Chapter Thirty Six

"Don't do it, God don't do it… please don't do it."

The sound of Jane crying out in her sleep travelled all the way down the stairs, causing Maura to freeze in her tracks. She could tell instantly that Jane was mid nightmare. She cast her eyes towards the stairs contemplating whether she ought to check on her friend. Despite her grave reservations her urge to care for Jane superseded her frustrations. She quickly made her way upstairs and across the landing to the spare room, where she gently opened the door and looked inside.

Jane tossed and turned, once again calling out, "Don't, please don't…"

It was mid evening and Maura recognised she probably should have woken Jane after a couple of hours to help her adjust to the timezone, but she hadn't been able to bring herself to face her again so soon after their argument. Now she leaned towards just letting Jane ride out the nightmare and hopefully sleep a little late. Granted even if Jane slept late she would be up obnoxiously early even by her own standards. She was caught in two minds.

Jane sat up violently, disorientated. She eventually noticed the light creeping in through the crack in the door and her eyes fell on the concerned look on Maura's face. Her eyes reflexively softened, seeing Maura there always brought her a feeling of safety, but when her brain caught up with everything that had happened she let out a groan and flopped back onto the mattress. She grabbed the extra pillow and buried her face in it. Mumbling, "Go away Maura," through it. She felt ashamed and saddened by her behaviour, but really didn't want to be scolded right then. Her nightmare still haunted her quite vividly.

Maura nodded despite the fact that Jane couldn't see her and closed the door. Jane's tone had definitely been more promising but she didn't want to push. She'd take the borderline exasperated, it's-too-early-to-be-awake tone, any day of the week over the anger from the afternoon. She was shocked when the door opened suddenly.

"Since when do you do what I tell you?" Jane asked pointedly.

"Since I really do not want a repeat of this afternoon."

Jane scratched the back of her neck and sighed sadly. She could tell from one look that Maura was weary, and as she focused harder she thought she could tell that she had been crying recently.

Great, way to have been an asshole Jane.

Shifting focus she asked, "Did I call out in my sleep?"

"You sounded very distressed." Maura folded her hands in front of her body and studied Jane closely in an attempt to determine her frame of mind.

Jane nodded almost imperceptibly. The nightmare had been a doozy of an amalgamation with Hoyt having both Maura and Melissa tied up, he had been taunting Jane telling her to choose. It was probably the worst nightmare she had experienced since his death. Her subconscious wasn't playing nice at all. "Yeah, definitely something like that."

"Did you need to talk about it?" Maura's question lacked the usual tenderness it would hold in that situation. She wasn't trying to be dismissive, but she definitely found she felt less concerned for Jane while she was awake.

Jane held her hands out palms up and shrugged. "Is there any point? I know I found all new ways to hurt you earlier, which was exactly why I chose Missy in the first place."

Maura considered what Jane had to say and it was the defeated tone that caught her attention. She searched her friend's eyes and saw regret and for a fleeting moment she could have sworn she saw a deep longing, but Jane looked away before she could be satisfied that had been what she had witnessed. Still she decided she was ready to try again to talk things through with Jane, if her friend wanted that. "I'll make us some tea and we can talk."

"I don't understand what's going on with you."

Jane resisted the temptation to laugh because that made two of them. She wasn't oblivious, she knew she had spiralled into a deep, desperate depression and her emotions were so volatile, her mini eruptions had been building in number and she worried that there was worse to come. Despite understanding that, she felt so apathetic towards doing the work to come out the other side, and that was what left her confused. Why didn't she care at all anymore? Perhaps it was because she had dug a hole so deep for herself that she felt like there was no possible escape. Maura was her lifeline, but how was she supposed to reach for that tether when Maura had cut it a mere two weeks ago. Not that she could blame her. Jane may as well have cut the tether herself, she was the one to let go in the first place.

"Does it really matter? You made your position quite clear back in Boston."

"You matter to me Jane. You have always mattered." Maura sipped her tea and studied Jane carefully. Her friend sat opposite her in an armchair and while she had declined tea, she had at least ventured downstairs to join her in the living room to talk. That felt like progress to Maura, but there was still so much to unpack.

Maybe that was part of the problem, Jane realised. She had been so angry about the way with which Maura chose to leave Boston, but at the end of the day after her experience with Hoyt in his final days she had been thankful that Maura had left. Maura had always doted on her, and if she had actually opened her eyes to that in the past so much of the heartache they had given one another may have been avoided. She was irrationally angry with Maura for that, while also being relieved.

She shuddered thinking about Hoyt and the fact his plan had probably involved murdering Maura in front of her eyes. Maura's unexpected departure had probably saved her life, because the way she had just let him leer over her and the way she had accepted her fate… it chilled her to the bone. "He knew, you know." Jane said so casually, not really noticing whether Maura was following the change of direction. "He had meticulously planned to trap us both, knowing full well that you were my greatest weakness. He wanted me to watch you die."

Maura didn't miss a beat, she recognised the significance of what hadn't been spoken aloud. "Charles Hoyt was quite astute at reading his victims. He had a highly honed understanding of human behaviour, Jane. It's no fault of your own that he understood our feelings for one another before you did."

"If I had, the entire course of our relationship may have been changed. You may have been there with me. You may well have died in front of my eyes. I didn't move, Maura. If you had been there, I would have watched you die, unable to do a damn thing." Jane rolled her head to the side so that she could look away from Maura, too ashamed to meet her concerned gaze. "And yet I'm still so angry that you left me behind."

"I highly doubt the veracity of your hypothesis, Jane. If there is one thing I have learned about you in the time I've known you, it's that you are relentless with your desire to protect others. You wouldn't have been frozen with fear if I were there, or anybody else at all for that matter. You don't like being referred to as a hero Jane, but there really is nothing more apt to describe your behaviour in dire situations other than heroic."

Jane turned back to meet Maura's gaze, feeling so helpless at the hands of this onslaught of kindness. She didn't deserve the kindness of her best friend, and she was far from heroic. "I'm not sure pushing you away as I did when you told me how you felt was very heroic, in fact it felt rather cowardly."

Maura's head tilted to the side as it was prone to doing from time to time when she was seriously thinking about what she had heard. It was difficult to maintain the sense of calm she had been given the rawness of Jane's rejection, but she didn't want to escalate the situation. Jane had found a place of calm and an openness that was rare. She had no intention of risking that just because she still felt the sting of rejection. After several subtle calming breaths she said, "I do believe you were convinced that breaking Melissa's heart would lead to her death by suicide. Am I correct in that belief?"

Jane simply nodded.

"Then if what you said to me was true, and I do believe in my heart it was, in your own irrational, illogical way, you were acting heroically."

"Just stop calling me heroic Maura." Jane retorted brusquely, she felt anything but. "Yeah I genuinely worried about her ability to handle another heavy emotional blow, and yeah I chose that over my own heart, but it wasn't heroic. It was cowardly. It was fearful. Mentally, emotionally, I've been at my tipping point for months. Even now as we sit here calmly talking, my insides are churning and I feel myself inching ever so closer to total self destruction. I just wanted to save you from that… from seeing me like that."

"Jane," Maura was ready to defend Jane against her beliefs.

"No!" Jane interrupted forcefully, "You don't understand. I told Missy to kill herself. It was meant to be sarcasm, but it doesn't change the fact I said that and doesn't change the damage that I did. That's not fucking heroic."

That admission was simultaneously painful and enlightening. It was painful to hear how far Jane had fallen, and that in her own way she had played a part in figuratively bringing Jane to her knees. She had suggested Melissa be the one to help pull Jane out of her reliance on alcohol. She had believed that love was the answer and it had ended in disaster for Jane. On the other side of the equation was the understanding behind Jane's irrational stubbornness in staying with someone she admittedly didn't love as she loved Maura. It felt a lot less heroic, just as Jane had been declaring, but it didn't feel cowardly to Maura. It simply felt like an act of penance and as far as Maura was concerned, if anybody had earned forgiveness regardless of actions while at her worst it was Jane Rizzoli.

"Perhaps not, but your act of penance is over now. Melissa has chosen her own path, and you no longer have to punish yourself."

Jane wished that were true. Melissa may have decided her fate lay elsewhere, but Jane had hurt Maura as much if not more. "I hurt you Maura. I walked away from you. I told you I loved you and then I walked away."

Maura took a moment to sip some more of her tea. She needed the time to think and to settle her feelings. Finally she settled on, "No, you didn't tell me you loved me Jane. I believe your exact words were 'you're more than just a North star to me, you're all of the stars and the moon and the sun'. There was no mention of love."

Jane's jaw dropped rather unseemingly. She stared at Maura, caught between so many different feelings that all squished together like a giant ball of rubber bands. She wasn't sure it was safe to even begin to unwrap what she felt, for fear of getting smacked hard in the face. So she just stared, a little dumbfounded. She could dare to hope that Maura had left an opening for her heart to reach through, but that was a scary proposition. "Semantics," she eventually uttered slyly.

Maura smiled. She was ready to forgive. She wasn't ready to forget, and there was still so much to work through, but she felt hopeful for the first time in weeks. "You owe me no penance Jane. I don't want you to punish yourself for making the best of an emotionally fraught situation."

Jane picked her jaw up from the floor and scratched the back of her head. It was nice seeing Maura smile again. It was the first time in a long time that she had seen it, and it melted her heart just like it would every time before. She couldn't bear the thought of life without Maura, and even with the fear of her impending self destruction, she didn't want to deny what her heart had been telling her for years for another single moment. "I'm so sorry for the way I've treated you Maura. Honestly, I'd have deserved it if you had chosen to wash your hands of me altogether. Is there anything I can do to make you reconsider your decision to not allow me to come crawling back now that I know better?"

Maura quirked an eyebrow. "Would you be more specific with your intentions, Jane?"

Jane huffed, of course Maura was going to make her earn it. She stood, crossed the space between them and knelt down in front of her best friend. She gently took the teacup and saucer from Maura and placed it on the coffee table. She turned back and took Maura's hands in her own and took a deep breath before looking into welcoming hazel eyes. "I love you Maura, you truly are the entire universe to me. I know I'm a broken woman, but I'm willing to do the work if it means you'll even consider giving me one more chance to love you the way you should be loved." Jane had to pause to take another breath, she felt so vulnerable putting it all out there, knowing full well Maura had every right to kick her to the curb. "I'm saying, I'd like to date you, be your girlfriend, be whatever you want me to be. God, Maura I'd marry you tomorrow if that's what it took."

Maura looked down at where Jane held her hands and back to soulful brown eyes, and in her heart she knew that she was so unequivocally Jane's. "The next time you ask me that, make it a little more romantic Jane."

Jane's brows furrowed in confusion, before she ended up grinning widely. "Is that a yes to us?" She asked, letting go of Maura's hands to rapidly gesture between the two of them in her distinctly Rizzoli fashion.

"That's a yes to seeing if you can do the work." Maura wasn't worried, she knew Jane was in a dark place, but the entire conversation they'd just had was difficult and Jane had sat through it. She knew Jane would do the work; whine incessantly about having to do it of course, but do it nonetheless. "You need therapy Jane, and you need to take it seriously. You also need to consider whether pursuing a romantic relationship with me is what you truly want, because Jane as much as I forgive you in the light of understanding the circumstances, my heart can't take any more recklessness. You need to understand what that means for you."

Jane sat back on her haunches, feeling slightly deflated, but also understanding that Maura had every right to protect her heart. She hated the idea of therapy, but even she knew she needed help. "Yes to therapy. What else does it mean for me Maura? What are your terms?"

"I'm not moving back to Boston. I have friends here, friends that I care deeply about and that includes Gabby, that's not negotiable. I want you here with me, Jane. I'm not interested in some long distance relationship where I see you for two weeks of the year. I recognise that's a lot to ask and a lot for you to give up, and that's why I want you to think about it. If it's too much I will understand, and we can simply be what we have always been, best friends."

A lot to ask? Jane felt like her left tackle had fallen asleep on the job and not only had she been blind sided, her head had been knocked clean off in the process. She thought she was about to throw for a touchdown, and instead she had not only been sacked, but viciously KO'd in the process. Her job. Her family. Her friends. Having to put up with Gabby in her life. Yet, what she settled on voicing was, "What about Bass?"

Maura hadn't expected that question of all questions. "He will be just fine with Angela, he has spent so much time with her already since I've been gone."

Valid point. Jane sighed. She needed time to think. It was a no-brainer if it meant they spent their life together, but she wasn't exactly going to be good old Jane any time soon. What if broken Jane became too much for Maura to handle? Could she take the risk of giving up her entire life on what had to be fifty fifty odds at best? She definitely had to think. "You're asking me to give up my career and basically my entire life and we don't even know if I can be fixed."

Maura knew Jane was scared, but she couldn't help but answer honestly. "Jane, if you can't be fixed, your career is already over. I however love you unequivocally. As long as you are putting your best foot forward, I won't leave you. I could never leave you, no matter how broken you may feel."

"You don't know that, Maura. I never thought Missy would leave me, and she did."

Maura reached out and cupped Jane's cheek, "Love, her heart was never truly yours. Mine is."

Jane leaned into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed. Of that she had no doubt. "I have taken three months of stress leave. What if we just see how things go, allowing me time to do some hard work, enabling us to make sure that this is going to work for both of us?"

Maura's immediate reflex was fear for her heart. Three months of loving Jane and helping her do the work, and becoming all the more attached. What if Jane then decided she couldn't give up her life? It was a risk she had to take. She was asking a lot of Jane, and this compromise was more than fair. She nodded slowly, "I'm agreeable to that, on one condition."

Jane's eyes opened and she raised a querying eyebrow, "And what's that?"

"That you kiss me now."

Jane grinned. She was more than amenable to that. She stood and put her hand out, helping Maura up when she took it. It was a slow gentle kiss, nothing like either of the kisses that had come before for them, and yet it left Jane feeling hopeful, and like she had found home.

"I thought you'd never ask."

A/N: We are getting closer to the the end now. I think three chapters and an epilogue is what we're looking at. Thanks as always for reading along and supporting me as you have. It means a great deal to me to entertain people with my stories.