JJ comes about half an hour before the ceremony. Jane looks up as she knocks softly on the door and pushes it open.
"JJ?" Jane sits up straighter, feeling her palms start to sweat. "What is it? What's wrong?"
JJ smiles. She has some of the kindest eyes that Jane has ever seen. "Easy," she says lightly. "Nothing is wrong. I was just wondering if I could borrow-" her grin widens as Emily starts to stand. "Not you this time, my darling," she teases. "Olivia, can I borrow you for a moment?"
Olivia pushes her hair out of her eyes as she stands. "Sure."
Jane sits forward urgently, despite the way the hands of the man doing her hair try to pull her backwards. "JJ," she tries again. "Is it Maura? Is something wrong?"
Olivia puts a calming hand on her shoulder as she passes. "If something were wrong, Jane, she'd tell us. Calm down," she says.
"It's true," JJ agrees. "But it's nice to see you rattled, Rizzoli."
Jane makes a face. "I'm not rattled."
This makes Emily laugh, though she pulls a straight face when Jane turns to look accusingly at her. "Of course you're not," she says. "Your hands just sweat like that all the time." She laughs harder as Jane goes to wipe her palms on her pants and then stops herself. "Good catch."
"Do you think Maura's having second thoughts?" Jane looks at the door where JJ and Olivia have disappeared. "If she is, I don't want Liv to try and make her."
This sobers Emily for real. "Olivia wouldn't do that," she says. "And neither would Maura."
Jane sits back and tries to let the stylist working on her hair do his job. If something was wrong, JJ would have said. If Maura was having second thoughts, worse if she'd split completely, JJ would have looked more worried. She would have asked to see everyone, not just Olivia.
And why had she wanted Olivia and not Emily? Was it because Maura needed to be talked off a ledge and Emily's tone would've been too harsh?
Jane stands suddenly, and her stylist lets out a dismayed squawk.
Emily simply raises an eyebrow. "Going somewhere?"
"Yeah, um, bathroom," Jane says without making eye contact.
"Jane."
"I should go now, before the outfit, right?" Jane glances up, and then away. "I'll be right back."
She heads to the door and pulls it open, hesitating when Emily says her name.
"She's still here. She's not going anywhere."
Jane rolls her eyes. Pretending to be annoyed is easier than admitting she simply has to check. "I'm just going to the bathroom, Em, I'll be right back."
Emily looks back down at her phone, smiling. "Suit yourself," she says.
In the hallway, Jane tiptoes down the hall to the room where Maura is getting dressed. She can hear the chatter of their guests in the main room, and nerves wink on and off in her chest like fireflies trapped in a jar.
If this were a hostage situation, or an abduction, she could overcome her fear and her doubts and tackle the situation head on. If she were up against an unknown suspect, a murderer, she would be able to stop her hands from shaking.
But this is her wedding. She's getting married to Maura.
And that means everything is different.
Jane skirts the front room, and creeps closer to Maura's dressing room door, listening.
The first thing she hears is Olivia, speaking softly. "It's okay to be scared," she says, "I threw up like...three times before I married Alex."
Maura makes a noise that might be a try at a chuckle. "Are you saying that to make me feel better?"
"No," Olivia responds easily. "Brushed my teeth so much, I thought they'd fall out."
"Logically I know it's natural to feel some nerves. I just can't help the feeling that…" She trails off here, and Jane resists the urge to burst in and embrace her.
The silence stretches for a long time, and when Olivia speaks again, her voice has dropped lower, and Jane has to lean forward even more.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Please," Maura says, her voice still heavy with the effort of holding back tears.
"I've been where you are."
Jane can almost see Maura's nod in her mind's eye. "Yes," she says. "With Alex. You've-"
"Not with Alex," Olivia says quickly. "With Jane." There is a little pause, and then Olivia rushes to continue, as if to explain away an assumption. "I don't mean in a wedding dress waiting to marry her," she says with a little chuckle. "I mean. I've felt how you're feeling. I've felt what it feels like to be in love with Jane Rizzoli."
There is silence within the room for a long time, and Jane stares at the door as though she could see through it. On some level, she knew. They used to know everything about each other, growing up together. But they never talked about this.
"There was this one time," Olivia says, "when I got hurt."
"The basement of that prison?" Maura asks, and just the mention of it is enough to cause a shudder of fear run up Jane's spine.
"No," Olivia says. "Another time. I got shot. Just a graze really. Fell and hit my head on the curb. That was the real injury. Jane had just left the city for Boston. She was determined to make it on her own. She started in narcotics."
"Yes," Maura says, and even without seeing her, Jane can tell she's smiling. "I remember reading about the bust that got her promoted.
"Right, but before that...I mean, don't get me wrong, Jane is one of the toughest people I've ever met, and she can get by on her own. But...she's…" Olivia trails off, seemingly lost for words. And Jane almost misses Maura's response, it is so quiet.
"I know," she says.
"I remember waking up in the hospital. Emily and Jane are both there, both standing at the foot of my bed. Emily is facing the door, her arms crossed over her chest. That's the way she gets...when something's bothering her, or she's scared. Stressed. She closes up, like a clam."
"That's not familiar," Maura says, and Olivia chuckles.
"Yeah, sort of like Jane, except...Jane is," Olivia pauses and Jane leans closer to the door, hardly able to breathe. "It's hard to explain," Olivia finally says. "Here's what I remember. I wake up. Emily is dealing with pain the way she does: compartmentalizing until it's over and she can find somewhere to break down. And there's Jane. And the look on her face so clearly says that she needs someone. Really needs someone, and..." Olivia cuts off abruptly. "Oh, I didn't mean to make you cry."
"No!" Maura says quickly. "No, it's not you, I just…I know that look. I know what you're talking about and I wish so desperately that I could help-"
"But you do!" Olivia interrupts. "You're the one who can ease that expression. The only one, Dr. Isles."
"Maura, please. Your wife is my bridesmaid. Call me Maura."
"What we do," Olivia continues, "is dangerous. It's hard to have a spouse in the field we're in. It's worse when you've got two sisters as reckless and heroically daring as Emily and I are."
This makes Maura laugh. "I agree with the heroic part," she says. "May I ask you something?"
"You can ask me anything."
"Why aren't you with Jane? Why didn't you two ever…" she trails off, and Jane reaches up to pull her hand through her hair before catching herself and shoving both into her pockets.
"Remember when Frankie got caught in that shootout on the Southside?" Maura must nod. "His partner goes down, and he climbs into the bus with her, to ride with her. But all that comes over the radio is Officer Rizzoli's in a bus."
"I remember," Maura says. "Jane was wild. I thought we'd die getting to the hospital."
"Tell me."
"She nearly broke the sound barrier. She almost shot the paramedic who gave the wrong notification..."
"And then?"
Maura hesitates a moment more, and Jane loves her so fiercely at that moment that she almost starts to shake. "She…cried," Maura says finally. "I drove us home, and she told me about this time she and Frankie made this, oh, what did she call it? An 'epic' pillow fort. And then she started to cry."
"And you stayed with her."
"Of course I stayed. I was in love with her, even then, I didn't want her to be alone. Even if nothing had really happened."
"Do you know that Emily and I heard about that almost three days later?"
"Oh. I'm s-"
"When we were kids, she used to wait until after the beatings to call me."
"She…" Maura seems to be struggling to catch up.
"She waited until it was over. She never wanted me to see her like that. She wanted us to think she couldn't break, that she was never hurt, or weak." Olivia pauses for a moment. "I wanted so badly to be there for her. As a kid, as a teenager. I wanted to fight her father. When he found her with her first girlfriend. What he did. I wanted to kick his dick up inside his body. God. I wanted to pick her up and carry her out of that house. I wanted her to ask me to stay with her in the hospital."
They are silent, and Jane knows that, just like her, they are both thinking of the time Jane asked Maura to stay the night with her the last time Boston General admitted her.
"I'm sor-"
"Don't," Olivia says quickly. "Don't you dare, because more than that I just wanted her to stop feeling so alone." Olivia makes a noise, like she's dissatisfied. "Not alone, alone. Just…what I have with Alex. I wanted her to…have someone she could melt into. And when I saw her with you, when I saw the way she could act around you – no – the way she could stop acting around you…I could just…let go."
Maura doesn't answer, but after a couple of seconds, it is clear that she's crying.
"Oh, no, I'm…Maura…"Olivia sounds flustered. "You're going to have to redo your make-up because of me."
"I never knew what I was missing."
"Excuse me?"
Maura sucks in a breath. "I used to tell myself that families were not all they were cracked up to be. I used to tell myself that…many perfectly successful people did not have ideal home lives. That it didn't matter. I was looking at it all wrong."
"I don't follow."
"You, and Jane, and Emily. You made yourselves a family. Despite what blood gave you. You went out and you made something, instead of walling yourself off from it."
"Do you love her?" Olivia asks this like she already knows the answer, but Maura responds immediately, without hesitation.
"So much that sometimes I think people who pass me on the street must be able to discern her name just from looking at me."
"So then let me tell you the answer to the question you are too afraid to ask."
"Please."
"You are enough for her. You are strong enough to hold all the love there is between you. I've seen it. I wouldn't tell you it was there if it wasn't."
"God."
"She is wonderful, and infuriating, and heroically reckless…or whatever it is I said earlier."
Maura laughs. Olivia doesn't.
"She was made for you, Maura. If you look at me and Alex, or Emily and JJ, and you wonder if we see the same thing when we're looking at the two of you…we do."
Jane nearly jumps out of her skin as a hand closes around her upper arm.
"Come on, Hero," Emily says gently. "You're getting married in twelve minutes. That's enough eavesdropping for now."
…
…
They beat Emily and JJ to New York.
They take the cruiser, and Jane uses her siren, silently daring anyone to pull her over and question the nature of her emergency. Maura talks briefly on her cellphone, first to JJ, and then to Alex, and then she puts her hand over Jane's between them, and doesn't move it for the rest of the ride.
Maura has thought of toll booths.
She has brought bottled water.
Three hours into the trip, she pulls a granola bar out of the bag she'd packed when Jane wasn't looking. "I know you're not hungry," she says, unwrapping it.
Jane takes it without an argument. "If you need to stop," she begins, but Maura shakes her head swiftly, bringing Jane's hand up to her lips.
"As fast as you dare," she murmurs to Jane's knuckles.
She doesn't ask what Jane is thinking about.
She doesn't speak again until they are pulling up in front of the precinct, Jane scanning the front steps once, and then again, before realizing that she is looking for Olivia.
Olivia won't be there.
"Emily & JJ met traffic. They're still ten minutes out."
Jane kills the engine, but doesn't move. She has been replaying Olivia in her head for the entirety of the five hour drive, conjuring her best friend up in her mind; first a short haired, dirty kneed pre-teen just like her, and then a pretty, quiet teenager who always thought everything through. And now a detective. A mother and a wife.
Missing.
"Jane," Maura says gently.
"There's so much I didn't say to her. I had like, a million chances, and I didn't say anything."
"Your chances to speak are not over," Maura says. "She's going to come back."
"God. Alex," Jane begins.
"We're here. We said we'd come and we're here."
Jane shakes her head. When Maura puts her hand on the back of her neck, she shivers. "What do I do?" she whispers. She wants Olivia to answer her, like she always does, to guide her without guiding her. "What should I do."
Maura, it seems, is a mind reader. She reaches out and pulls the keys from the ignition. "First," she says authoritatively. "You have to get out of the car."
…
…...
Brunch the day after the wedding is quiet. Most of the guests have already checked out of their hotels.
Jane wanders down to the buffet room alone, intent on grabbing some coffee and bringing it back to her wife.
Her wife.
She smiles at the carpet as she walk along. She's married, and her wife is upstairs, refusing to get out of bed, hair tousled and sleepy little smile pulling at her lips.
"I know that look." Olivia's voice makes her look up. The other woman is walking towards her, looking like she just woke up herself.
Jane smiles sheepishly. "She's my wife," she says quietly.
Olivia beams at her. "It was a really beautiful ceremony, Jane. Who knew you had so many mushy thoughts inside your brain."
Jane flushes, but doesn't deny it. She'd spent a long time on her vows, perfecting them. She'd wanted them to mean something.
"You getting coffee for Al?"
"Yes, though she would prefer I go out and find some freshly poured tar."
Jane laughs, and they head into the dining room. A couple of people wave, and some call out to her, but no one calls her over. She's relieved. As fun as the reception had been last night, now she just wants to share a cup of coffee with her best friend.
"Thanks for being my Best Man," she says as they pour.
Olivia glares at her out of the corner of her eye. "Best Man?"
Jane smiles. "Maid of Honor?"
Olivia grimaces. "Best Maid? No, that's worse. God...all these terms are so antiquated. We need to come up with something better."
"I'll get on it for my second marriage," Jane jokes, but this doesn't make Olivia laugh. She looks at Jane oddly for a second, and then takes a sip of her coffee.
"Sit with me?" she asks. "Just for a sec?"
"Sure," Jane answers, following Olivia to a table, "but if you're going to tell me about how a baby is made...you're too late."
Olivia grins at this. "I knew you'd figure it out," she says with a nudge that makes Jane flush.
"Fast learner," she mumbles, and they drink, and sit, and Jane is just starting to think that she hasn't ever felt this content in her life, when Olivia speaks again.
"So, are you going to ask me?"
Jane takes a sip of her coffee. "Ask you what?"
Olivia narrows her eyes. "About what happened when I went with JJ?"
Jane shrugs. "Maura married me," she says. "So it's not important, is it?"
She pretends not to notice as Olivia stares at the side of her face, clearly trying to decide if Maura told her about their conversation, or if Jane listened in.
"I…guess not," Olivia says after a moment, though her eyes stay narrowed a bit longer. "I guess it doesn't matter."
They sit in comfortable silence, sipping coffee, until it seems that Olivia can't contain herself any longer. "Listen, Jane, I want to tell you something."
Jane puts her coffee cup down slowly. "Okay," she says, not looking up.
"Can you look at me?"
Jane looks up, into Olivia's face, and she can read everything she wants to say, right there in her eyes.
"I just…" Olivia glances away and then back, resolute. "I need you to know how proud I am of you. You looked so happy, and so beautiful last night. And all of your other friends, and your mom and brothers, they might have looked at you like, 'shit, she's growing up,' but Em and I saw so much more than that. I just want you to know that I love you. I love you so much and I…you could catch thirteen hundred more serial killers and become the most decorated detective in all of history, but I still wouldn't be prouder than I was watching you marry the woman you love."
Oh.
Jane looks down at her coffee, blinking very fast. She had not known that this was what she needed to hear from her best friend. She reaches out her hand, palm up, and Olivia takes it at once.
"Trust her, Jane, okay? Just...promise you'll trust her."
Jane wants to say something, wants to reply, so that Olivia knows she's been heard, that this means the world, but she can only nod her head jerkily until the other woman laughs, leaning forward to kiss her cheek.
"Okay, okay," she says, still laughing. "New subject. I didn't want to take away from your spotlight last night, but Alex and I don't think we should leave without telling you."
Jane looks up, the change in topic clearing her tears. "What is it?"
"Well," Olivia says, sly smile curling her lip. "It involves the words 'bunting,' and 'Godmother,'" she grins bigger as Jane leaps to her feet, eyes wide. "Do you want to guess?"
Michael falls asleep in Jane's arms less than half an hour after she picks him up. When Alex looks around at them, she feels a heavy mixture of pride and guilt that she can't quite explain. Michael had run towards her when she and Maura had entered the bullpen. He hadn't wanted to hug Maura hello, or go back to his mother. Even his favorite Aunt Emily, arriving fifteen minutes later, tall in her high heeled boots, could not coax him from Jane's arms.
"It's okay, Mikey. We'll just go sit over here, okay?"
A sleepy nod was all she'd gotten in return.
Now, Maura finds them on a bench in the hall and she sits down as close to Jane as possible, reaching to push some of the toddler's curls from his face.
"Do you think he just knows I miss her the same way he does?" she asks quietly. She can feel Maura look up into her face, but she can't make herself look around. She leans forward, like she might kiss Jane's cheek, but then she speaks, softly, so that they are the only ones who can hear.
"She's going to make it."
"You don't know that."
"Yes, I do."
"You can't possibly," Jane's voice rises, and she fights it back under control with almost all of what is left of her willpower. "Fucking SVU. Why did it have to be SVU?"
Maura only hesitates for a nanosecond before replying. "Statistically, Jane, you have the most dangerous job of the three of you."
Jane shakes her head. "I'm not worried she's going to die," she says through gritted teeth. "I'm not worried he's going to kill her. I'm worried that he's going to…" but she can't continue, not without waking the little boy in her arms, and she wants to let him sleep.
Maura puts her hand on Jane's knee and squeezes, just hard enough. Just this side of pain. "I know," she whispers. "It's going to be okay."
"I thought you couldn't lie."
"Exactly," fierce. "That should tell you something."
Jane looks away, towards where Emily and JJ stand with Olivia's boss, Don Cragen. Until they have a lead. Until they know where Lewis might have taken her, there is nothing to do. Nowhere to go.
Jane hates being inactive. It makes her feel angrier. It makes her feel helpless. She is exhausted, but not willing to admit it. Terrified, and not willing to admit it.
She looks down at Michael, thumb in his mouth, brow smooth. "This is her son," she says. She looks up from the little boy in time to see JJ and Maura exchange a look. "What was that?" she asks, starting to stand. "Maura?"
Maura puts a steadying hand on her shoulder. "I don't know," she says calmly. "I'm going to talk to Jennifer, and if it's time for action, Jane, then we'll wake him."
Jane is still working on standing up. "No," she says. "Just let me-"
But Maura is firm. She stands and puts both hands on Jane's shoulders, and Jane looks up into her face, ready to be furious.
"Sweetheart," Maura says, "let your godson sleep just a bit longer. Trust me, okay?"
"Maura."
"Trust me."
Jane can feel her eyes filling up with tears. Even if she tried, this time she wouldn't be able to hold them back. "She's been one of my best friends longer than anyone in the whole world," she whispers. "She's...she was my Best Man."
"I know," Maura says gently. "I know, darling. And you'll find her. You and Emily."
"What if he's hurt her, Maura? What if he's-"
"Then we'll do what it takes to help her heal," Maura says resolutely. "Anything it takes for our family, right?"
"Maura," JJ calls, just loud enough for her voice to carry. "When you have a minute?"
And Maura stands, and after a nod from Jane, crosses the room to stand next to Emily.
Jane presses her lips against Michael's forehead.
"We're going to get your mom back," she whispers. Already the ripping she'd felt at losing Olivia was starting to turn in white hot fury. "We'll get her back," she repeats. "I promise.