Author's Note: Thank you very much for all your reviews and messages. I think I have two chapters left (epilogue included). Then I will write the sequel to Nine Months.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The plane took off. Maura closed her eyes and tried to focus on those first seconds of weightlessness in order to forget the weight that kept on pressing on her heart. She thought about her and Jane's last hours in Paris, the stroll by the Canal Saint-Martin and the quietness of the Père-Lachaise cemetery. Jane's genuine excitement as soon as she had found the grave of Jim Morrison. They were leaving Paris with a thousand, untouchable memories and with the soft taste of novelty. The City of Lights was now deeply connected to their relationship. No matter what happened, Paris would always be the city where they had dared to make that step towards something more intense and more personal than a friendship.

It hadn't started in Paris. Now that she thought about it, Maura could affirm that what she and Jane were now having had started a long time ago – way before their trip to France – and that perhaps fate had something to do with it. She didn't like the idea of a natural force controlling her life – her emotions – because it didn't match with her scientific mind but she nonetheless had to admit that there might be something. Something that she couldn't explain.

Something powerful and eloquent.

"Are you alright?" Jane pressed Maura's hand. "Why have you closed your eyes?"

To forget. Maura had closed her eyes to forget the unknown that lay ahead of her – ahead of them – and to concentrate on a past that had already begun to slip through her fingers like grains of sand. She didn't want to go back to Boston because that meant that she was about to lose Jane. For the first time since she had been assigned to her job, Maura didn't miss the morgue. She wasn't eager to go back to her office nor to put her white coat on anew. She wanted to remain in that suspended lapse of time instead, the one that had witnessed the surfacing of her romance with Jane.

She had woken up in the first hours of the morning only to realize how hard it was for her to believe that it was true, that Jane had become her lover. Her partner. She hadn't forgotten about the pain that she had felt until the day she had kissed Jane on the west point of the Île Saint-Louis, how shameful her fantasies had been because it wasn't appropriate. Nobody is supposed to fall in love with a friend. Nobody. But against all expectations, Jane's feelings were mutual.

Probably a matter of luck, of hormonal dosage.

"I'm fine." Maura gave Jane a very brief smile before looking out the window plane. It was 8pm and the night had fallen two hours earlier. They were now flying over Paris, over a multitude of lights that glimmered in the dark like diamonds and pearls. "Ce n'est qu'un au revoir..."*

Her whisper caressed her lips before dying in the depths of her heart. She would come back. Of course, she would come back. With or without Jane. Paris had always been part of her life. One of her aunts lived there and Maura liked the city a lot anyway. She was a francophile.

Jane didn't insist. She understood Maura's silence. Sometimes, the only thing you needed was to not speak. To not say the slightest thing. You needed peace. She unzipped her backpack and turned on her cell phone.

Nothing.

Her mother hadn't sent her the mere text message. Angela had remained quiet and it worried Jane. It wasn't normal. It wasn't normal at all. Jane had tried to call Boston when she and Maura had reached Charles de Gaulle Airport but the call had been disconnected before anyone to pick it up on the other end of the line. Then she had had to board and she had simply sent a text message to say that their flight was on time.

Jane had a hard time believing that her mother could be mad at her because of the picture that she had sent her the day before. It didn't make sense. Her mother was open-minded. Perhaps the situation would have been different a few years earlier but Angela Rizzoli had changed since she had filed for a divorce. She had found a new balance in her emancipation and same-sex couples weren't an issue to her. She had even showed a lot of enthusiasm when Frost's mother had got engaged. That had to mean something. It couldn't be different just because Jane was her daughter.

"When are you supposed to leave?"

The question was rhetorical. It was only there to fill blank spaces and a silence that Maura didn't want anymore. She turned her head to look into Jane's eyes. All she saw turned out to be an immense uncertainty.

"I leave on Sunday... I start on Monday."

Which meant that she would barely stay in Boston for a day. Their plane landed on Saturday. It had seemed to be a great plan when Jane had booked her flight tickets. Besides, she couldn't postpone her arrival to Quantico too much. It wouldn't have been seen as a sign of seriousness and motivation. Now she regretted to not have at least a whole weekend to spend with Maura. Everything felt rushed, even more after the slow pace of their vacations in Paris.

"Sunday. Okay..." Maura nodded. "You will send me a text message on Monday to tell me how it will have gone, okay?"

Jane rolled her eyes. She scoffed rather loudly before turning her tablet – personal screen on in order to win some time. She didn't want to talk about Quantico. Not now.

"I'll call you, idiot. Are you working on Monday?"

"No... But I think that I will stop by the morgue nonetheless. I was gone for a long time and I have many files to catch back on."

And nothing else to do. Maura bit her lips. On Monday, her life would be dull and pointless. She wouldn't have anyone waiting for her at home, anyone to share a lunch with. Her best friend would be gone. Her best friend and partner. It would be a hard day and finding an escape in work seemed to be rather appealing now.

"Like that case you've been working on?"

"Hmm..." Maura gladly accepted the glass of Champagne that the flight attendant held out to her. She rarely drank alcohol on a flight but the singularity of the current situation was such that she wanted to make an exception this time. "It has to do with children."

She wasn't supposed to talk about a case with someone else than her colleagues and collaborators but as much as Jane didn't belong to the BPD anymore, she was still the person Maura trusted the most. Besides, she wasn't afraid of listening to murders. On the contrary. Crimes belonged to her daily life. It was her job and that was immensely comforting for Maura.

"A serial killer?" Jane swallowed hard. An ounce of excitement had showed in her voice as she had asked precisions to Maura. She wouldn't go on a crime scene anymore. Becoming an FBI instructor meant that she accepted to put aside the adrenalin that rushed through her veins whenever she reached a crime scene. That part of her life was over for now. "Who's on it?"

"Liam O'Connor."

It could have been you, Jane. You could have been in charge of this case. Then the conversation we're currently having – so inappropriate for a commercial flight between Paris and Boston – would have sounded completely different. It would have symbolized our return, you to the BPD and me to the morgue. The partners in crime back in town after a vacation abroad.

It sounds flat instead, and terribly fake. Something is missing. Your badge, probably. And my faith in my capacity to keep on doing this job without you by my side. It's completely stupid. I know it is. But it sounds like goodbyes.

Jane took a sip of her Champagne. It was probably the last time in a while that she travelled First Class so she wanted to take advantage of it at the most. She settled her glass down on her small table before leaning over to kiss Maura on the cheek. Just there, at the corner of her lips.

"Liam's a brilliant detective."

Jane meant what she had just said. She had a lot of respect for her colleague and she would miss him a lot. Just as she would miss everyone. She settled in the crook of Maura's neck and closed her eyes. She needed the touch, to feel the heat of Maura's body against hers. It would all be gone in two days and she would wake up to a cold and empty bed in a city that she didn't know. The flight from Paris to Boston lasted seven hours: she wouldn't waste a second of it being far from her partner. Not now.

"I love you."

Maura smiled as she said the words out loud. They sounded right, and pure. True. She liked their melody and what they stirred up in her heart. They made her feel proud, very proud.

I love you and I can now say it out loud. Except you nonetheless run away from me. Somehow. At least I know that you're supposed to come back after a while, that I don't scare you with my feelings. Because you love me in return.

I don't like the miles that will separate us. I despise the few hours it will take to be in your arms. They are my enemies, the main obstacle to you: love of my life.

I hate Washington D.C. almost as much as I hate the FBI and agent Davies. Don't ask me to be nice to him because he's the one who's taking you away from me. I hate all of this but I love you too much to ever compromise our relationship. So I'll do my best, Jane. I'll do my best to keep on smiling whenever you'll look at me.

...

*Ce n'est qu'un au revoir : It's only a goodbye