A/N: Flashbacks in italics.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Standing in front of the doorway, she obsesses over her second pass at the Mills case and every way it went wrong...
.
.
She watches as the fire crew quickly smother her blazing car, a steaming, smoking shell, grey and ashen by the side of the road. Thinks about how she left Frost sitting inside, how he could have died right there.
Someone jokes about her paying to replace it, about having money taken from her paycheck every month to cover a new vehicle, but she's doesn't have it in her to laugh. Can barely manage an unimpressed grimace as she mutters, "Ha ha. Jackass." Because what has happened is bad, but her mind's eye is filled with how it could have been so much worse.
She refuses treatment from the paramedic, but lurks beside the ambulance as they check over Frost and Frankie. Tells them Frost is lying when he insists he doesn't need a trip to the hospital, tells them he needs x-rays and other tests for the injuries hidden beneath his clothes and she can see in his face that he's already plotting revenge.
He glowers but she ignores it. Makes Frankie go in the ambulance with him for good measure, and then they both hate her. It's worth it to know they're both going to be okay.
She watches forlornly as the doors to another ambulance are slammed shut. As it drives away carrying a little girl and a CPS worker. Crosses her fingers and hopes that Kelsey has a grandparent willing to open their heart and their home to her, in this life as it was in the other, but knows that crossing her fingers does nothing to repair the damage she's caused.
.
.
She paces. Wonders if things would have gone pear-shaped even without her ill-chosen interference. After all, some cases are just plain difficult and occasionally no one gets the outcome they want, even when they do everything right.
But it's no use. There's no avoiding the fact that this almost-disaster was a result of her decisions alone.
She caused this. It's her fault. Knows it for a fact, like the sky is blue or grass is green. Doesn't waste a single second on any other theory, just cuts through the shock straight to disgust and self-loathing and oh my god, what on earth has she done?!
.
.
She watches as the tow truck drags both vehicles out of the reservoir, creaking and groaning, water spilling out. Gets her first look at the massive piece of metal, part of the roadside barrier that had pierced through Frankie's patrol car. Can't breathe when she sees how close its sharp and jagged end came to the driver's seat and has to sit down.
She stares with morbid fascination as Charlie's truck door is levered open, his pale corpse removed and zipped into a body bag. It's not hard to imagine how many more bags could have been filled today.
Maura catches her eye as the team stows him away in the back of the Medical Examiner's transport, but she turns away. Haunted by a dozen different endings and drowning in guilt.
She can't look anymore. Just had to make sure he was gone. That it is over.
.
.
She pushed Charlie too far. Pushed and threatened and the second they let him go he knew they were onto him. That there would be no escape.
There were no cards kept to her chest that day. No hedging her bets or waiting for results to back up her suspicions. Not like the first time. She showed every hand she had, laid it all out before him on the interview room table.
Impatient and stupid.
.
.
Someone wraps her in a blanket and bundles her into the back of Korsak's car.
When he climbs into the driver's seat, huffing and grumbling, she hands him her badge and gun without protest. Nods silently and tearfully as she's given the reprimand of her life.
He talks about an internal investigation; about how the statements of Frankie and Frost support the preliminary theory that they were the victims of an attacker so desperate to escape, he caused his own demise and barely missed taking three officers with him but the words fade in and out like she's not fully inside her own body any more.
He tells her she'll likely be in Evidence Management for some time once she gets her badge back, as punishment for disobeying direct orders, but that, in the end, the outcome isn't so bad and it'll just be a blip on her otherwise impressive record.
"You did good, Jane," he says, as heels on asphalt approach and he winds down his window.
"Thanks," she replies, though the word catches in her throat, strangled, and she coughs. Doesn't want to cry again.
Maura leans in to the Sergeant from outside the window, gestures to the empty seat behind him. "May I?"
"Sure, Doc," he says and climbs quickly out as Maura slides in beside Jane.
"I have a couple of butterfly stitches here," she explains matter-of-factly, producing several items out of a small first aid pack in her lap, "which I can apply to that cut and save you a trip to the emergency room."
Jane holds her gaze for a long moment, sees the determination in Maura's face, and feels her frozen insides melt just a little.
"Will you let me clean you up?" Maura asks, brusque, as if dealing with a prickly stranger and not her best friend. But, then she adds, "Please?" and it is softer, pleading, the façade breaking, as if she can no more pretend to be unaffected by seeing Jane injured than Jane can pretend she doesn't want to be close to this woman, to be taken care of by this wonderful woman.
She nods her assent, watches all the while as Maura prepares cotton wool with antiseptic and then begins to clean her wound. Watches, even as her vision blurs with tears, from the sting, from the pain of knowing she doesn't deserve this kind of care, but can't tear her eyes away.
"You did g -" Maura tries, but a sharp inhale from Jane cuts her off.
"Don't… Maura," she whispers, hand latching instinctively around Maura's wrist, stilling her movements. She screws her eyes closed and the built up tears run down her face. "Don't say good. None of this is good. I've made so – so many mistakes -"
"Jane," Maura breathes, her fingers coming to stroke gently at a wet cheek.
"But I'm going to fix it," she says, clears her throat and pulls herself together. Gives Maura a short, sharp nod. "I promise."
"I believe you," Maura says softly with a tiny smile and the numbness inside Jane recedes until she forgets herself.
"I lo -" she starts without thinking, but catches it inside another cough. She can't say those words in this life, not yet anyway. If ever.
"I have to go," she says instead, once Maura is done placing the sterile strips on her temple. Shucking her blanket, she climbs out of the car and quickly strides away.
.
.
One more bad move and she'd have been unemployed, estranged from her best friend, grieving her partner, her brother, and an innocent little girl who got caught in her selfishly blinkered crosshairs.
Things couldn't have gone much worse. And the whole debacle makes her want to climb the nearest fire escape all the way to the roof and jump.
That would be one way to escape. This is another.
The light that emanates from the doorway is dim now. It flickers almost completely out every ten seconds or so, makes her heart skip a beat each time, before it bursts back to life. Like a lightbulb surging just before it dies. And it will die, she concludes, whatever it is.
Sooner or later, she'll have to make a decision about where to remain. And she swears she'll think about it even as she fights with all her strength to push her body through the dying doorway, to get to the comfort she craves, to get to her alternate life. To her Maura.
Just one more time, she bargains. Just once, and then she'll put a stop to it.