Maura's day was rather uneventful, until she returned home to be with Jane. She'd done two autopsies and left the remainder of any testing for Susie to do; caught up on her reports and paperwork; popped up to see Korsak and Frankie and then headed home a little after one in the afternoon. She hadn't gone into too much detail when informing Korsak as to what had happened between her and Jane, but enough for him to know that it was a sensitive subject. He smiled and nodded his agreement to not mention it to Jane when she came back in the next day unless she did or something significant to provoke it.

Jane was lounging with Jo on her lap watching a baseball game when Maura arrived home. "Hello, Maura," she called when she heard the door open. She bounded up with Jo in her arms and pulled a face of regret at having done so too quickly, then shuffled over to Maura and gave her a kiss. "How was your day?"

"Alright; nothing much happened. How was yours?"

"Meh."

"Only meh?"

"Well, you weren't here, so yeah, it was meh," Jane explained with a shrug. She waddled over to a stool and sat herself down as Maura refilled her water bottle and grabbed a banana to eat. She sat Jo in her lap like a baby, with her paws resting on the counter.

"Jane, please take Jo off the counter," Maura asked.

"She's not on the counter." Jane pulled a mischievous grin as she titled her head to kiss the top of Jo's.

"Jane..." Maura warned.

"Yes, Mother," Jane grumbled as she got up to place Jo down with as little bending as possible. When she looked back up Maura was staring at her with puppy dog eyes and a half peeled banana.

"You think I'm like your mother?"

"No, of course not," Jane said as she rounded the counter to Maura's side. "It was a joke."

"Oh," Maura said feeling a little stupid.

"You'll make a great mother." Maura looked up and smiled into Jane's eyes; nothing but love radiating off her.

"Only if we do it together," Maura added, making Jane's own smile falter a little. "Unless you don't want to have kids wi-"

"Maura, stop! I want everything with you, but we've been dating like... a week. We haven't had an anniversary yet, or spent Christmas together as a couple so we could kiss under the mistletoe, or kissed on New Year's, or had a holiday away together, or even gotten married." Jane's hands waved around her as she spoke, making Maura giggle a little.

"Jane! It was just a joke."

"Oh," Jane whispered; now it was her turn to feel a little stupid.

"But I agree; we should definitely do all of those things before we have children together."

"Yeah, 'cause I could get sick of you."

"Unlikely," Maura argued. "You love me too much."

"That's true," Jane replied before leaning in to softly kiss her girlfriend. They stayed joined for a few sweet moments before Maura pulled back and started on her banana, which she had been holding for a long while now. Jane moved back over to the couch and flopped down as gently as she could before Jo bounded up onto her lap while Maura finished her banana and went into their bedroom to change out of her work garb.

When she came back into the lounge room she was holding a post-it note between her fingers reading the numbers over and over again. "Jane; what's this?" She turned it around so Jane could read the note and explain. It looked like a phone number and it had been placed under the brunette's phone with only a corner sticking out.

Jane rotated herself on the couch so that she was facing Maura and the piece of paper in question. Her confused look faded immediately and she began fiddling with the stitching on one of the cushions. "Um..." she started nervously, but then shook her head and straightened her back. It wasn't a bad thing, but she was a little embarrassed about it deep down. She never thought she'd have to call that number again. Only once was the person on the end of the line supposed to appear in her life, but then they'd popped up again, and another time after that, and she always had the number stuffed down into the corner of her pocket or drawer with a little tickle in her tummy that said that she would call again. She hated that her gut was nearly always right, so she'd always waited for the other shoe to drop indicating that she'd need to call.

"Jane..."

"It's the phone number to the therapist I saw for my psych evaluation when I became a cop and then later when Hoyt was after me." Maura stared back at her with no expression. Jane tried to read her face to find an expression... any expression, but it was blank, like she was in shock or didn't know how to respond. "I called him this morning after Ma made me breakfast and you were at work."

"Uh... did you make an appointment or something?" Maura's mind was racing like a rat on a wheel but stuck like peak hour traffic at the same time. She was worried but glad that Jane had called, but even then she didn't know what to say.

"No, I... I just spoke to him for about ten minutes. He'd like me to come in and talk, but I said I'd talk to you first."

"About what?"

"About if you want me to, or think I should, or even if you wanna come. I scared myself Maura." Maura rounded the couch and sat herself down beside Jane. She slipped her hand under Jane's and rubbed her thumb across the top. "I hit you, and scratched you, and head butted you; hell, I attacked you, and I thought you were the enemy. And the whole time... the whole time I had no idea I was doing it. I was fighting for my life, against some demon in my mind, but I was taking it out on you."

"Jane," Maura interrupted. Jane looked up and a tear ran down her cheek and nestled in the corner of her mouth. She licked it away, before swallowing thickly. "I'm proud of you."

"What?"

"I have to be honest... I was surprised when you said you called your therapist. I never thought you would do something like that. I thought you'd tuck it away and hide from it."

"See, I normally would; but I wasn't the only one in the middle of it. You were. I hit you. I attacked you. I put your safety in jeopardy because of what my mind was doing, and I'd hate to think that I'd end up pushing you away because I couldn't bear the thought of hurting you. I can't bear the thought of hurting you, but I did. I don't want to push you away because I'm too much of a coward to do something about it."

"Then we will do this together." Jane nodded and leaned into Maura's chest as her arms wrapped around her.

"And I'm sorry I freaked about our future before."

"Jane, that's alright."

"I'd just had this on my mind the whole day and I just got an image in my head of how messy I could be if I don't fix this."

"I understand."

"Thank you."

"Always, darling," Maura whispered before pressing a kiss to the top of Jane's head. Jane's fight was her fight and they would win it together.

Frankie arrived half an hour later and found the two women in each other's arms still with the dog snuggled against Jane's leg and the baseball game still on. "Hi, Frankie," Maura said, tapping Jane's back for her to sit up.

"Hey, little brother."

"Hey. Is Ma around? She wanted to talk to me about... uh... something."

"About me?" Jane asked with her least threatening voice.

"Yeah. Are you okay?" he asked as he crossed over to her.

"Yeah, I'm just going through some stuff."

"Okay," Frankie said. Jane had told him the exact same thing in the exact same words with that exact same tone when she was dealing with Hoyt, so he knew. "If you need anything..."

"Thanks, Frankie." She loved that Frankie would offer help because he just knew, but she also resented the fact that it was becoming so easy for him to know. She'd been in the crosshairs so many times that it felt that it was a recurring nightmare. She'd done her deal with Hoyt, and that was supposed to be it; the big thing that happens in a cop's career that threatens their life, but it kept happening for her. And this time it wasn't even her, yet she'd been affected so much. It annoyed her to the point that she wanted to break things using only her mind; her mind that had betrayed her so many times.

A deep breath was what she needed and she couldn't get that here right now. She smiled at Maura, who suddenly also knew and let her go, so she made her way upstairs, but because she didn't want to be disturbed and pandered over like she was ill with the flu, she locked herself in the bathroom. She opened the window and breathed in the fresher air that hit her and swallowed its soothing powers until it reached her mind, heart and soul. She no longer needed to pace when she was pissed with something, but she still took a few steps around the tiled room just to feel the coolness under her feet.

She grabbed a towel from the rack and laid it across the bottom of the bath tub and then lowered herself in. She grabbed a hand towel and placed it on the edge so that she could rest her head as she swung her feet out the other end. The afternoon sun whispered in a little while later as it was getting closer to three o'clock and graced across her toes. She must've been up there for almost forty minutes in the silence of the bathroom but the chaos of her mind. She didn't really know why she over thought everything when she really ought not to, but it happened. Like just when she wanted to go to sleep and then she'd start worrying about life, and global warming, and wars, and hunger, and the economy. "Can you not?" she asked to the room.

It answered back with her words as they bounced off the tiles and made it no easier to quiet her mind. She took another deep breath and willed brain to shut up. It took more than one effort, but she really wanted it to stop, so she kept going and going until it was just a quiet sunset on a deserted beach somewhere; her fingers entwined with Maura's and the sand between her toes. Her feet, in reality, were going a little numb as they had been dangling over the edge of the tub for quite a while now, so she sat up with a groan or so and rubbed at them until they tingled.

She stood up out of the bath and cracked her shoulders, feeling oddly refreshed for having just done nothing. Once the towels were hung back up neatly, she made her way downstairs where Maura was sitting on the couch finishing some show with her feet up on the coffee table. When she heard Jane, she turned around. "Better?"

"Yeah," Jane said with a smile, before she murmured to herself. "Not fixed, but better."