I think you're getting used to it by now that this is a sad story, but this chapter isn't quite so sad as all the rest. I hope.
I don't own the characters of Rizzoli & Isles nor am I making an income from the telling of this story using said characters. What we know from canon belongs to them. The story is mine.
Sex: nope. It just didn't feel right in the telling of this story.
Language: Not likely. If it slips in you've been warned
Angst: a little bit but I hope not too much in this chapter.
The Stone
Part V
Spring in Boston is always beautiful. The gray stone reflected the bright sun from its polished surface. It stood quietly surrounded by grass. It sat at the top of a knoll that invited the sun and anyone who wanted to rest or talk. It had heard a lot of talking and saved many secrets over the years and it was sure to hear a few more before it was all said and done. Ten thousand years from now the stone would still hold the secrets and stories from the people who loved and cried at its base.
A small group, who appeared to be a family, walked towards the stone monument. Two boys, twins most likely, ran up to the stone and looked at it closely. "MOM! You said that we were going to see who MJ was named after. Where is she? There's no one here!"
"Jamie, she's not here, but this headstone is where we like to visit her. I know it's hard to understand."
Connor spoke up with the same tone as his twin brother. "She's buried here is what you mean, mom. Why didn't you just say so?"
"Okay, Mr. Smartypants. You're right, but she's not really buried here. A part of her is and her wedding ring from when she and I were married is here. At least I assume it still is.
"You were married to someone else?" Jamie's freckled nose scrunched up in confusion.
"I was. A long time ago before I met your mama. She died a little over a year after we got married."
Jamie was the most sensitive child Jane had ever known and today he felt his mom's pain. "Crap. That's so sad. I'm sorry, mom."
Jane smiled at her son. "Thank you, sweetheart. I agree. It was crap and remember we don't use that kind of language….most of the time."
"Are you still sad, Mom?"
"Yeah, Bud. I am sometimes, but I have you guys, your sister and your mama to keep me happy! You are my treasures!" She reached down and gathered them both in for a hug. She held them until they squirmed away and ran off to play or find bugs or whatever little boys do when they are outside.
Jane heard her daughter's voice and it brought a smile to her face. She loved that kid. She loved them all, but her first born was connected to her heart in a different way. "Mom! Where's my book? I want to show Maura what I'm learning this year."
"I'm pretty sure that Grandma has it with her in your backpack. Ask nicely, please."
Jane walked up to the stone and gave it a grin and smoothed her hand along the engraved letters. "Hey there, Sunshine. I've missed you. As you can see we brought the boys this time. They were a little too young last time and it was cold. All they would have done is complain." Jane let out a good laugh at that. "I'm missing you today. Don't know why today, but there are times that it just flows into me. MJ is 10 today and she wanted to come up and see you for her birthday. I can't really blame her. Now that we're back in Boston you are a favorite destination for her. She says it's quiet here and you help her with her homework. I think she thinks you really do. Shit, maybe you do and I just don't know about it. Maura, I need to tell you about the kids. You may have already guessed…"
"Janie! I need you for a minute."
"K, Ma." She turned back to the place holder. "Hold that thought, I'll be right back."
Little Maura, as she is called by her Mom sometimes, walked up to the gravestone. "Hi Maura. You know, sometimes Mom calls me Maura the Second and thinks she's funny. She's not. They mostly call me MJ or Maura Jo if I'm in trouble. I know you know me. I know I say it all the time, but maybe you forget in between. Anyway, I haven't been able to come up for a while. Usually Grandma will bring me, but she's busy taking care of the boys most of the time. She doesn't need to, but she says she likes it. I don't know. They're boys. I can take care of myself. Mom is working somewhere again. She doesn't need to, she says. I think she should stay home, but Mama says it keeps her "out of trouble". Mama quit her job too and now she's a professor at a college. She said which one, but I wasn't really listening. Maura, I know we're rich cause I hear them talking like I don't have ears or something, but they act like we're going to be poor any minute." Maura rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I want to show you my new math homework and maybe you can help me." She pulled the book up to the stone and opened it to the page she was working on.
Angela let her eyes wander over to the young girl sitting by the marker. Her hair was golden with curls in all of the right places and her skin was a perfect olive tan. She watched as she talked to the stone. Her face was just starting to grow out of the little girl stage and into the tween years. Her eyes were a perfect mix of brown and light hazel. All of those things had caught Angela's attention in the past. They had for about a year now, but she had held her piece. Today it was the blond girl's mannerisms that struck a nerve in her heart and made her catch her breath. "Jane."
"Yeah, Ma."
"So….don't take this the wrong way and don't get mad like you do. Okay."
"Uuuuh Okay."
"Maura."
"Yeah, Ma. We're here to see Maura."
"No, babe, I mean little Maura, MJ. She's just like…." She motioned with her chin to the young girl and then looked back into her daughter's eyes and she knew.
Jane looked at her mother and as all mother's do, Angela read her mind. "Yeah, Ma. She is."
"But….how?"
"JANE! Come on, we're going to be late! DVR the rest of it. We can't wait for overtime or extra innings or another period or whatever sport you three are watching!"
"Coming, babe! I know. Guys I gotta go. Do NOT tell me what happens or I will write you out of the will!"
"Janie, we would never.."
"Frankie! I'm serious!"
"Okay, I pinky swear."
"Thank you. Okay, babe, let's go."
The first part of the ride to the doctor's office was a quiet one. The two women were comfortable in their silence. Chris reached over and took Jane's hand in her own. "This is it, hon. Are you ready to start a family? Are you really?"
"It's time. I'm not getting any younger, ya know?" Her brown eyes looked over quickly to her wife and a small grin plastered across her face.
"You keep saying that. I'm not buying it. You look as sexy as the day we met."
"Okay, you! Two years isn't that long, ya know. I hope I still look mostly the same."
Chris laughed. "I hear ya, but still hon, you're still beautiful and it feels like a lifetime to me. I've told you a million times, I feel like I've known you forever. Maybe we met in another life or we met in another realm."
"Yes, babe, I know. One where you agreed to take on a grieving widow and make her into a real person again."
"We were both grieving." She was quiet for a few seconds. "In some ways we still are. For me, this step we're taking now is bringing up a lot of emotions. Good ones. Some scary ones and some really sad ones for me. Don't be mad, but I miss Jo. It makes me sad that she's not here to see this and yet if she were we wouldn't be us. It's the most bullshit catch-22 in the world. I can't imagine how you're feeling."
"Chris. Why would I be mad? Honey, I feel exactly the same way, but I love you so much and I'm ready to do this. Are you sure that you want to do this? I mean it's not too late to call it off." The detective was nervous for her wife. Chris was going to be the one to carry the baby because Jane's reproductive system had taken a beating in a literal sense during her years as a cop and the OBGYN didn't think it was a safe choice. Chris was 6 years younger and hadn't suffered any traumatic accidents like the detective had.
"Jane, there is nothing I want to do more than raise children with you. I'm sure, and you know I think it's what they would have wanted."
"Yeah. I know. Maura really wanted kids. It just wasn't in the cards I guess. Did Jo want kids? I'm not sure that we ever talked about this. Have we?" Jane signaled and turned left into the parking lot.
"We've talked and talked about so much about them it's hard to keep track, but no not really. She was always so busy traveling that I think it wouldn't have worked out if we had. I had never even considered children until I met you and the Rizzoli bunch. Now I can't imagine NOT having kids. It seems a natural step with you. I am so lucky to have found you." Jane parked the car and looked over to her now wife.
"We were both lucky, Chris. We both were." She kissed the other woman's hand. "You know, I have a feeling that "they" had a hand in us meeting." The other woman laughed. "I really think so, but who knows what's on the other side anyway? Maybe everything, maybe nothing."
"Yeah. Okay let's see what the doctor has to say about my ability to give you children."
Jane laughed out loud at that as they got out of the car. "You're hilarious, woman."
Jane returned to her mother's side after pulling the boys down from the tree. She didn't mind that they climbed trees, but there was a service going on not too far away. "Sorry, Ma. Where were we?"
"You were going to explain your daughter to me."
"Right. I'm not sure where to start."
"How about you just talk and I'll listen?"
"Okay. Obviously, we wanted kids and that doesn't happen naturally for you know.…"
"Jane, I get the picture."
"Ma."
"Sorry."
"Well, you know that we went to a reproductive clinic to explore the possibilities of Chris or I getting pregnant. We weren't sure how it all worked. Even reading online it's hard to tell. I was ruled out for a lot of reasons. So it was going to be on her." Jane looked to her mother. Angela had questioned why Jane had never tried, but she could take an educated guess.
Jane continued with her story. "We had so many appointments for blood work and all of the other things that go along with it it was overwhelming at times. It's crazy what they do. We chose the sperm donor from a notebook and the whole nine yards."
"I think we told you that we tried insemination several times. Every month when she was ovulating, we'd run to the clinic. I'm not going to tell you how they do it, but it's jacked up. We...SHE went through all of that for months, but nothing was taking. The doctor, somewhere along the line, decided to do a D&C and scrape her uterus just in case that was the trouble. That was awful." Jane rubbed her forehead as her mom put a hand on her knee. She looked over at the marker where MJ was sitting. Chris wasn't far away with the boys playing tag. It seems as if the service was over so there is less reason to keep too quiet. Spending time in a cemetery had become normal to the family.
Jane looked back to her mom and spoke again. "They suggested that she try some weird hormones and injections, but they made her sick. Gave her freaking migraines. God, I felt so guilty, but she kept on saying yes to the next thing the doctor wanted to try. Chris wanted to have a child so badly. It was in her heart. I kept asking if she wanted to keep going. I would have been fine no matter what she decided. It took us almost a year to get to that point. It still didn't take. We decided to take a break for a while and let her heal emotionally."
"Janie, you needed to heal, too, you know. I remember you two going through all of this. You were so stressed out."
"Yeah I know, Ma, but it gets worse. There are likely things that I didn't tell you. At this point I don't remember if I did or not. Anyway, we went on that long trip to New Zealand just to destress. We picked the furthest spot from anyone with anything that had a beach. It was helpful to sit in the sun. We went to the natural salt pools and hiked a lot. When we came home, Chris felt like she was refreshed and ready again. Her OB did a die test and found that only one of her tubes was open. They went in and flushed it or something like that. She can tell you if she wants. Jesus, why they didn't look at all of this the first time, I'll never know. Anyway, we tried again two more times and nothing. We finally decided to try IVF. The sperm we had picked out was very healthy and swimmy." She laughed. "Those guys moved A LOT. So…..anyway…." Jane dropped her head. She hated talking about some of this, not because of how she felt, but because of how Chris felt like she was a failure. The pain she had gone through for them was valiant. She was Jane's hero for being so strong. "So….we got a call from the doctor that he wanted to see us about the process. We went and they told us that Chris's eggs were not viable. They kept falling apart as soon as they were fertilized. We were crushed. I mean really crushed. Why the fuck didn't they look at this FIRST? Ugh! I know why. It was all about the harvesting and the process to get the eggs in the first place. If we had only known we could have saved her so much pain."
"Oh, honey. I'm so so sorry! That was devastating."
"Yes it was, but I had a wild, a good maybe...idea. A crazy thought really. I don't know, but it worked and it was all because of Maura."
"Jane, do you still want to have kids?"
"Not without you, Maura. I can't even think about that right now."
Maura nodded from her chair. They had opted to pay for in-home care all the way around from beginning to end. Maura appreciated the comfort of being at home. "Okay. I just wondered." The drip of the chemicals in her system was poison and she knew it. Her hair had started to fall out after the first treatment, and now it was completely gone. She wore a soft silk scarf around her head to keep the cold at bay. She had lost several pounds and looked as sick as she felt. She wouldn't go through the treatments were it not for Jane. She would have said no and let the end come naturally. She didn't want that now. She wanted to have as much time with her lover as she could live through. The quality wasn't the best, but the quantity was keeping her going.
Jane was quiet for a minute. "Why do you ask, babe? I mean it's kind of a weird time to be thinking of kids."
"Jane, I really don't have much time left. I am trying to stay with you, but as the days go by I see me slipping away." She sighed. "Here's the thing, I want you to move on after me, Jane."
Jane started to cry again. These past months have been filled with a lot of tears. They made love as often as they could up until the time that Maura just couldn't. Jane was more than content to just hold her. When the holding became too painful, they held hands. Their connection rarely was broken. "Maura, please. Let's not do this now."
"Jane, look at me." The brown eyes turned up to her. "Really look at me, my love. I'm sick. I'm going to die and it's going to be sooner than later. We have to have these talks now or they will never happen."
"I know!" She didn't mean to snap. She put her eyes back down to the floor. "I know, Maur. I know. The hurt though. It's eating me up."
"Okay. You don't talk. Just listen." The brunette head nodded. She didn't look up while Maura spoke. "My whole life I never thought that I would be loved and accepted for who I am. I'm very different from normal people. And yet you, brave, heroic, sarcastic, gentle, beautiful, Italian, Jane Rizzoli came in and quite literally swept me off of my feet."
"Well, you were getting ready to fall." She smiled at the memory.
"I was, and you saved me. You've been saving me ever since. Even now as I'm dying, you save me daily. I wake up and see you and I'm so thankful for that moment. That moment gives me strength to go on for one more day. And when the time comes it will be one more hour or minute. But mark my words it will be you saving me. I'm blessed beyond measure that you love me."
"Maur…"
"Let me finish." The other woman nodded. "When I'm gone you will still have all of that love inside of you. You will have it and it would be a sin if you didn't share it with another person. I don't care who they are as long as they love you like I love you."
"Maura, no one will ever love me the way you do. No one can."
"Then give them the chance to try, Jane. I love you so much that I can't breathe sometimes. I want someone else to catch their breath when they see you walking towards them. I want their chest to burn up with excitement at the thought of holding you. I want your touch to let them know peace from a long hard day. I want them to have what I have, because it's the best gift I was ever given. You are a gift, my love."
"I'm your gift, Maura. I don't belong to anyone else. I never will."
"I know, sweetheart. I know."
The two women sat in their silence for so long that Jane figured Maura had fallen asleep until her soft voice broke the quiet.
"Jane, I need to talk to you about something in our assets that we have never discussed."
"What else could you….we possibly own? We have everything known to man."
"Do you remember a couple of years ago I told you I wanted to freeze my eggs?"
"Vaguely. You said you wanted to because you thought you weren't marriage material."
"Yes, I didn't realize at the time I was just looking for you."
"And you found me."
"Yes, I did." She stroked Jane's cheek. "Back to my story. I did that. I went through hormone therapy and had my eggs harvested. They are in cryostasis."
Jane sat absorbing this new information. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I tried the day after you moved in, but we got…..distracted." A soft smile appeared on her face at the memory.
"Oh yeah. You asked me if I wanted children."
"No, Jane, you asked me. I already knew that I wanted children. I had my eggs harvested before they became non-viable due to my age."
"Okay, so we have your eggs. Wow. We have your eggs."
"We do, but I won't be here to carry them." She waited for a reply. When one didn't come she continued. "If in the future you decide that you won't use them or they get too old, I want you to bury them at my headstone. I'm a scientist, and they could be used for research, but they are a part of me. And they are yours now."
"Is that even legal?"
"Darling, there is very little save murder that isn't legal for the wealthy somewhere in the world. Call Franklin if you have any questions."
"How long do I have to decide?"
"They are viable for 10-12 years in stasis. I harvested them about 2 years ago. You have a long time to decide. Put it on your calendar for 10 years from now. It's more likely that someone will call to let you know it's time."
Jane couldn't imagine, at this moment, that she would want to carry Maura's baby after her death, but hearts change. Maybe one day, the path would become clear and she would know what to do. Right now she would just hold her wife's hand and be her comfort. The rest fell to the wayside. Nothing else mattered except Maura.
Angela sat with the news for a long time. "I never knew that a woman could do that, but it sounds like Maura. So what's the rest of the story?"
"I waited a few months before I approached Chris with the crazy idea. I think that she wanted to curl up and be sad for a while so I let her. I took her out for a nice dinner and I told her Maura's story. All of it. She asked me to call Franklin the next day.
"Franklin. This is Jane Rizzoli. She didn't know whether to use Isles or Fontana so she left it where it was.
"Good day to you, Detective. I take it all is well?"
"Thank you for asking. I need to talk to you. I think we should probably meet in person maybe. I don't know the procedure here."
"Tell me what it is that you need and let me be the judge."
"I need to talk to you about Part VI of the portfolio packet you gave me."
"Yes. Very well. We will need to meet. I can do it as soon as tomorrow morning at 10 am."
"That's perfect. Is it alright if I bring Chris?"
"You don't need to ask my permission to bring your spouse, Detective. She's your heir and is always welcome at our meetings at your discretion."
"Great. We will see you tomorrow."
Jane sat again for a long time in comfortable silence, this time with her mother. They watched the boys and MJ as they did what their minds led them to do. "So, long story short."
"Jane, it's been a long story long, but go ahead."
"Chris agreed that we should use Maura's eggs if she could choose the sperm donor. I have never known who it was. For all I know she used a friend or someone from the book. She's never said and I have never asked. We have gorgeous children and that's all I care about. Well, I care that they are biologically Maura's. MJ is so much like her it scares me and makes me cry sometimes. Her voice is changing and it sounds just like her. So, that's our story."
Chris finally let the boys run on their own and joined the other women on the blanket. "Boys! You stay where one of us can see you!"
They received a "Yes, ma'am." in unison.
"You guys are being awfully quiet. What's up."
"Ma, figured it out."
"Figured what out?"
"Our story about the kids."
"Ah. It was bound to happen. Moms and grandmas know. Angela, how do you feel about it?"
"I…." Tears began to fall. "I am so happy for you both that you have such beautiful children. Maura was really an angel. Chris, honey, I'm so sorry that you went through so much to have them."
Chris looked around at her family. "Angela, they are worth every second of what we went through. They are a gift. A true and wonderful gift."
Jane looked at her watch. "It's about time to go. Gotta set up the party."
Chris yelled out for her children. Maura's children. "HEY! Kids! Let's go! We have a birthday to celebrate!"
The family packed up and left the stone sitting in the warm sun holding secrets and math homework in its strength. One more time the family had recalled the memories of the woman the stone commemorated. It was one of the more revered stones. The stone didn't care. It held a place on the hill for the people who loved the woman etched into its face. Silent, it stood. Waiting. Honoring.
