"Now, before you think I'm a terrible person, Janie-"
"Too late," she snorted derisively. His eyes flashed briefly and then smouldered, the fury hidden behind the depths of his pupils.
"I won't kill your friend. She'll get to live, of that you can be assured." He patted Maura on the knee. "You see, before I realised what I was; before I realised my power and my purpose for this immortal life I lead, I killed a lot of humans. They called me a serial killer, and oh I was superb at it, Janie; the best. They hated to admire me for my skill at such a dark art, but they couldn't help themselves."
His monologue took a small respite as he seemed to indulge in his memories. "I used to hunt couples back in those days. I was young and naïve, didn't know that other, better prey existed. I'd rape the wives of countless men while they watched, helpless and crying and then I'd kill them and let the wives live."
He shook his head smiling. "It was a genius modus operandi, Jane. Perfect, even. I was never caught. No one had ever caught me at anything until you came along. I was expecting you to get close; it's why I did all that research on you, but I never truly expected you to come all the way and find me. I admit, I was impressed. You showed such promise; the ultimate opposition in our little game of chess." He smiled, showing off his pointy teeth.
"Though perhaps I was wrong. You seem to have given up and succumbed to your fate." He tsked. "You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be Jane Rizzoli, fighter to the nth degree. Never give up. It was your ferocity that made me like you, I think. But where has it gone?"
He walked over to Jane, inspecting her. "Ah, I know." He jabbed his head in Maura's direction. "Shock her again. She should be regaining some feeling and movement in her extremities by now."
"Don't!" Jane begged. "Don't hurt her, please. Hurt me instead."
Hoyt inhaled deeply. "It's so refreshing to hear you beg, Janie, sweetheart. But it's not enough."
Maura's body rocked again with the new shock.
"Now, shall I get onto business? Let you watch me defile her, own her, break her? The woman you're in love with is going to have me, and then both of my men buried within her, Janie, and there isn't one Goddamned thing you can do about it." He smirked. "How does that feel, Janie? Knowing you're helpless? How does it feel knowing that, despite everything you've done, all the things you've accomplished in your life, and all the lives you've saved from being torn apart, you couldn't save the one that matters most to you?"
"TELL ME HOW IT FEELS!" He roared, getting right up into her face.
"I'm warning you Hoyt, I swear to God with all the angels as my witness that if you don't let her go, you will all three of you be sorry," Jane vowed, voice low and dark; haunting.
"There we go!" Hoyt cried. "That's the Jane we know and love!" He picked a scalpel up off of the table and leaned towards Maura. "Shall we see, dear doctor, how our Janie reacts to the sight of your blood on my fingers?" He asked, menacing smile in place. "I shall take your silence as agreement."
He drew the sharp blade across the skin of Maura's throat and Jane watched in horror as blood emerged instantaneously from the wound.
"Stop it Hoyt! Stop it, you son of a bitch!" She struggled against the men holding her captive.
Hoyt turned to her, his expression the perfect picture of delight. "If that's your reaction to a tiny spot of blood, I wonder how you'll do when we start to strip her. When she's lying there, naked and waiting, helpless just as you're helpless. How long will it take to break you, Janie?" He sighed loftily. "Now, isn't that the question… you see, I've spent the majority of my life devoted to ascertaining the breaking points in all of us. I have studied and experimented thousands of times, I have hundreds of notebooks filled with observations and information, times and dates. They have all been different and yet the same. A pattern started to emerge amongst the races. Faeries and warlocks were always the hardiest. Humans, those pathetic excuses for life literally took no time at all. The rest of them were scattered in between.
"So believe me when I say this Janie: You are unique. And it will be my greatest pleasure, I assure you, to break you so entirely that you won't want to live anymore." He inhaled deeply, smiling as though the sun shone from his very face; like he was God or something. "And then I, being a merciful lord, a powerful being, will solemnly oblige."
"Terence!" He called loudly. Jane felt the arms at her left go slack. "Undress her!" Hoyt commanded and the henchman quickly did as he was instructed to. Jane saw her opportunity and she lunged for it, driving her elbow into the groin of the man holding her and charging forward, delivering a quick jab to Terence's neck. He went down without a fight, and the man she'd hit in the family jewels was still writhing upon the floor in agony.
To Jane's utter dismay, Hoyt didn't seem the least concerned that she'd escaped her captors. In fact, he even seemed a little disappointed.
"Let her go," Jane demanded, squaring off against the warlock.
"I'm magical, Jane, you can't win." Hoyt informed her. "I admit, I'd rather hoped you would've broken out before now, but alas."
Jane eyed her small explosive on the ground, about a foot in front of her now. Narrowing her eyes at Hoyt in concentration, she stepped forward brusquely and kicked it square at his chest.
It erupted in black smoke on contact, little bits of shrapnel flying in different directions. A few pieces cut across Jane's cheeks, and she swore she saw a few cut Maura as well, but she wouldn't let herself think and dwell on that. A couple of little cuts were a far better alternative to what Hoyt had had in mind.
He seethed with anger, eyes burning with his determination and hatred. "You'll pay for that, Janie," he promised, and raised his hands menacingly. He mumbled something Jane vaguely recognised as Enochian, the language of the angels, and his face turned victorious as the last syllable left his lips.
Except nothing happened.
"Put a damper on your powers!" Jane informed him. "You really should hide that mixture from people who could use it against you," she advised, some of her badass swagger returning to her. Quickly, she picked up the taser from the floor and spun, shocking the man who'd attempted to sneak up behind her and incapacitating him for a while. She let it drop as it recharged, hoping against hope that if she did this right, she could shock him again.
He howled with frustration and indignation, choosing instead to charge her with his medical blades.
This was far more Jane's speed; good old hand to hand combat. But if she'd assumed that simply because he was a warlock he would have no skills in that regard, she was sorely mistaken. It was like facing three opponents in one. He had such incredible speed and strength, it took all of the power her Marks gave her and an unrelenting amount of sheer will power to keep matching him strike for strike.
His scalpel managed to clip her a few times as they parried and sparred back and forth, moving along across the floor. They ended up getting closer to his table of torture implements, where the rest of her weapons were stored. She exerted as much energy as she could and gave him a hard kick to the gut, blindly reaching for one of her seraph blades.
"CASSIEL!" She cried, flinging the sword in front of her to block Hoyt's next attack. It glowed at the sound of its name and Jane felt more confident that she could win.
Until, that is, Hoyt bent quickly and retrieved her other blade. He could not invoke the runes to make the sword glow with angelic power, but he could still use it as a tool.
They duelled, crossing great lengths of the house's main floor as Jane did her utmost to keep their battle away from Maura's prone body.
Finally, the technically perfect man made a fatal error and Jane managed to slash him in the side, causing him to fall to the floor and drop his weapon. She stepped onto his ankles roughly, feeling a queer tingle of pleasantness at the sounds of the bones and joints breaking; his squeals of agony.
"Maybe I've underestimated you," he said through gritted teeth between outbursts of pain.
"Maybe," Jane conceded, as she stepped next onto his wrists, though she didn't break them. "Maybe you're just not as great as you seemed to think," she offered.
She brought her seraph blade down strongly, tip first and pierced him through the heart. Then she cut his head off because of course he had to be a fucking immortal son of a bitch to boot.
The door crashed open as someone bolted through. "Jane?!" Frost called, shaking off the impact and looking around. "Oh shit, there you are, are you alright?"
Shocked, Jane could only ask, "How'd you find us?"
Frost turned, shocked. "Is Maura here, too?"
Jane nodded and walked over to the doctor. She took the woman into her arms and carried her out of the house, Frost following close behind.
"Let's all just take one car. I don't want to let either of you out of my sight. We can send someone for the other car." Frost said, opening the back doors and helping Jane get settled.
"Really, how'd you find us?" Jane asked softly. Maura's eyes were closed, and Jane couldn't pull her gaze from the doctor's face. She looked so peaceful, almost like she was sleeping. Except Jane was sure she'd merely passed out from the electricity.
"Tommy. He saw you leave, alone, earlier. He would've come himself but Lydia was going into labour and he's out of practice. You haven't trained him up again. I was the first one to get out of the funk of whatever it was, man, so I came running for you." Jane glanced up to meet his eyes in the rear view mirror. "It's what partners do."
"Thanks, Frost. Thank you."
He watched as her eyes started to flicker, like she was fighting off sleep. If anything could out big bad Rizzoli to sleep, it was the lulling motion of a car ride after an adrenaline spiking fight.
"I've got you, Jane. No one's coming after you."
Her eyes closed and she drifted off.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They were locked in the infirmary for two days. Maura was let go after day one, but she didn't want to leave Jane's side. They were inseparable; more so than they had been before. Even after they were both released, they both practically moved into Jane's room together.
Nightmares were prevalent every night. Sometimes it was one or the other, but every once in a while it was both of them at the same time, and they'd wake shaking and sweating, automatically wrapping each other up in their arms to comfort as they took comfort.
They never told anyone else about their night terrors, but Maura felt certain that the rest of the household already knew that sometimes they simply laid awake at night and chatted.
It was two weeks later, and Institute life had returned to what was routinely deemed normal. They went out on the occasional night patrol, but mostly they stayed back, training and reading up on the demons they sought to exterminate.
They worked slowly at being comfortable at spending time apart from each other, Maura often going off with Giovanni while Jane was hauled away by Frost and Frankie. At first it was unbearable, and after a mere couple of minutes they were running back to each other and embracing strongly.
But with time and practice, two minutes turned to five, five to twenty, twenty to an hour, and after a few weeks, they were almost back to normal. They chose not to spend their time apart, but they no longer needed to be together to keep their sanity.
Towards the end of those couple of months, Frost informed Maura on the down low that Jane's birthday was rapidly approaching, but not to make too much of a deal about it. Truth was, Jane kind of hated her birthday, and didn't generally enjoy reminders about it.
Maura decided that, whether Jane liked it or not, she'd be getting a present regardless. She spent a good half hour on the floor of her room (which at this point, was really more just Maura's closet and Bass's room) chatting quietly with Bass about possible gift ideas.
That was when the idea struck her. She dashed out of the house the night before Jane's big day, and although it took a few hours to find the right one, she made her way home that evening with her prize.
The next morning, she snuck out of Jane's embrace in the early morning and retrieved the box from her room. She slipped back into bed, taking the lid half off and placing it on the bedside table. She brushed Jane's hair out of her face with one hand, and wrapped her other arm around the brunette's waist.
"Hey," Jane murmured, turning to face Maura with a smile on her face.
"Hi," Maura whispered back happily. She reached behind her for the box, slipping the lid back on. "Happy birthday!" She exclaimed cheerfully, presenting the box and ignoring the frown on Jane's face.
"Maura, no, I don't want anything for my birthday and you aren't even supposed to know it's today!" She glared playfully at the blonde. "Who told you?" She paused, thoughtfully. "It was TJ, wasn't it? My little nephew traitor. He told you with his mind, didn't he? Everyone else knows better!"
"Jane! You know that's impossible! He's only a couple of months old!" She shook her head indulgently. "Here. Open it."
She could see Jane getting ready to fight it. "Please? For me?"
Clear victory for Maura Isles.
"Alright, alright, give me the box," Jane sighed, holding her hand out.
She plucked the lid off and her lips formed an 'O'.
"It's your very own geochelone sulcata!" Maura informed her excitedly. "He doesn't take much care and interacting with him is very easy. He can live in my room with Bass and you can play with him all the time; Bass too! You'll be able to fully see their awe-inspiring potential to be fantastic pets!"
Not knowing what to say, Jane stuttered, "Y-yeah, Maura, it'll be great."
Maura nodded emphatically. "What're you going to name him?"
"I have to name him now?" Jane stalled, mind whirring in an attempt to scramble for a decent name.
Maura smiled widely. "Yes!"
"Well he's pretty cute, I guess…"
"I would suggest Watson, so he can be your perfect complement to your Sherlock, madame detective."
Jane snapped her fingers. "You're brilliant Maura! I present to you, Baby Bass Watson!"
"Aww, you named him after Bass, too? Jane that's so sweet!" And then without even thinking about it, she kissed Jane fully on the lips.
Shocked, they both abruptly pulled away. Jane set Baby Bass down on the bed beside them and whispered, "Best birthday ever," before going back for another kiss.