A/N: At least this was a quicker update, haha. Enjoy the little bits of fluff you can manage to pull from the wreckage. This is essentially the second shoe dropping- the rest of the way out gets fluffier with each chapter, so, once you've finished this one, congratulations! You've survived the 'worst' of it. I put worst in quotation marks because someone else out there has to be a masochist like me: the angst is my favorite part to write and to read. This is six out of nine chapters I have planned. Thank you so much for all your kind reviews.
.,.
She makes the decision before she has time to think about her mother would say.
She makes the decision before she has the time to think about Catholic school and innumerable sermons of guilt.
She makes the decision without acknowledging anything but her job, her lifestyle, and the egotistical FBI agent who she knows would be no better a parent than she would be.
.,.
She knows Maura's schedule inside and out. She knows when Maura has yoga, when she has Pilates, when she usually schedules her monthly facial- and she books the appointment between two and three pm on a Friday so that it doesn't conflict.
She doesn't want to be alone.
More specifically, when she is alone, she's terrified. Sitting in silence at any point of the day drives her crazy with guilt. At one point she thinks she hears a second heartbeat and she panics before she realizes that's not possible- before she realizes it's way too early for any of that. Even still, the heartbeat haunts her, and she aches inside and out. It's a dull, throbbing ache, radiating from her navel, arcing along her spine, settling in her shoulders. She hurts whenever she's not working.
The night after she makes the appointment Jane paces her apartment, thumbs pressing insistently into the marks on the palms of her hands, her left cradling her right. These are not the hands of someone who could ever hold a child safely; these are not the hands of a mother. They are the hands of a fighter. They are the hands of a cop.
They are her hands. And even if there's a part of her that very suddenly and very violently wishes they were not, she's not the kind of person capable of pretending to be something she isn't. In a way, she supposes, the decision is doing the unborn little human being a sort of favor. In the future there might come a time- though she doubts it- where her life is accommodating, where she has someone willing to stay home with a child, or at least to held her out; in the future she might be braver, or else the future might be less dangerous- and in that future, she can almost imagine herself with a child.
But not now. Not today.
.,.
Maura is reading a book on protist lifecycles when the phone rings.
She's been spending most of her time trying not to think about Jane and failing miserably. She wishes her memory of Jane wasn't overtaken by memories of more specific things; she wishes that the smell of coffee and a sleep-roughened voice were the things at the forefront of her mind. Instead, she alternates between remembering the sound and smell of a gun firing, and the way Jane had so easily been able to push her away and immediately press her back into the wall.
If she doesn't distract herself, her mind wanders. She's not in the habit of using her imagination, but Jane has changed that, along with everything else. She can't stop thinking- what would have happened if she had let Jane take the lead? She was sure the detective would have taken her to her bedroom, but she wasn't sure of anything after that. Would a gentler touch have fixed it all? Would chaste kisses and whispered words have softened her in the least? She doesn't know. And it didn't happen that way anyway, so she ought to think about something else.
The 'something else', as it turns out, is protist growth, until the phone rings.
Without looking at it she answers, marking the sentence she stops on with her fingertip.
"Isles."
"Maura," comes the too-familiar voice from the other end of the phone, and then a catching-of-breath, a hitch, a broken sigh.
Maura stiffens and closes the book. She grips the phone tighter and says nothing, too confused by the tumult of anger and longing at odds inside her.
"Maura, I…I need you."
.,.
Jane knows she looks every bit as exhausted as she feels. Maura picks her up right on time, of course, but she isn't really ready yet. All the doubt and anxiety she'd avoided by making the appointment while still in shock has come back to kick her ass, leaving her sleepless, nauseous, nails bitten down to the quick. Maura doesn't provide much relief as they drive, just as she hadn't during the phone call.
"Please," Jane had prompted her, fighting to keep a level tone. "Yes," the ME had answered after some time, "Yes, I'll do it."
Jane's still not entirely sure that she can do it. The only other people in the waiting room are a young girl- no older than 17 or 18- and her boyfriend, whose fingers are knotted so tightly with hers that their knuckles are white. Jane wonders if that anchors them, wonders if she would feel anchored, too, with someone's hand to squeeze half to death. Instead of thinking about Maura's hands (the hands that saved Frankie's life, and probably hers, too), she clasps her hands just above her belly button and laces her fingers together.
Jane doesn't believe in miracles. But when Maura breaks the silence, just as the young couple is called back into the sterile hallway…she comes pretty damn close.
"It's been three and a half weeks," she says, leaning a little closer so she's speaking under her breath. Jane looks up and sees that Maura's eyes are on her hands. "Give or take a day. It's very early on. At this stage, it's really not a human being, at least most scientists agree on that. It's not a fetus, it's hardly even an embryo- it's about this big," she holds up her thumb and index finger in a circle, about the shape of the stupid chocolate coins that are all over the Dirty Robber on St. Patrick's Day, "and it's a genderless cluster of parasitic cells."
Jane half-smiles for a moment, just because it's so very Maura to think that would help.
.,.
In truth, Maura doesn't think she's helping very much. She tries for two reasons: because she's cause Jane plenty of grief recently, and because she hates to see Jane so exhausted. So scared. So…defeated.
"Will it hurt?" Jane asks. She won't meet Maura's gaze. She's even blushing slightly, as if her vulnerability is embarrassing. For Jane, she supposes, vulnerability is something she's not used to feeling, much less showing. Certainly Maura has never seen her so fragile. "Only a little."
She immediately wishes she'd lied. Jane flushes slightly, leans back in her chair. "Will they let you go in with me?" she asks, and Maura watches as she presses her thumbs against the scars on the back of her hands. "Given my degree, probably," she answers after a brief hesitation. "Would…you like me to go with you?"
She's curious about the idea of that, especially after how stubbornly she's been avoiding Jane. There's no reason for it, not really. Now, with Jane so broken, thinking about Doyle hardly hurts. What she did hurts much more.
Are Jane's feelings real? As real as I know mine are?
Is it even possible that Jane could still want to be with me?
"Yes," Jane rasps. "I don't want to be alone."
.,.
During the entire procedure Jane's grip on Maura's hand doesn't falter. Maura doesn't mind. She's still trying to figure out how Jane could possibly want her there. Besides which, she's pretty sure the marks she left on Jane's back were much worse than any Jane's blunt fingernails might be leaving on her palm.
.,.
Jane is silent the entire drive back to her apartment. She expects Maura to say something, especially after she'd been so talkative back at the clinic, but whatever magic that was that made her reach out seems to be gone, maybe forever. Jane doesn't want to think about what just happened, what she just did, but without Maura to distract her, it's unavoidable.
She feels so empty. She feels so confused. Did she do the right thing? She needs someone to assure her that she didn't just ruin everything. She needs someone to assure her that if she goes to sleep and wakes up in the morning, the world will still be there. She doesn't even realize she's crying until the car stops moving and Maura fishes some tissues out of her purse and hands them over.
.,.
She's in autopilot because she knows that if she weren't she'd run away. Whatever confidence had come over her in the clinic is gone now. She knows Jane is waiting for her to say she's forgiven, but she's afraid to do it- afraid of what would come next.
She's not ready. As long as she's been waiting for Jane to return her feelings, she's not ready for it yet, and she doesn't know how to put that into words. So she avoids it. She helps Jane up the stairs and takes her inside, unable to think of what to say, or if she should say anything at all. She's never seen Jane cry before and it's scaring her, more than the idea of starting some kind of a relationship scares her. She watches, warily, from the doorway, as Jane flops onto her back on the bed, eyes closed.
When she speaks, it's around a minute later, and Maura isn't even sure she heard her correctly, because her voice is so soft.
"I know you hate me," she starts, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, "and I know I fucked up- majorly fucked up- but can you just…can you just be my best friend again for tonight?"
.,.
She feels stupid as soon as it comes out of her mouth. She's sure Maura's just going to leave right then and there, leave her to wallow in her own self-pity, but she's wrong. And she's never been so glad to be wrong in her entire life.
She feels the bed dip as Maura comes to sit on the other side of it, and before she knows it Maura has tugged her head onto her lap. It's not exactly a best-friend gesture; it's just intimate enough to push the boundary, but not intimate enough for her to actually mention it. Besides which, although Maura seems hesitant to speak, she's certainly not hesitant to run her fingers through Jane's hair, her deft fingers pressing against her scalp.
.,.
Maura focuses on Jane so that she doesn't have to focus on what she feels.
She rests her thumbs at Jane's temples and rests her fingertips on her forehead for a brief moment before slipping her hands up toward Jane's hairline, applying gentle, consistent pressure. She finds the Governor's Vessel meridian- a Chinese theory that places the center of the scalp as the most important and most sensitive- and continues the light circles, watching intently as the stress begins to drain from the detective's face.
Color returns to it, too, and Jane shifts as if she's more comfortable now. Maura knows that tension tends to build up at the back of the neck, but as her hand slides around to relieve that, she feels Jane take in a sharp breath and realizes she's made a mistake. The physical contact is more than just tender, it's inappropriate, especially if she's going to try to avoid complicating things with feelings, ones that Jane can't possibly share.
She freezes, and Jane shifts again, this time with a soft but clearly disappointed little grumble. "Maura?"
.,.
Jane has no idea what Maura's doing with her hands, but it's already helped- she's half asleep when the moving stops and she yawns, stretching slightly. She doesn't hurt as much anymore, and she wants Maura to keep going, because the touching is proof that there's something still between them. Maybe that's why Maura stops and clears her throat, displacing her so she can stand. Jane opens her eyes but doesn't sit up. "I should go," Maura says, and Jane's heart sinks.
"Oh. Yeah. Okay. Maur?"
"Yes?"
"Have you forgiven me yet?"
There's a few moments of silence before Maura answers with a half-smile, "I want to. I have to go."
.,.
But she doesn't go. How could she go? After that? She can't make herself leave. Some way or another she has to push through her cowardice and show Jane that she's still there for her. Even if she's not sure she's ready to give Jane what they both want, she can't just leave. Instead she digs a blanket out of the hall closet and hunkers down on Jane's couch for the night.
She dreams of the ocean.
.,.
This time, Jane kicks the seatbelt free, grabs Maura's hand, and when she wakes up she's already out of the water and onto dry land, back where she belongs: in Maura's arms.