Author Note: Thank you for the comments, it's great to see that you're here and ready to begin another whirlwind/rollercoaster journey with me. It's certainly not going to be an easy read, but I hope you enjoy it all the same.


The bullpen was its usual hive of activity. If Jane didn't know any better she'd have suspected nothing had changed. But in the blink of an eye, everything had. Sitting behind Korsak's desk was a man Jane barely knew. His stomach protruded further, his teeth were crooked and he smelled of tobacco. Frost's Guardian had been pushed aside by a man tall enough to be an All-Star basketball player. The last time Jane had seen him, he'd been in uniform.

At her own desk sat a blonde woman; her hair shone like the sun, a pair of glasses balanced on her perfect nose, held momentarily by nails that belonged in a salon. The BRIC was empty.

This was not her team.

"Rizzoli." The portly man, who Jane remembered was called Wheeler, stood up, shocked at her arrival.

"Hey."

The rookie detective whispering with the woman, watching her like she'd grown a second head. Wheeler glared at him and he stood up, holding his hand out.

"I'm Detective Brock Miller."

"Hi, Detective Brock Miller," Jane said, testing the name in her mouth. She didn't like it. It didn't fit. "What are you all doing here?"

"We got temporary transfers," Wheeler said. "Murder stops for nothing."

"Not even murder," Jane said, with a grimace. "What's the case?"

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Rizzoli," Wheeler said, walking around her desk and placing a hand behind her back, as if to guide her towards the exit.

She turned around. She could see it in his eyes. There wasn't nothing. There was a very big something and she could see her face on the whiteboard. "Except her."

"Well, yes." He slipped back behind his desk and closed the case file, pushing it underneath a pile of papers.

"I want in."

"Can't let you do that."

Gritting her teeth, Jane leaned against the desk. "She killed my mother. My brother is lying in a hospital bed comatose. Sergeant Korsak lost his wife. I. Want. In."

"She could kill you and I still wouldn't let your ghost help."

She stood upright again, her shoulders aligned with her back. "At least tell me if she pulled through."

Miller and the blonde averted their gaze. The last thing she remembered from the night before, aside from pushing the boundaries of her relationship with Maura, was pressing down on her wound.

She had to keep her alive to stand trial. She couldn't let her die. Death was too easy.

Frankie shot her to stop her, not to give her an out.

"She didn't," Jane said, searching his eyes for the answer she didn't want. Miller and the woman looked even further away. She slammed her fist down on Korsak's desk and stared into the empty eyes. "Answer me."

"She died this morning."

A chill travelled along her arms, sending goose pimples across her skin and through her body. She felt weakened; gripped the desk to steady herself. Jane didn't drop her gaze, waiting for him to say something more, but he just stared back.

"She here?" Jane asked.

"I can't…" he said.

She closed her eyes, then fixed her stare. "Is. She. Here?"

"Came in an hour ago."

"Thank you."

The weakness of her body came second to her need to visit the morgue. Maura was still in bed when she left for the office. She didn't think she'd be there, but it almost didn't matter. What did matter was seeing her. The woman who destroyed her world in minutes.

"Rizzoli, you can't," Wheeler shouted, his voice drifted away as she ran for the stairs.

The morgue was empty, like a ghost town. Maura wasn't sat behind her desk; the crime technicians were nowhere to be seen. Even Kent wasn't hanging around. Jane walked into the examination room, unheeded. A body lay on the table, covered in a sheet. She stood in the door for a moment, then took a long, deep breath in and stepped closer.

Underneath the cloth, if only she had the courage to pull it away, was the woman. She could feel it. Her heart raced. She swallowed a lump in the back of her throat and stared at the fabric.

It didn't feel real.

The office door opened in front of her. Jane jumped. She rested a hand across her chest and stared into Maura's eyes.

"What are you doing here, Jane?" she asked, stepping closer.

"I thought you," she said, drifting off, her eyes landed back on the form beneath the cloth.

"Kent called. He saw you come in."

Jane shrugged. "Like five minutes ago."

"An hour ago."

She looked at the clock on the far wall. She'd barely noticed the time disappear. She didn't move. Her feet were frozen to the ground. She needed to see the woman, yet she couldn't bring herself to look at her.

Maura walked around the body, stopping beside her. She didn't speak, just walked forward and pulled the material halfway down her body.

"You might as well take a look," Maura said, interlinking her fingers with Jane's and giving her hand a squeeze.

She didn't move. Couldn't move. She lifted her free hand to her mouth as her shoulders shook. She fell forward, letting go of Maura's hand and rested them on the edge of the metal gurney.

She knew the woman. A memory etched on her face, a distant memory from her past. She could barely place her. This was her fault. The reason this woman had was because of her.

Lifting her clenched fist up, she tossed her arm out to her side and watched as it collided with the metal tray of instruments, sending them flying onto the floor.

"Jane," Maura whispered, the tiniest sound crept through the noise of her memories. An arm landed on her shoulder, which she shrugged off. "Please don't shut me out."

"I need to get back upstairs," Jane said, turning around.

"You need to stop pretending that you're okay. You can't work like this. You shouldn't work like this."

"What else can I do?" Jane asked, turning back to Maura, fire burning in her eyes. She shook her head, her arms out in front of her. "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

The calmness in Maura's voice unsettled her somewhat, yet at the same time, it brought her back down. "Today you don't have to do anything. I brought some lunch, it's in my office."

Jane stared at the space Maura vacated for a moment, before following her into the office. They sat beside each other, eating silently, focused entirely on the food and nothing more. Jane chewed a cherry tomato, something she usually enjoyed tasted of nothing, just sorrow and emptiness.

"Korsak wasn't in the office," Jane said, dropping the half-eaten tomato onto a pile of salad leaves. "Frankie wasn't there. They've got Wheeler the fat guy from Vice, and some librarian-type bimbo with acrylic nails."

"Were they acrylics, gels or silks?"

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose not."

"They've got a rookie sat at Frankie's desk, Frost's desk. He doesn't have a fucking clue how to be a detective. He was in diapers five minutes ago."

Maura cleared her throat. She wanted to be sympathetic; she just didn't quite know how to have the conversation that Jane insisted upon.

"They had to do something," she said.

"Why?"

Maura gave her knee a gentle squeeze. "The world hasn't stopped moving."

"Mine has."

"We need to discuss funeral arrangements."

"No." Jane stood up and walked back across the office. She stared through the window where Kent had proceeded to prepare the body.

Following her across the room, Maura stood beside her. "Jane."

"You'd better get in there before Kent finishes without you," she said.

"I'm not doing the autopsy."

Mouth open, Jane stared at her. "Why not?"

"I'm too close to this."

"So?"

"I cannot do the autopsy."

"Fine." She turned tail and headed for the other door, tugging it open as she marched out of the office and headed back toward the elevator. As she waited, tears crept into her eyes, blurring her vision. She brushed them away.

Maura stepped up beside her. "I'll drive you home."

"Whatever."

x

"I've prepared spaghetti for you, just like Angela used to make it," Maura said, putting a dish in front of Jane and sitting opposite her at the dining table.

Jane stared at the spaghetti, her eyes filled with tears. She couldn't speak. She picked up a fork and twirled it around until spaghetti covered every last inch of the prongs. She stole a glance at Maura, who ate hungrily. Jane lifted the fork to her mouth but she couldn't bring herself to take a bite. Instead, she returned it to the dish and chewed the air.

"Is it okay?" Maura asked, sipping her wine.

"Yeah." She moved the spaghetti around the dish, pushing it back and forth, occasionally pretending to lift the fork to her mouth before placing it back down. She didn't feel hungry. Her stomach growled at her, but she didn't feel the desire to eat.

"I can take the day off tomorrow," Maura said, emptying the last of a bottle of wine into her glass. "We can clear out the guest house."

Taken aback, Jane forced the lump in her throat back down. "No."

"Okay." Maura's eyebrows tugged together. "We could do something else."

She dropped the fork into her dish and pushed it forward, leaning back in her seat. "Just go to work, Maura."

"But I." Maura drifted off.

An uncomfortable silence settled between them. It never felt uncomfortable, not usually. Jane shifted in her seat as Maura cleared away the dishes. She could hear her sigh as she scraped her uneaten meal into the trash. It should have made her feel guilty. All she felt was numb.

"What happened the other night," Maura said, sitting back down opposite Jane. "Maybe we could talk about that."

Ignoring her, Jane picked at a piece of dried spaghetti sauce on the table then tossed it back and forth between her fingers. Everything felt broken, nothing was the same anymore. How could it be?

"Jane." Maura's fingers wrapped around her wrist. "Please."

"Ma would like the service to be religious," Jane said, finally looking up. "Catholic. The full works. Hymns, prayer, it's the only option."

Maura nodded. "We can arrange for that, but…"

Jane cut her off.

"She hated carnations, said they were the flowers people gave when they didn't really care about someone. She loved sunflowers. They reminded her of," Jane choked back the tears. "Of the summers she spent in Tuscany as a teenager."

"I'll call my florist first thing in the morning. Anything else?"

"No." Jane stood. She didn't really want to make the arrangements. They hurt too much. She just couldn't talk to Maura about what they'd done, or why they'd done it. "Going to bed."

"But, Jane," Maura began.

Her voice drifted away. Jane exited the room and headed for the staircase. Her mother talked about the sunflowers like they were the greatest flower in the world. She promised to take Jane one day, but money got in the way and they'd never made the trip. She curled up under the bedsheets and felt the tears flow down her cheeks.

x

Placing a pair of pyjamas on the table beside Frankie's bed, Jane brushed his hair back from his forehead and kissed it. A small flash of memory filled her mind, of her brother lay in her mother's arms in the hospital just a few hours old. She crumbled into a seat beside the bed, not dissimilar to how she jumped up onto the plastic chair as a small child. Everyone smiled their biggest smiles, and she held the wriggling, tiny baby in her arms, and kissed his forehead.

"Oh, Frankie," she whispered, moving his hand off the side of the bed and holding it in the space between herself and the bedsheets. The heart monitor beeped on the other side of the bed, his chest heaved with every new breath forced into his body by the ventilator. "You need to wake up soon, or you'll miss Ma's funeral."

She sniffed back tears and wiped her nose, fresh droplets slipped down the bridge onto the back of her hand. Nothing had changed from the first time she visited, and she wondered how much longer it would take for him to recover.

"Ms Rizzoli."

The doctor stepped into the room, Maura by her side. Jane stood, cleaning the remaining tears from her face as she moved to the end of the bed.

"I'm Doctor Harper," she said, holding her hand in front of her. "I've been on your brother's case since he came in."

Jane shook her hand then slipped her own into the pocket of her sweats. She bounced from one foot to the other, her shoulders hunched up around her neck. "When's he gonna wake up?"

"You need to prepare yourself," Doctor Harper said, her smile subtle, gentle. The briefest silence followed. Jane glanced at Maura, at the tears glistening in her eyes, and she felt herself grow weaker. "There's no change in his condition. We're seen little to no brain activity. There's still a chance, but it's tiny."

"What does that mean?" Jane asked, not daring to look her in the eye. She stared absently at the tiles on the floor, at the empty trash can across the room, at the fold in the door mechanism that would account for the problems she had in trying to shut it on her way in. She didn't want to hear the answer, yet all she wanted was to know the truth.

"Given that Francesco," Doctor Harper began.

Jane cut her off. "Frankie. Everybody calls him Frankie."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Given that Frankie wasn't married, and we've been unable to get hold of your father, we would like to ask if you would consider signing a do no resuscitate order."

Do not resuscitate. The words lingered in the air, like a bad smell. Doctor Harper's voice repeated it in her mind several times.

"No." Jane pushed past them, out into the corridor where she leaned against the wall. Her heart sped up, her breathing became that much harder to handle.

"Jane," Maura whispered, the familiarity of her voice was the only thing that kept her sane.

Jane looked at her, at the sadness in her eyes and the hand outstretched to her arm. She shrugged her away and faced the wall, shaking her head repeatedly. "Leave me alone."

Nothing would make the moment better. Not even Maura. The longer she had to consider the doctor's request, the harder it was to understand. Frankie was not dead, he was there, in that bed, there was no reason to give up on him. Not yet. Not ever.

She turned back around after a moment, the questions on her lips could only be answered by Maura, or Doctor Harper, and she'd taken an instant dislike to the woman who was ready to drop her brother like a football. Neither of them were there.

"Jane?"

A small voice filled the empty corridor. Jane lifted her gaze, locked her eyes with Nina's. She stared at her, desperate to allow the tears building in her eyes to fall, but she held them back. Instead, she opened her arms and Nina walked into them.

"I'm sorry," Jane whispered. She knew how deeply Nina's feelings for Frankie went.

"He's not going to be okay, is he?"

She clung to her colleague, a woman she wasn't quite able to call friend, and shook her head.