CHAPTER THREE

She makes to leave immediately once their scene investigation is over, wants to call her partner and have him do his thing as soon as possible to get them a head start, but Maura is quick to catch her elbow at the door.

"Promise me you'll call if you're not going to be home for dinner."

"Uh..." she blinks, tries to recall any conversation about joint plans for tonight but comes up blank.

Maura sighs hard again and Jane notes that it's happening a lot more than usual today. Combined with the frequent eye rolls and other odd behavior it feels like a slightly different version of her best friend.

"I know you, Jane. You'll work 'til you drop trying to find that missing girl. I don't expect anything less. But if I don't see you, I would at least like to know you're okay, so that I can get some sleep."

There's a hand on her arm again and Maura's breath on her face and she can't think. Tenderness oozes from the blonde's every pore and it's so much like everything Jane has ever wanted that she's considering reinstating that dream theory. She's tempted to lean in and see if Maura might kiss her again. It feels like she would.

Instead she nods, shucks a thumb over her shoulder and starts to slowly back away. "I'll call you. I gotta go." She's already reaching for the phone clipped to her belt when she turns and mutters, "I need to talk to Frost."

"Oh."

It's just one syllable. But that singular note drips with so much emotion it's as effective as a gunshot in making her stop and turn back.

"Okay. Well..." There's a cloud of something dark in Maura's eyes, but it lifts a breath later and Jane barely has time to frown in question. "A bottle of Bordeaux would be wonderful with dinner, just... if you happen to pass DeLuca's on your way back from the cemetery."

It's the tentative pause that gives Maura away. The first thing that came to the blonde's mind wasn't the first thing out of that beautiful mouth. She has no idea what topic Maura just avoided, or what the hell the cemetery has to do with anything.

"Only if you have time," the doctor adds, much brighter now but with a sympathetic pat to her arm.

Trying to make sense of today's events makes her head hurt almost as much as the lump that still sends occasional shooting pains ricocheting around her skull. Now is probably a good time to get a brain scan.

She spends a full ten seconds with her phone to her ear, pressing the fingers of her free hand into the knot of stress in her neck and watching Maura's retreating figure once more before she realizes the call hasn't even connected.

Frost's speed dial hasn't worked and she shakes her head at a blank screen as Maura's car pulls away and leaves the scene. Trying and failing to find his number in her contacts sends her stomach into a nauseating flip as the pieces clumsily start to click together.

She has the evidence, knows what it all would mean if it were part of a case. But she doesn't like her conclusion, refuses to believe it. Her instincts are on point and her gut screams answers. For the first time in her life, she doesn't want to listen.

But she has no other option, and so she dials a different number and tries to ignore the shiver that runs up her spine.

The call connects just as a feint breeze drops and suddenly it's as if she's alone on an abandoned soundstage or movie set. It's much too quiet, too still. Goosebumps blaze a trail for unease as it snakes its way through her limbs.

A deep voice in her ear brings her back to earth and she blurts, "Korsak! Don't leave yet. I need a favor."

She falls heavily into the passenger seat of Korsak's unmarked car.

"What's up, Jane?"

"Vince, look…" She sighs hard, hopes the use of his first name is enough to show she's here for something serious. What she's about to do feels a bit surreal and she buries one hand beneath her hair to rub at the very real lump under her scalp. Breathing deeply again, she wills herself to stop stalling and start talking. "Here's the thing… I took a really nasty knock to the head last night and now some things are kinda… fuzzy."

She watches his wiry eyebrows dance up and down in surprise and concern.

"You need a ride to the hospital?"

She waves her free hand to dismiss him and props her elbow up on the inside of the car door. "No, no, I already got checked out." It's an outright lie of course and she stares pointedly out of the windscreen. Worrying that he might want to confirm her story makes her feel like a perp with a shaky alibi.

When he's still silent a couple of beats later she turns, and dark brown eyes flick nervously between his and the view beyond the driver's side window. "I just – it sounds ridiculous but I need to like… realign my memories, have you clarify some details y'know. Everything's really jumbled up right now." And that's not strictly a lie; she is very confused. Convincing him to go along with this scenario feels like the quickest way to the truth.

With animated hands, she puts it as plainly as she can in the hopes that she'll get the same in return. "So, when I ask a question just pretend I'm not really me. Imagine I have amnesia or something and tell it to me straight, okay?"

"Okay," Korsak offers quietly. It's tentative and suspicious and he peers at her below a tightly drawn brow like he thinks maybe she should get a second opinion and have her head checked again. And maybe she should.

There aren't many people who would be this patient with her and so she's silently grateful for his cooperation, even if it's most likely only due to curiosity on his part. To see where she's going with this. He's an old school detective after all and she'd probably do the same.

"Okay..." She swallows hard ahead of her first question. Lets it hang in the air between them. "So, Frost is…?"

He blinks a couple of times and then breathes, "Jesus, Jane." It's a heavy whisper laden with sadness and sympathy. A thick swallow from him betrays more than any words might as he looks away. "Are you seeing him again?"

Again? Her heart clenches painfully. She just saw him yesterday! But she hasn't seen him today. Got the feeling Maura hasn't seen him in months. "No," she supplies, not knowing what else to say, but it lilts up at the end in uncertainty, almost a question. Like the dozens more that swim through her veins, begging desperately for answers.

"I don't know how she knew, but Maura said this might come up again today." Now it's Korsak's turn to stare out the windscreen. "You scared us in the beginning, y'know, those weeks after the funeral. Running into traffic like that, chasing after his ghost like your life depended on it. You're lucky one of those cars didn't hit you! I lost count of the number of times you screamed at me to stop the car and let you out."

He shakes his head softly. His eyes are all glassy, and it's so genuinely painful to watch that she tears up alongside him.

"Oh god," she mutters, but it does little to interrupt him as he continues to say things that threaten to break her heart.

"I'm just glad you accepted the help, Jane. We'd already lost him; we didn't want to lose you, too. And we can get your wellbeing appointments started up again, if you're… if you need them. You didn't seem like yourself in there."

Eyes closed and trying to stem tears, she cringes for three reasons.

One. The term 'wellbeing' is deliberately non-specific, employed by BPD to protect an officer's dignity they claim. Sessions that cover anything from a sprained ankle to severe PTSD, and she's found the vague generalization irrationally irritating from day one.

Jane knows wellbeing appointments, has suffered through a variety of sessions, most tending toward the latter end of the scale after multiple experiences with Charles Hoyt.

Those are memories that will make her squirm until her dying day.

Two. 'We' sounds like an awful lot of people. More than just Korsak and Maura. Or even Korsak and Maura and her mother.

The way he says 'we', and repeats it, emphasizes it, sounds like Korsak and Maura and Angela and Frankie and Cavanaugh and most of the damn precinct and she's mortified to the point of cheeks burning from even imagining herself in that position.

And three. It sounds awfully like her best friend and partner died, and she endangered herself by hallucinating him during an emotional breakdown.

Maura might say there are many reasons why she doesn't remember any of this happening - memory repression, psychosis, plain old denial – though nothing feels more true than it just didn't happen. Not to her anyway. Not in her lifetime.

This bang on the head is turning into one hell of a trip. And every thought, every theory on what's happening to her stretches the silence that surrounds them. The whole situation just doesn't bear thinking about.

Fear and apprehension rolls off Korsak in waves now and Jane knows he's mistaken her silence and red face for something else. She just can't set him straight. The truth as she knows it would put her one foot inside the nearest insane asylum.

"Maura doesn't have to know you're talking to someone again, if it bothers you that mu -"

"No, no. That's not -" He really does know her so well, and that rare familiarity, that pseudo-fatherly love pumps warmth all the way to her fingertips. "It's -" She shakes her head. It feels safer and more sensible to move on to the next important question. "Me and Maura… How did we, I mean – When did -"

"You get together?" he cuts in. "I don't know exactly. I remember we drank 'til late one Friday night at the Robber and you just – you held hands as you left. Nobody questioned it. Whether you were already together at that point or whether that was the first night you realized there was more for you at Maura's than just a guest room… I certainly never asked." Broad shoulders shrug loosely as a smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. "Because it didn't matter. Still doesn't. You two always seemed like you were headed that way. I guess losing Frost just gave you the push you needed."

She is pretty much lost inside her own head, more unanswerable questions piling up by the minute. Wants to scream are you shitting me?! and pound something with her clenched fists.

She's never touched hard drugs but maybe this is what it feels like. Are the fresh and recent memories of Frost something else, her mind playing tricks, while her real life is rooted here?

Here, where… "Everything's different," she sniffs.

"Nothing's changed. Not really," Korsak says, a sprinkle of brightness lightening his eyes until they dip, mirroring the drop in tone and volume of his gravelly voice. "Well, apart from -"

"I get it." And she does get it, doesn't need to hear him say it again. She gets it like she's been hit over the head with something heavy. Heavy like a tombstone maybe. Barry's tombstone, which doesn't exist because he's not dead.

Yet it does and he is.

Here, in whatever wicked and twisted version of reality she seems to occupy, she and her best friend are together and Frost is dead. Because Frost is dead.

It's a dream come true and her worst nightmare all at once. But no matter how hard she pinches the skin on the back of her right hand she doesn't wake up. There seems to be no escape.

Without warning, she opens the door and climbs out. "I'll see you back at the precinct," she mutters and stalks quickly away.