of uninterrupted human interaction, and it isn't undesirable, just new. There hadn't been friends or acquaintances where she'd been raised, other students had been nothing more than competition and even training missions had been solitary. They'd been taught how to deceive and fight and kill, but they'd also been taught not to need.
Maura didn't need human interaction, but she was finding that she may like it.
It's a thought she tries to expel as she scouts for a new car, because given their current circumstances, a major overhaul of her personality system should be the last on her to-do list. She finds what she's looking for in a parking garage in the business district, a dark grey Mercedes GLS that promises significantly more leg room and storage than the smaller car she'd dumped across town. She watches as it pulls to a stop and the owner exits with a briefcase in hand, and uses the radio she'd rigged in Brussels to spoof the keyless entry & push start engine. It's a smoother drive than the Volkswagen and in her search for reprieve she ventures down Aarstrasse, the main road to follow the Aare river. It's a beautiful city, nestled in the nook of an ancient waterway and the buildings she passes are medieval in their architecture. If she were still Maire, she may have paused to explore the Museum of Fine Arts, but that was another life lost that she couldn't grieve, because it had only been real to her.
It would be easy to disappear, she thinks while she waits in traffic. But easy wasn't always worth doing, and against her better judgement, she trusts Jane Rizzoli.
Maura returns to the apartment in the Marzili district at four in the afternoon to find Jane and Frost seated on the sofa with a beer each in hand and Barry's go bag by the door. They're mid-laugh when she walks in without knocking and the room falls into silence quickly, and the blonde feels a spark of something foreign low in her abdomen when Jane leaps to her feet in a defensive stance. She feels a smile tug at her lips as her hands reach up either side to frame her head in a pose that mimics Jane's surrender in her safe house in Paris. The brunette visibly relaxes and falls back into her place on the couch, feet propping on the coffee table.
"Hey Maur, want a beer?" She holds her own drink up as if to emphasise the basis of her question.
Maura pauses in surprise, hands slipping into the pockets of her black slacks. The nickname is new but not unwelcome, and she can't recall a naturally occurring moment in her life like this one. "Oh, sure-thank you."
She's starting to refile things in her mind, and Jane is bordering on miscellaneous-possible friend.
They decide to take the drive back to Stuttgart slowly, primarily because Maura needs time to organise a house suitable for the three of them, and covers deep enough that their trio won't be easily detected. It's significantly harder, as she emphasised vehemently, to hide three adults rather than two, but it doesn't come across as the protest Jane thinks it's meant to. She's also sure that the small tours they make around the German city are more of a test of Frost's dependability and a silent assurance that he didn't set them up in the name of upholding the law. Maura had clocked him as a straight arrow and a respectable agent and due to her lack of personal relationships, she found it hard to believe he'd throw that away for mere friendship. Apparently their bond ran deeper than that though, a brotherhood of sorts that promised complete faith and unquestionable loyalty.
It's the first time Maura fully realises the totality of things she's missed.
The long road trip around the small town also allows them a moment to breathe, although Jane suspects that her companion is always waiting with bated breath for the other proverbial shoe to drop. In a way, they kind of all are now. It's a break in the chaos the brunette didn't realise she needed until they're checking out of their fourth shitty no-questions-asked motel in as many days, on the outskirts of Gruyères at 10am on Saturday. They've spent their time sleeping in separate rooms, but their nights are shared over food and an attempt to introduce Maura to the cinematic marvel she's been deprived of.
Maura looks particularly triumphant as Frost closes the back door of the Mercedes and buckles up.
"I've prepared a field trip." She announces as she starts the engine.
Jane and Frost draw in mutual frowns of confusion. Frost is the one to voice it. "A field trip?"
Maura nods as she focuses on her rear view mirror while reversing. "A museum and before you roll your eyes Jane, I think it's one you'll both enjoy."
"Never met a museum I liked," Jane throws back with a smirk, although it isn't really a protest either because she's finding she enjoys these spontaneously human Maura moments.
She meets a museum she enjoys. The H.R Ginger Museum was only a ten minute drive from their motel, but Jane seriously doubts it was more than coincidence because they only watched the Alien movies two nights ago, and Maura had sat through the three movies largely unimpressed and intent on picking apart every minor plot hole. It warmed her though, to know the other woman had gone out of her way to schedule a morning that likely wasn't going to interest her in the slightest, for the sake of the enjoyment of her companions.
Jane was surprised to watch both Frost and Maura spend more time admiring the actual artwork rather than the set designs and movie props.
They didn't realise what they were missing, she decided.
It becomes somewhat of a tradition of theirs for the remainder of their time in Switzerland. Barry shows them the Child Eater statue on their way back through Bern and Jane during her designated driving time through Zurich, stops at Moulagenmuseum. It's in the city's university hospital and it's an entire museum of anatomically correct wax sculptures of disease. Maura thoroughly enjoys herself and spends the afternoon explaining each depiction to Jane in detail great enough that the woman could sit a damn medical school examination and pass the top of her class. The same cannot be said for Frost, who makes it to the flesh eating bacteria wall before turning a vivid shade of green and returning promptly to the car.
Maura raises a questioning brow and Jane explains with a smirk, that most of his work didn't require an active field jury.
"It's a shame he left so quickly," Maura shrugged as she moved along to the next model. "This would have been the perfect opportunity for a little exposure therapy."