A/N: Shortest chapter so far. Again, thanks for the reviews and alerts and stuff! Also there are a couple curse words so if that's not your thing sorry.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
Without Jo Friday to walk the next day Jane just lay in bed. Occasionally, as an experiment, she would lift up her left arm and turn it slowly. Her muscles pulled and ached at the move. She would go without the sling today just to see how it felt.
She needed to get back to real life, back to detective work, she needed to heal. She was so bored at home. Her mind would drift to different events in her life. Of all the stupid things she had done in the name of justice shooting Patrick Doyle was pretty high on the list. In the eyes of the law she did the right thing. But in her eyes, in Maura's eyes, in everyone's eyes, it was so, so wrong. A best friend isn't supposed to shoot their best friend's dad. That level of idiocy broke some kind of code. It broke more than a code it broke her friendship with Maura into uneven, jagged halves.
She had reacted on pure, unadulterated instincts in that warehouse. Shots were being fired. Her first thought was to eliminate the threat, eliminate the amount of guns at play, and most importantly get Maura to safety. Everything had happened so fast. She didn't have the liberty to think about her actions. Doyle put his gun on her and Frost. He changed the game. He made her choose. Suddenly it wasn't just her life at risk, it wasn't just Maura, it wasn't just that Dean had already been hit. Suddenly it was much, much more than that.
She didn't have time to connect the dots. She didn't have time to think that the person holding a gun to her was Doyle. She didn't have time to think that Doyle was Maura's dad and that she probably shouldn't shoot him. But she wasn't wearing a vest and neither was Frost. She didn't have a choice. Jane shook her head. No, that was wrong too. She had a choice and she chose wrong. She fired her weapon to preserve her own life. She fired her weapon to gain control of the situation. She acted like a cop. Never in her life had she felt more ashamed of the blue blood that ran through her veins. Never had she been so ashamed of her actions than she was when Maura yelled for her not to touch him.
She would always put her job ahead of everyone else. Maura was smart to get out while she could, relatively unscathed. Jane hated herself. She hated knowing that Maura was hurt. She hated knowing she caused that hurt, that she caused those tears, that she caused all of this. Maura deserved better. Maura deserved a friend that would understand about melon spoons and dinner party etiquette. She deserved someone who would understand her Google speak. Jane was unrefined, classless, and a jerk most of the time. She was Maura's opposite in every way. Maura deserved a better best friend. Maura deserved someone who would always put her first.
Jane was a lousy friend, a lousy sister, and worst of all a lousy daughter. The only thing she was good at was being a homicide detective and even then there were cases where the murderer got the better of her. There were cases where she wished Hoyt had killed her in that basement. Cases and crime scenes that were so grotesque they made even her veteran homicide stomach turn with the disgust that people actually did these things to each other. Her job was hard and long and difficult. It had shaped her into the cynical, crass, sarcastic person she was. It had shaped her into a person that shot her best friend's father. Maybe if she was lucky the Irish Mob would put a hit on her head and put her out of her misery. Before she could think any further there was a loud, forceful knock on her door shaking her from her thoughts. She rolled out of bed to answer it.
Special Agent Gabriel Dean stood on the other side of the door. He looked just as unkempt as the last time they had seen each other only this time he wasn't favoring his right shoulder. Staring into his smug, nonchalant face something ignited inside her bones and spread like a wildfire until it finally reached her heart.
She hated him. She absolutely hated him. He was the epitome of everything she hated about herself. When Dean followed her team to the burnt out warehouse he put his career over their whatever-it-was-relationship. He got the big career advancement too. He got the rainbows and new office and got to be head of whatever department he wanted. He was a hero up in DC, even though Doyle had escaped custody on the way to federal prison.
Jane looked into Dean's cocky brown eyes and the smirk that settled across his unshaven face. She was so angry. He wasn't supposed to have been at the warehouse. He wasn't supposed be in Boston. He should have left well enough alone. He should have let her handle it. He shouldn't have gone into the open room guns blazing with Maura – a civilian – just a sitting duck; he could have gotten her killed. He wouldn't have cared either. She knew it. He knew it. Everyone knew it. As long as he got Doyle he wouldn't have cared about a damn thing. He didn't care about the firefighter's death they were investigating. He didn't care about Maura's mother. All he ever cared about was himself. Jane moved behind the door and slammed it in his face.
Agent Dean knocked on her door again. Repeatedly. She could hear him laughing on the other side. She felt the anger surge to a new level. "Jane, I'm not going to leave until you open the door."
Letting out a small growl the detective reached for the doorknob and swung it open. "If you don't leave I'll have you arrested for harassing a police officer." She kept her voice low and even, daring him to contradict her. She was not in the mood.
Dean laughed again. "Jane, don't you think you're overreacting?" He reached out a hand tracing it down her right shoulder to her hand where it stayed.
Jane quirked her eyebrow, was he kidding himself? Really? That's what he wanted to go with right now? "You don't let go on my arm in five seconds I will not hesitate to cuff you to the stairwell and watch as half of Boston's finest rain down on this place to haul your ass off to jail." He stepped closer. The smell of his cheap cologne was intoxicating in a very bad way, like I-drank-so-much-I-woke-up-with-my-face-in-a-dirty-toilet kind of way. Did he think he deserved some kind of victory fuck or something? Because really she made that mistake once, she would be dead before she tried that again. "Five." She started counting down. "Four." Dean brought his eyes back level with hers. She felt violated. "Three." If he even gave her a chance to hit him, she would take it. "Two."
Finally he dropped her hand taking a step back. He looked hurt. "I thought we had a connection." Jane slammed the door in his face for the second time and locked it for good measure. At the rate she was going she would be lucky her neighbors didn't call the police on her for a noise violation. She rolled her eyes as she made her way to plop down on her couch.
She was just going to stop answering her door. Every time she did it was just bad news. She looked around her house. Her walls looked like murder boards from all the cases she had worked in the past four months. She saw the faces of Carl Hook and Samantha Bowden. They were a boyfriend/girlfriend duo that were breaking into people's houses and stealing things. It was a robbery case until seventy year old Anna Lewis had a heart attack during the break in. She was able to give the elderly woman's things back to her daughter, Jennifer. Then there was Jeff Johnson. He was the one who threw her down the stairs on Friday. He had been on a serial rampage raping and killing three women before they caught up to him. With each and every face she remembered. She really didn't need the mug shots. Each death, each victim, each sick and twisted plot was stained onto her eyelids, what each mug shot represented was etched onto her soul.
She had been thinking a lot about giving up her job. She knew she wasn't ready to retire, she was too young, and her retirement fund would be nothing. But she just felt so guilty. It was the only solution she saw out of a lose-lose situation that Doyle had set her up in. The pictures kept her going. The mean, cold stares kept her from prematurely turning in her shield. She was a good cop. She brought peace to the grieving families. The mug shots told her that there would always be bad people out there, there would always be people wanting to do harm to others. And it was her job to catch them when they did. She couldn't let them get away with it. Jane sighed.
With her week off she had planned to clean her house but Maura and Frankie had done a good job of that. There was nothing really left to do besides laundry. And she hated laundry. So instead Jane flicked on the TV to some half-rate sitcom. It was only Sunday. She couldn't go back to work until the next Monday. She could already tell it was going to be a long week.
…
Angela Rizzoli walked into her daughter's apartment bracing herself for what she was stepping into. She had expected beer bottles and clothing thrown over everything, regardless of Frankie's clean up job. Instead she saw her daughter crashed on the couch mouth slightly open, with the TV on and evidence of Jane's work everywhere. There was a time when Angela wouldn't even step foot inside her daughter's apartment because of the case files and horrifying pictures that were strewn about every square inch of her apartment. Jane moved to homicide after being in the Drug Control Unit for two years. She remembered when her daughter told her. Jane was so happy. No more undercover prostitution stings! She remembered Jane's face cracking grin as she said those words. Homicide was supposed to be a new start for Jane. But then homicide took over her life in a way that DCU could never do. Jane was all about the victims, she wanted to give them peace and justice. She wanted to right all the wrongs that found themselves on her desk. The bodies weren't just bodies. They were people who had lived life with real dreams and real fears. They deserved her best. Then Hoyt came along.
Hoyt had changed her daughter in ways she didn't want to imagine. She still didn't know what exactly happened in the basement or why Jane had insisted going into it without backup. Part of her wanted to know but she knew how Jane was when the subject came up. Her eyes would get darker than she'd ever seen. Angela could physically feel the wall that Jane would immediately raise guarding herself. She had asked Sargent Korsak what happened but he had told her she didn't want to know. After that she stopped asking about, but sometimes she would catch a glimpse of her daughter staring at her hands or eyes staring off in a distance as she relived all the memories.
But then Hoyt had also made Jane realize that she couldn't live the way she was. That she couldn't let herself get sucked into the job and the shield as much as she did. He made her realize she had to stop punishing herself for what other people have done to each other, it wasn't healthy. After Hoyt's first attack Angela saw more of Jane. Jane started coming to family dinners again and would help her dad with plumbing jobs if she had the time. She was still just as focused, just as driven, but she allowed herself to live her life.
"Too many people have a key to my apartment." Jane grumbled picking her head up off the couch staring at her mother. "What are you doing here?"
Angela walked to the bar setting the two bags of groceries on the counter. "Frankie said all you had in your fridge was beer, ketchup, and cheese." Jane rolled her eyes. "Besides, someone's got to talk some sense into you."
"Oh this is gonna be great." Jane grumbled sarcastically. She moved from the couch to sit on a stool at her bar.
"I heard that missy!" Angela started putting groceries away. "Maura misses you."
"Oh, wow. Don't waste any time, just dive right in." Angela rolled her eyes. Jane put her forehead on the cool counter. "She shouldn't."
"Just apologize and move on Jane." Angela replied. "It's really simple."
"No, Ma." Jane said picking her head up to look at her mother. "It's not okay. It's not simple. It's complicated." She brought her hands up to her face. "She deserves better. Everyone deserves better." She said her voice dying at the end. She put her head back onto the counter. This was all just too much. She was so tired.
Angela's eyebrows furrowed. "What are you talking about, Janie?"
Jane sprung up from her chair. "I'm always working! I'm always picking my job over everything else. I'm a lousy friend. I'm always disappointing you! God, Frankie got shot because he wanted to be like me!" Hot tears sprung from her eyes. She swiped them away angrily, she was so sick of crying.
Angela looked at her daughter. She hated seeing her children cry. Even when they were younger and cried from a scraped knee or a broken arm she wanted nothing more than to take all their pain onto her. As they grew and the tears became less and less it always shocked her to her core when she found one of the three in tears. She remembered one time when Frankie called her choking on tears because one of his friends was killed in the line of duty. Tommy would cry when she visited him in jail, telling her about how sorry he was. But Jane, Jane was always different. "You've never disappointed me, Jane." She said looking into her daughter's deep brown eyes. "And Frankie is a grown man, he loves being a cop. It makes him happy, just like it makes you happy. I just don't like seeing my babies hurt." She reached out rubbing Jane's back. "You're not a lousy friend. You've helped Dr. Isles in so many ways. She needs you Jane. She may not know it, she may not know why but she needs you. And you need her."
Jane let the words sink in for a moment. "I know. Thanks Ma." She wrapped her arms around her mother. "I love you." She whispered in her ear.
Angela was a little shocked as she wrapped her arms around her daughter. "I love you too, sweetie. It'll all work out."
By the time Angela left Jane's apartment it was dark and the detective had a whole house full of clean clothes. Jane couldn't remember the last time she had so many clean clothes, even her sheets were clean. Once again in bed she made the decision that somehow, someway she would find her way back to Maura. She just had to get her shit together first.
A/N: I know that is a weak conclusion to a motherly talk but it's the best I could do. Also I could totally see Jane as a workaholic. The resolution or whatever is coming, so just bear with me. I've got most of chapter four written and it's the weekend so It'll be up soon!