**DISCLAIMER – I do not own the characters, they belong to TNT and associated bodies. **
(However I have a wonderful imagination and that belongs all to me, just sometimes Jane and Maura wind up naked in it, and there's not a thing I can do to stop it. Gutted.)
I also don't own the song 'Solitaire' but I do enjoy screaming it in the shower, esp the Clay Aiken version.
Chapter Two – (She's playing) Solitaire.
(I'm thinking of Chapter-naming all the Chapters after song titles, and themeing the chapters around that song. Appears to be warding off the writer's block thus far!)
Maura's mind often drifted back to that Monday morning. To the emptiness she had felt, the shock, the anguish. More often than not, her thoughts would drift from there to the Friday night. Analysing every detail of the night, pausing and reversing in her head; over and over and over. Like a desperate broken record, caught on the saddest line; nothing pulled her from her memories.
Over 4 years had passed. Maura knew Jane was in regular contact with her family, Frankie would never be moved to elaborate further other than that Jane was alive and doing well. Nothing could have prepared Maura for the day Jane would decide to return.
It had started the same way every Tuesday starts, Maura's day off ruined by an apologetic phone call from Senior Detective Frost. Maura hadn't minded the long days, the weeks, the months. She had nothing outside of her work. A wall went up when the anguish subsided, no-one would get past her indifference. Maura preferred it this way. If she had no-one, then there was no risk of being hurt again. So she worked, constantly. Her colleagues worried at first, slowly becoming accustomed to her unwillingness to socialize. They knew, it was unspoken; but they knew. Her grief was visible; she had paled, she had lost her vigour, she thinned dangerously, she locked herself away. Other than Korsak forcing her to a bullpen lunch on Thursdays, she stayed alone. Her heart beat steadily, broken but physically functioning. Her heart rate rose exponentially on that Tuesday morning.
"Good Morning gentlemen . . . J . . . Jane. . . ?" Maura just about whispered the name. She prayed, she screamed inside that this wasn't another cruel nightmare; the kind she had cursed so many times, leaving her racking with sobs in the dark; night after lonely night.
Jane didn't respond immediately. Turning quickly on her heel, standing by the side of her old desk, she stared in shock at the remains of Dr. Maura Isles. The gorgeous blonde hadn't exactly let herself go. She still looked immaculate in terms of fashion, every hair was curled into place; half pinned up. Jane had adored it when Maura wore her hair that way, it made her eyes sparkle. But the hazel glow had darkened to lonely grey cobalt, her lips had thinned; in fact everything had. Maura was at least 20lb lighter than she had last seen her, and she was already slight then. Maura Isles was a ghost, a remainder of a life gone by. A life left behind, abandoned.
Jane swallowed hard and attempted to take in the broken woman in front of her.
"Maura . . ." she had no idea what to say. Seeing Maura this way was more than a shock to the system. It was a confirmation. Frankie hadn't missed a detail. When Jane finally decided it was time to come home, she had given into four years of wondering. Frankie's response in terms of Maura's welfare had shocked her. He really wasn't over-playing Maura's condition to get Jane home any quicker. Maura Isles had been destroyed by Jane leaving.
"Are you visiting?" Maura composed herself. Four years of having to wear a poker-face at the mention of the Detective's name had steeled her for this moment.
"Ummm . . . Kinda. I'm not sure just yet, we only got back last night." Jane fiddled with a ring on her left hand. It took Maura a few seconds to acknowledge it as a wedding ring.
"Agent Dean is back too, I presume?" Maura was never one to presume, but she had wondered. She wondered in those long years if Jane had found someone. As the months passed she would overhear Frankie talk more and more of Agent Dean. It wasn't long before she heard him referred to by his first name. It was all the confirmation she needed. In those months, Maura said goodbye to any hope of seeing Jane again. She could see them returning to Washington briefly, before settling somewhere to start a family. She didn't account for Jane's love for her family. Of course she would come back to Boston.
"Yeah . . . he's just sorting out a hou... some things we need to sort. For the time that we're back." Jane's breath quickened at Maura's avoidance of her eyes. She felt a pain deep inside, as if every mention of her husband was physically hurting the already visibly fragile Doctor. She stepped slowly forward. "Maura? Maura . . . I should have told you . . .".
Maura ignored the last desperate statement from Jane. She could deal with losing her. But to then have her return, married? She thought things had been cruel until now. This was beyond heartbreaking. So she reverted to type, she closed herself inside her shell.
"Det. Frost; I believe we have a case. And standing around here isn't going to help the victim. We're losing evidence as I speak," Maura practically commanded. "It was nice to see you Jane,I hope you . . ." Maura struggled to get the words out, "I hope you and your husband enjoy your visit. Take care now." With that she turned abruptly, straight out of the bull-pen.
"I told you Jane, that's how she's been for four years," Frankie chided his elder sister. "Straight to the point and straight outta here. Whatever happened between you two, you destroyed her. She couldn't hear your name for months without walking out of the room."
"She never got over you Rizzoli," Frost half whispered,as he gathered his coat.
Jane looked at him, on both confusion and bewilderment. "What?"
"Jane if you couldn't see what everyone else in the world could, then you're blind," he took her quietly aside. "Jane she told me, she had to tell someone. She walked out because she thought you were drunk and you'd never gave her a direct clue that you felt that way. Rizzoli, she loved you. I mean loved you. And she's never got over you, she's never even tried," he finished.
"She's never been with anyone else?"
"Jane . . . because she walked out, you presumed she felt differently to you. She did. You wanted a one night stand, she wanted to put a ring on your finger," he looked at her wedding band. "But you let someone else do that, and believe me; you've just knocked her right back to square one." Frost looked sympathetically at his former partner before walking out the swing-doors.
"What have I done," was all that Jane could think for the rest of the afternoon. She stayed in the department for the remainder of the day, catching up and reacquainting with former colleagues. Maura never appeared through the doors for the rest of the day. For the first time in four years, the Doctor visited the crime-scene before handing the case to her deputy; and returning home to the rest of her day off.