The badge makes a soft noise every time Jane turns it over between her fingers, and, other than the soft snoring of the dog lying at her feet; it's the only noise in the apartment. She has the same urge she does when she's facing a particularly tough case- to break out the Hoover- but she resists it. She resists it because her life is not a homicide case and because she knows she'll only wake up her neighbors if she gives in. The thing is, she can't help but treat this like a homicide case. It's the only possible way to think about it in detail, logically and realistically, without losing her mind.

When she leans back into the couch, the marks Maura left behind on her lower back sting like she's doused them with salt water. They're the only thing that has her convinced any of the past hour and a half even happened- the before, the 'incident', the after. It all seems too sudden and too disjointed to be real.

The longer she thinks about it the more frustrated she gets. She's trying to decide if she's always had feelings for Maura and no matter what way she looks at it the answer is a resounding 'yes'. Hell, she went to yoga for Maura. She ran a marathon in a spandex suit with 'PUKE written on the front. And it was only because he was threatening Maura that Jane found the strength in her to kill Charles Hoyt. In fact, she'll be honestly surprised if pretty much everyone else hasn't already guessed- Frost and Korsak at the very least.

But she missed it. The 'hero detective' of BPD, the youngest detective ever to join her precinct- it went completely over her head. She wonders if Maura would see the irony in that and then decides she probably already has. The badge slips through her fingers when she fumbles it slightly and it wakes up Jo, who snuffles for a moment before getting up and moving to the other side of the room, giving Jane a look that could only be described as sympathetic.

At the very least she knows to keep her mouth shut. She knows better than to go looking for Maura, to call her up and babble something semi-coherent about how she thinks she might have been in love with her since… since a long time ago. Best-case scenario, Maura wouldn't believe her. Worst-case scenario, it would make things even worse.

.,.

There's no funeral.

Maura thinks Doyle probably would have wanted it that way, honestly, and she's glad she doesn't have to see people there for her sake; glad that there won't be a forlorn little group to remind her of who her father really was. This way is much easier, cleaner. In an ironic twist of fate it's a beautiful day when she watches them lower the coffin into the ground.

She would have gone alone to the memorial, but Barry insisted she have someone with her, and if not Jane, why not him? It's very sweet of him, she admits, and once she's actually there with him she realizes what a relief it is not to be alone. It's a warm day for Boston in November, warm enough that she has to shrug out of her jacket after ten minutes in the sun.

"He wasn't a bad man," she says finally, and for the first time, she believes it herself. She's picking at her cuticles- an old habit that she broke in college, which, following the shooting, seems to have returned with a vengeance. "He did bad things, but he wasn't a bad man." It reminds her of how she had justified Tommy's actions to Jane, months ago. Justified her supposed 'interest' in him- interest that, if it had existed at all, had been driven mostly by his similarities to his sister.

Barry nods, folding his coat over his arm. She wonders if it's a polite nod or if he believes her, if he agrees with her. Jane had spent time justifying Doyle to her, before she had been able to see the good in Doyle on her own, but she can't imagine that's what Jane remembered when she pulled the trigger. She doesn't want to imagine that's what Jane remembered about him if her instinct was to shoot him. In fact, she'd prefer not to think about Jane at all, because as angry as she is, she also feels horribly guilty, and she doesn't have the emotional capacity to juggle everything at once. "I can believe that," the detective's voice breaks into her thoughts, softly enough that she's not sure she heard him right until he continues, "he made you, after all, he couldn't have been all bad."

She's always thought of it the other way around. She's always thought of it in terms of his affect on her- if he were capable of killing, wasn't she, too, a killer at heart? But the way Barry said it gave her another idea, one that offered at least a little bit of comfort: If she had any generosity, any tenderness, any fundamental goodness in her, then maybe he had, as well.

And maybe not. "It's possible," she temporizes, even though she wishes she could stop herself, "but sciences suggests that children are the products of their environment, so it's more likely that my…'good' traits came from the parents who raised me."

She looks up and sees that Barry is watching her, jacket over his shoulder, both hands in his pockets. He shrugs where Jane would have made some caustic remark about her being the human reincarnation of Darwin's journals (although Locke would have been a more accurate choice), and says, without realizing how true it is, "then you have nothing to worry about, right? I mean, if the good parts couldn't have come from him, the bad couldn't have, either."

She smiles; until she realizes that means what she's done to Jane has come from her and no one else.

.,.

Having Maura back at BPD actually manages to make things worse.

Jane avoids her as much as she can, and when they absolutely have to interact, they do so as coldly and professionally as possible. There's no animosity between them- it's not as if Maura is snippy with her or anything- but there's no joy in the job anymore, not when Jane feels like she has to tiptoe around everyone else's feelings.

Frost seems to have taken Maura's side. Not that there are sides, she reminds herself, just that Frost has replaced her in the sense that he's the one, out of the two of them, that communicates things to her. Meanwhile, Korsak is 'checking up' on her every five minutes like he's waiting for her to turn around and spill her guts, tell him everything, down to each little detailed feeling she gets whenever Maura looks away from her.

She hits a breakthrough on their case- a murder victim's teenage son is missing- but when she goes to find Frost, his desk is empty. She finds Korsak in the café, where she intentionally ignores her mother, ignores precursory greetings and gets right to the point.

"Where's Frost?"
"Lunch break."
"I need to find him."
"They went to some new organic seafood place or something."
" They?"
"He and Maura."

She pauses, unsure of what she even wants to say. "What, are they like, dating, or something?"

"You're askin' the wrong guy." He shrugs, stirs his coffee, and makes the fatal mistake of sparing a glance in Angela's direction. She pounces on it immediately.

"And since when do you eat lunch here?"
"Hey, the food's really not that bad!"

She leaves without another word because it's the only option she can take that won't get her fired or kicked out of her own family.

.,.

Her life goes through a phase of weird fast-forwarding, the kind of thing that happens when every day is just like the one before and the one after, where things are the same kind of shitty every waking moment. The only thing that changes nightly is what she dreams about- it alternates.

Sometimes she dreams about Maura. Sometimes she dreams that she didn't take the shot- either that Frost did, or that Doyle had lowered his gun and she had let him go. Sometimes she has a stranger dream, a more abstract dream, one that she doesn't understand and isn't sure she wants to.

It always starts exactly the same- she's in a squad car. There's always an emergency, and it always involves Maura, but she's never sure exactly what the emergency was when she wakes up- just that it was urgent, and Maura's life depended on her getting there in time. And then, somehow, invariably, she ends up driving the car off of a dock, either it's out of control or it's necessary for some reason- and her seatbelt won't come undone. She struggles with it and the water comes all around and her arms stop working. She looks up and it's Maura's face she sees through the water- she reaches, she sinks, and then she wakes up.

One morning, when she wakes up from that dream, something's different. She always wakes up gasping for air, sweating, shaking, but this time there's a sour taste in her mouth. She realizes in the nick of time that she's about to puke her brains out and heaves herself out of bed and into the bathroom, which she hardly reaches before she loses it.

So she's upset. So what? She doesn't think about it, until it happens again, two days later.

And again the next day.

.,.

It's just a precaution, she reminds herself, rocking back on her heels as she peers around the edge of the aisle, paranoid that someone she knows will see her. I'm only doing this so I can sleep at night. She can't actually be…yeah, it's not possible. Even in her head she can't say it.

She grabs a carton off the shelf and walks briskly to the counter, buys it with cash, and retreats to the pharmacy bathroom without taking a breath. When she sits down she lets out the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. She leans back and takes another deep breath, and then she waits.

Two minutes pass. She watches the minute hand on her watch move and empties her mind as if that will make the outcome what she needs it to be. After the second minute, she moves her thumb away from the little plastic window.

She lets out another shaky breath and leans forward, tossing the test into the little mini-trash can beside her and dropping her head into her hands.

.,.

There isn't anything abstract about the dream she has that night, although it's exactly the same dream she's been having for at least two weeks. This time as she's drowning, she kicks the seatbelt free, reaches up through the water, and Maura's hand clasps around hers.

She wakes up before she's out of the water.

.,.

A/N: Wow. Wow. See, this is why I love this fandom, you guys are so so so supportive and I appreciate it immensely. It's been a rough week or so for me, because I'm juggling school, homework, rehearsals, and test prep, but here's five of nine! This was a rough one, I know, but trust me, okay? It's going to get worse before it gets better, but the end of this is just so fluffy that I encourage you to buckle your seatbelts and brace for the angst. Thanks for all the reviews. And, yes, there will be another M scene, and it won't be angry, I promise. But it's a ways off.