Hi guys! Yup, it's me. I'm back from the dead. Sorry I didn't update in over, like, a year, but my mental health was a mess, and school is destroying me :) Anyway, I'm back with this new chapter! I'll hopefully write more tomorrow.

By the way, Happy New Year! Yay!

After about five hours of sitting there and staring at the wall, Jane stood up, and stretched. A yawn escaped her lips, making Charles look at her with a raised eyebrow.

"You should go. I'll call you if anything happens," he said softly.

"Nah, I'm fine," she said, a half-hearted smile on her face. She couldn't go now. What if Maura... dies, while she isn't here? Or what if she goes out of surgery and she wasn't here?

Nope, she was definitely staying.

"You know what?" She muttered after a while. "I'll take a look at the case in the mean time. Maybe the crime techs found something?"

"Good idea." He nodded, and held his head in his hands. "Maybe I should be productive too," he pondered, but didn't budge from his seat.

Jane smiled sadly, and patted his shoulder. "I'm gonna call Korsak, and have him tell me the details. Meanwhile, you go eat something. I can hear your stomach grumbling."

Charles chuckled. "Nah, I'm fine." He smirked at her, and she rolled her eyes. "Go call Korsak, and update me."

"Sure thing." She strolled off to the same spot where she called her Ma, who was showering at home, and was planning to return wait with them as soon as she finished.

She dialed Korsak's number, and waited. After a few seconds, he picked up the phone with a casual 'Korsak'.

"Hey, it's Jane. Do we have anything?" She pressed, the urgency in her voice evident.

She heard Korsak sigh. "Nope. He was as meticulous as always. We found signs of struggle, Dr. Isles fought back hard."

Jane smiled at that. "Yeah, she's tough." She winced, remembering the slap from yesterday.

"There are no cameras in the autopsy room, but we know she was autopsying the Surgeon's victim."

"Maybe she discovered something?" Jane wondered. This has been on her mind for a while now. The Surgeon's message on the floor was quite clear. He considered Maura adversity. He considered her clever enough to find him. Maybe she did find evidence. But it was probably long gone by now.

"Her autopsy notes vanished. He probably took them with him."

"It must be important. Maura discovered something, that's for sure." Jane thought for a while, before an idea popped in her head. "Maura likes to record her notes on her phone. Did we recover it from the crime scene?"

"No, it was gone." Korsak sighed again.

"When Maura wakes up, she'll tell us what happened." Jane asserted in a calm voice.

"Jane..."

"She will, Korsak. She has to."

"I hope so Jane."

And with that, the call ended.

Jane scratched her head tiredly, and made a face. How long had it been since she last washed her hair?

Shaking her head and deciding she will most definitely not think about this while Maura's fighting for her life in an operating room, she went back to join Charles, who was drinking his fifth energy drink of the hour.

"That's probably gonna kill you," she joked, making him burst out in laughter. It was probably from all the duress he's been under, and he's just cracking under all the pressure, but she's happy she made him laugh.

"Maura fought back," she told him in a soft voice. "That means she probably has skin particles from whoever did that to her under her nails. It can help us catch him. Even in her situation, she still solved the case."

"My little genius. She would've solved it either way," he sighed, and Jane felt the need to hug him.

"She probably did. That's why he... attacked her." Her voice came out as strangled in the end but Charles didn't comment.

They stayed silent for a while after that, and Jane found herself falling asleep slowly.

Her eyes opened with a start at yelling. People were yelling around her. She groaned internally, and was this close to screaming, when she remembered.

Maura.

She jolted up from her seat, and was face to face with a young woman, probably her age, wearing a white blouse and red scrubs underneath. The surgical department scrubs. She racked her brain to remember how she knew that, but decided it wasn't important.

What was important was that Charles was punching a wall to her left, and that woman in front of her had that face that said 'someone died and we're trying to be empathic.' But that empathy was fake, and Jane's tears certainly weren't.

"She's dead. She's dead, isn't she?"

Regardless of the fact that it wasn't a question, the doctor nodded wordlessly, turned around, and went away.

Jane could swear she was smirking.

"She deserved it." She heard it come from behind her in detached, smug syllables.

"She was in my way." She definitely recognized the voice.

She turned around, and Charles was bent over her, a smirk on his face. Her vision turned red around the edges, and she could swear her ears filled with static. Impossible... It was impossible.

"Jane... You failed, dear Jane... Jane. JANE."

She bolted upwards, taking short ragged breathes. This was definitely the most frightening nightmare she ever had. Even more frightening than the night she dreamt that she went to the school dance in her unicorn onesie. She didn't even own a unicorn onesie. That was a year ago.

Anyway, she looked to her right, where the voice that had woke her up came from. Charles was still there, still drinking his energy drink. She felt oddly uncomfortable, sitting with him like that.

"You were restless. It looked like you were having a nightmare. Are you okay?" He asked tiredly, like he didn't care if she was okay or not, but it was custom to ask.

"Yeah, yeah. I-" I can't remember what I dreamt. "It was nothing."

"Dr. Hoyt?" A young woman wearing red scrubs and a fake empathic expression appeared in front of them. "It's about Maura Isles."

Hope you liked this :) leave a review if you did, and I'll be back tomorrow with more!