A/N: Thanks to everyone for the continued support through reviews as well as the delightful PMs – AND special thanks to my beta clody whom I, shame on me, mention for the first time in this chapter. Enjoy!
Chapter 4: Unconquerable soul
Jane creeps around the kitchen, ears pricked, on alert. A cold breeze hits her and she gazes into the living room. The door to the backyard is ajar – not wide enough for a grown up to squeeze through, though. She waves at Maura, who is already approaching the living room area, then turns back towards the kitchen unit and softly knocks against one of the cabinets.
"Someone in there?" she asks, her voice testing and low.
"No", comes the instant reply and Jane has to chuckle as she pulls open the door to find Charra on the other side. He jumps at the sight of her, even though he should have figured out that he got made. A smile is creeping up his face and he is about to leap forward and into Jane's arms, when a blood-curdling scream erupts from the garden, making them both wince this time.
Alban even beats them to the glass door, the game forgotten and the frightened cry correctly interpreted.
They find Maura kneeling on the lawn, quiet now, but rocking herself. It is a disturbing and unsettling picture. Jane falls onto her knees, ignoring the pain of colliding with the hard and icy ground, and crawls next to the shivering medical examiner. She puts a hand on the woman's back and one on her forehead, trying to comfort her, while searching for the source of the hurt she seems to be experiencing. Eventually, she pries away Maura's arms when she notices that the medical examiner is clutching something to her chest.
It is Eli – head hanging limply from his stiff body; his eyes are hollow.
What is wrong with him? Alban asks, too stunned to use spoken words. Jane can read his signing even from the corner of her eye and she knows it is for her to answer, because Maura is squeezing her eyes shut and appears to be trying to block out her surroundings.
"Eli has gone to heaven." The sentence is intuitive, instinctive even, and not thought through at all. The potential meaning only becomes clear to Jane when Charra puts a hand on Maura's back and says: "Mommy, it's alright, Hadhaa tiyya can watch him now."
Yet the little boy's consoling words, about his biological mother taking care of their cat, have no effect on the softly swaying doctor.
"Mommy", Charra tries again, sounding on the verge of tears.
"Maura", Jane says more firmly than the little boy, and taps the doctor's knee. She is overwhelmed with the desire to actually be able to speak a fourth language that only Maura and her would understand. "You gotta snap out of it", she finally pushes, keeping her voice down because there is at least a slight chance that Alban will not catch it. It is a futile attempt, though. No one can read Jane's face better than Alban; and right now, she is not able to force the worry she feels from her features.
And Maura follows her command, as if that had been all she needed. She nods once, puts Eli down, and stands quickly, brushing off the dirt from her trousers.
"Let's wrap him in a blanket for now." Her voice is calm and steady. It creeps Jane out more than everything else that has just happened.
.
Putting the boys to bed that night is a long and tiring process. They are practically buzzing with questions about what just happened, to Eli as well as to their mother, and Jane feels like she might go nuts if she herself cannot find answers to that soon. Answers that require a different version than what she feels comfortable telling the kids.
When they finally fall asleep and the women step inside the living room, Jane speaks, "I am so sorry, Maur'. I know you loved that cat and I harshly cut short your time to grieve."
"You were right to do so. And I still love him."
"I'm so sorry."
"You already said-"
But Jane cuts her short again by enveloping her in a hug.
"Someone opened that door to get to him", Maura mumbles into Jane's shoulder. The detective nods softly.
They call CSU and let them check the back door for fingerprints and look for footprints in the garden. They hand over the cadaver of their pet. They have said their goodbyes this afternoon, with the boys. Maura has been stoic throughout all of it.
When the door closes behind the forensic team, their colleagues, Jane says, "Come on, I wanna show you something."
The medical examiner follows her into the study, where Jane pulls the old tool box out of the shelf she usually keeps it on, in and places it on the floor. She motions toward it.
"I can have a look inside?" Maura sounds incredulous and watches as Jane kneels next to the box.
"I didn't just pick out certain items for you to look at. You are allowed to see everything."
Maura understands. She is speechless and hesitant as she squats down beside Jane. When she finally opens the lid, however, she looks like she expects there to be a chance that the box could belong to Pandora.
At first sight, it is chaos. Maura first considers a joke about it being a mini-version of Jane's apartment, but then, she does not want to remind the detective of the arson. Not after the day they just had. The medical examiner lets her fingers slide over the small, and even smaller objects that lay in there, all in a tumble. Jane cannot take her eyes of Maura, who touches everything so reverently, as if she is handling antiques.
Right in the center of the jumbled items lie three small pebbles. Maura gathers them carefully in her palm. Her name is written on one of them, in black ink and with fine letters. The other two hold the names Alban and Charra.
"Those are the good stones", Jane answers Maura's quizzical face.
"The good stones", Maura echoes and waits for the meaning to click.
"I had to make them", Jane explains. "They are the good stones and I needed them, because I hated that metaphor of your therapist so much that I'm still haunted by it. I still cannot grasp why you would picture your life as a glass?"
Maura has to chuckle a little at Jane bringing this up after more than two years. Then again, it was Maura who had expressed in her letter the need to talk about what had happened back then. "Why wouldn't it be a glass? It is something fine and delicate-"
"And hollow, see-through and also a very breakable object by the way."
"Well, I give you that."
"And then you filled it with many ugly gray stones and water, which means more see-through stuff. Water that was supposed to represent the good things, but all it really did was make the pebbles appear bigger. All it did was make the trouble and trauma it represented look shinier."
Too late Maura realizes that Jane is talking herself into a rage, and she herself is too overwhelmed to decipher what kind of emotion or state of weariness has brought this on. She hates that the tender moment from when she first got glimpse of Jane's treasures is gone.
"You know, I actually counted them. 67, Maura. 67 fucking stones and it had me make a list of all the bad things that happened to you, all that I could think of, just to see if I could prove that horrible number wrong."
"What did you come up with?" The doctor's question is timid.
"What did I- seriously, Maura? What, so you wanna compare notes? I'll tell you what I came up with: that there's no way to count or measure something like that. How many stones for all the things your mothers and fathers put you through!? Which is such a weird sentence and makes me feel so sorry for you, 'cause you actually have four parents who failed you."
"That doesn't do them justice." Maura's reply almost sounds like a question. "There have been good times. Even with my family members."
"Fine." Jane is fuming. "Then how many stones for being framed for murder, interrogated by me, thinking you may have been raped, for you to actually consider for a moment that would be the better scenario 'cause it would justify self-defense, for being sent to prison, and attacked in there again?"
"Whatever, Jane", Maura mumbles. She blushes as she is assailed by a sense of guilt and shame for not being able to figure out why Jane is blowing up at her like this. Jane's anger washes over her and the sincerity and certainty in the detective's glare makes her believe she truly caused this - whatever she is supposed to call the situation that has developed between them. Jane scoots even closer to where Maura is still crouching on the floor. She is not done.
"Whatever!? Come on, Maura, I haven't even really started, yet." Her voice has been left by any tone and got reduced to a harsh rasp by now. "How many stones for the way Hoyt made you doubt yourself, electrocuted you and cut your throat with your own favorite instrument and weapon of choice?" Jane regrets her question the second it leaves her mouth, a trait that belongs to her, like one of the scars on her hands.
"What are you insinuating?" Maura hisses as she backs away, out of Jane's reach, and gets up looking down at the detective before the other woman slowly raises herself.
"I didn't-"
"Oh, like hell you didn't!" Finally she can focus on a different feeling than the one from before, which was solely directed at herself.
"Maura", Jane gasps, not sure what she wants to say, though. Maura brings up a trembling hand to rub at her forehead, her eyes fixed on the floor.
"This has been an emotionally straining day", Jane concludes after a moment of silence. Her brows are furrowed, but the anger has left her features.
"Yes, it has", Maura nods. She points at the box and asks, "Can we continue this some other time?" Her voice does not betray her, but she looks the way Jane feels: exhausted.
Without hesitation Jane says, "Definitely", and really means it, because the last thing she wanted was to keep Maura away from that treasure box any longer. "Actually, if you ever feel like exploring it, please, just go ahead."
"Thank you." Maura is touched. Even more so because of the way they have pulled themselves together again.
A/N: I bet the context made it clear, but in case you missed it: Hadhaa tiyya means 'my mother'.