I say a little prayer for you

Maura pressed her finger to the sensitive screen with one hand and let it run its small length to get to what she was looking for. Once satisfied with the new location she brought her left hand up to wrap around the warm mug in her hands.

The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup

I say a little prayer for you

"Enchantment…" She began to read below her speaker system. "Noun."

And while I'm coming my hair now, and wondering what dress to wear now

"A feeling of great pleasure or delight…" She took a sip of her espresso.

I say a little prayer for you

"The state of being under a spell; magic…" Maura wrinkled her nose and tried the word again. "Magic."

Forever and ever, you'll stay in my heart

And I will love you

Forever and ever, we never will part

Oh, how I love you

Together, forever, that's how it must be

To live without you

Maura rested her mug down and used both hands to formulate a new search. "Magic." She picked up her mug again and glanced at the wall clock in her kitchen and then back to her tablet. "Noun…"

Would only mean heartbreak for me

##

Toothbrush in mid rotation Jane grabbed at the dark blue v neck she was wearing and pulled the fabric to her nose for inspection. The detective frowned and spit into the running water in her sink and rinsed her brush before putting it aside and yanking the shirt over her head. "I had to have done laundry this month…" She took in the sight of her bedroom for the first time in a few days and grimaced. "Shirt, shirt shirt…" She called as she lifted the fallen duvet at the foot of her bed and into nightstand drawers. Finally a crimson red v-neck passed the test in both odor and appearance. Jane slipped it over her head and then hesitated before pulling her hair back into a ponytail. She checked her watch again and made an effort to move a little faster to get herself ready to get out the door. She hadn't slept well last night, and her stomach kept on doing this thing that really was starting to annoy her. "It's just Maura." She reminded herself. "It's just another work day." She glanced at her watch again as she grabbed her keys. "And you're just about to be late for it Rizzoli, get it together."

Maura looked up from finishing her yogurt parfait when she heard the front door being keyed into. Jane slipped in clad in a black suit and crimson shirt. She grumbled something about traffic before tossing her car keys onto the end table near the door before stepping into the room fully. She looked to be about to greet the other woman when the parfait caught her attention. "You have more of those?" The last thing she had to eat yesterday was a bagel at work.

Maura tilted her head. "Why is it that you never eat breakfast at your apartment?"

The detective slipped to sit at a stool near the island. "Because I have no food there."

Maura turned to get a small mason jar from her cupboard. "Because is arguably the worst way to begin a sentence."

"And I know it."

Maura sent her a little smile. "You never go shopping."

"You always go shopping."

Maura shook her head as she opened her stocked refrigerator to grab the tub of Greek yogurt she had used. "Good Morning."

"Morning." Jane watched her begin to assemble a to-go version of her yogurt parfait taking care only Maura would to alternate the levels of blueberries and raspberries with granola. The doctor was wearing a grey pencil skirt and a ruffly black blouse that made Jane want to reach out and touch it but fearful because it may actually take flight if woken. Instead she crossed her arms and leaned forward to watch what she was doing before glancing up at the focused woman. There were a slight crease in her right dimple as she fought a stubborn piece of fruit; it made Jane smile a little. Maura looked up to ask something but fell quiet as she noticed Jane's gaze and returned one of her own.

Last night they had agreed to entertain this idea, this feeling.

"Your hair is out of your face, today." Maura noticed but then went back to her work when she realized it wasn't something one ought to say aloud, at least not when they were thinking the exact same thing and waiting for the other to address it.

Jane chuckled. "I was going for slutty-sporty but I think now I'm wishing I had went sporty-slutty." The ME laughed in response thus defusing the somewhat charged moment.

"Well I like it whichever look it is."

"You get any sleep?"

Maura finished the final layer of granola and began to search for a mason jar lid. "Some."

Jane got out of her seat and walked around to the mug cabinet. She noted the coffee light on Maura's fancy coffee pot had just turned off, meaning it had gone through a whole two hours of warming, meaning Maura had put it on early, meaning she was up early. "Hm." Jane responded as she reached to pour herself a quick cup. "Thank you." She picked up the sealed mason jar and turned it over to look at the surgically placed fruit and granola with her free hand.

"You'll have to have it when you get to work." The ME began to gather her bags. " I have an early meeting and then I have to head over to BCU for another guest lecture."

Jane nodded. "It's cool that they invited you back." She moved to take a sip from her mug but Maura rested a hand on her hand to stop her. Jane narrowed her eyes. "No Maura, I stayed up till three this morning scribbling big words on a napkin for you, I'm drinking this coffee."

Maura chuckled. "No one is retracting your caffeine; I'm simply asking that you take it to go."

Jane smiled then. "Wise woman." Maura shook her head in amusement as she began to gather her things. Jane watched her move about with a graceful haste. 'So that's why you look all dressed up today?"

The medical examiner was slipping something into her briefcase. "Pardon?"

Jane shrugged. "You look nice…" Maura smiled. "Very um, academic."

"A compliment?"

Jane brought her mug to her face to take a sip. "Only because you let me keep my coffee."

"Ah." She grabbed a blazer that was sitting on the back of the couch and looked to Jane expectantly. "Jane."

"Alright I'm coming, I'm coming."

##

Jane sat down across from Edgar Knowles and watched him closely. The paling man was about to break. They didn't need his confession, they had his partner's suicide note and the evidence at all locations, but Jane didn't want Knowles to know that. A crime this large had to have moving parts that predated the first attack. A crime this large had to have a series of buildup offenses and intricacies that and Jane was just not buying the psychotic break thing. She had sat in front of serial killers before, the more normal and sustained their life behaviors, the more sinister of offenders. Edgar Knowles had maintained a solitary life with just the right amount of witnesses but there had to be a hole and when she found it (because she would) Jane would expose him for the animal that he was.

"Mr. Knowles do you know who I am?"

He sighed. "Detective Rizzoli, I don't remember what you are keeping me here for but I do know that you're looking to confuse me further with asking me that every time you step in here."

"And where is here?"

His chains jingled with a shrug of muted frustrations. "Boston, Massachusetts."

"Hm." Jane responded simply. She leaned on her elbows of the interrogation table casually. "Sorry about that, I must have my disorders messed up." She stretched out a little entering his personal space without threat. "Like I have previously mentioned you are being detained for questioning for the twelve victims you had originally confessed to murdering." She leaned back in her chair and flipped open the manila folder in front of her.

"Murder? I haven't murdered anyone!"

"Yeah yeah calm down we did this yesterday, and the day before." She scratched her cheek.

"This is outrageous."

"What's outrageous is you running when my partner and I approached you on Wednesday evening, confessing to the murder of twelve people, refusing to tell us who or where they are and then waking up and claiming to not remember a damn thing." She watched him purse his lips. Good, he was angry. "This is just all for what? Shits and giggles? You think you can play the system?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about, Detective."

Jane huffed. "Alright well why don't you try and remember for me?"

"Am I being charged with anything?"

"Murder…" She shrugged. "Serial Homicide, if you want to get specific." She closed the folder in front of her after refreshing her memory on the quick blurb Maura had written for the Chief on the trace opioids that were found in all twelve victims' bodies. "How'd you do it?"

"I didn't murder those women."

Jane paused. "What women?"

Knowles shook his head. "The ones you said I murdered!"

"Eddie I didn't say they were women." She sat back in her seat and crossed her arms as she watched his face fall, recalculate, and then begin to twitch. He wanted to kill her. She could see him imagining how. She waited patiently as it all seeped in and his fantasies flashed over his heartless grey eyes and then he blinked and it flickered away. A corner of his mouth turned upward. It was an iota of a moment but Jane knew he was impressed with her. "Well I did confirm that they were women when you confessed to murdering them when you first came in here but I thought you couldn't remember that part?"

"I don't recall."

"You don't recall."

"Yes."

"That's interesting what you get to pick and choose what you remember and don't remember. Who you kill, who you don't kill. Tell me how did you decide on those women? DId they look like mommy? Or were they just in your way like women usually tend to be?"

Knowles stared at her. Jane narrowed her eyes and he lifted his chin in defiance before lowering it once. A nod. "Where is my lawyer?"

Jane actually chuckled as she stood. His games of superiority wouldn't work here. She had an idea. "You remember you have one? Good. I'll make sure he is on his way back." She stepped out of the room and straight to the viewing part of interrogation. Her brother stood watching Knowles carefully while Korsak turned to her.

"We got him."

Jane nodded. "How long do we have him technically?"

Frankie looked over at her. "A day before the DA wants the full report."

'I think he has something else to hide."

Korsak shook his head already knowing what she was suggesting. "No."

"We let him go and where is the first place he will go?" She motioned with her folder through the large one way mirror.

"To go find his dead golfing buddy." Frankie shook his head. "Janie we got the note, we have a morgue full of bodies downstairs that we can link him too—"

"Not directly Frankie and we have nothing on how he managed to continue to pull off these hides." She shook her head. "Think for a second alright, I wanna be as done with this as the both of you but just think about the man power it would take to hide twelve bodes in plain sight like this. It's not a two man job, it's just not." She shook her head. "Korsak would you hire someone who had been hopping from job to job like this? With no character references from past places of employement and noreal experience why hire a forty two year old man when you could get some kid to do it?"

Frankie shook his head. "What you think someone else knew? Someone was hooking him up? A relative?"

Jane had a point and Korsak knew it, he wasn't about to let a serial killer walk free just so they could tail him, there were too many variables. "He stays in the box, Jane."

"Vinc—"

"Find out who hired him. DA Groves is here tomorrow on Saturday because of the publicity this case has received. She wants to book him and book him fast."

"What time tomorrow?"

'Eleven thirty. You have till then, after that I want this dropped."

Jane nodded. "By tnight, got it."

Vince shook his head. "Jane I said by tomorrow—" Jane was already out the room and down the hall. Korsak looked to Frankie who shrugged and look back at Knowles through the mirror.

"I think she's right."

Korsak chuckled. "Think?"

##

Maura was running a hand through her hair and looking at papers alone in the large auditorium at BCU where she guest lectured frequently on the intricacies of pathology with Professor Erin Dooley. Today's class had been a great success and she was enjoying herself so much that she agreed to take a look at some of the reports the students were charged with while Professor Dooley tended to her office hour schedule in a nearby building on campus. Like with volunteering with MEND and occasional writing Maura found education to be one of life's continued surprises for her. She loved school growing up, even now, but she had no idea that teaching would fill her with the same excitement she felt as a child when preparing for a day of coursework. Erin warned her that this class in particular was special and the psychology 101s of the curriculum made you want to tie a cement block to your leg and go swimming but Maura was welcome to sub in on those as well.

If the class wee that bad physiologically speaking that wouldn't have been the fastest and most painless way to go anyway and why didn't her fellow pathologist know that?

A breathily laugh escaped the medical examiner.

It had been a joke.

Maura looked up from her musings suddenly when she heard the large double doors to her right near her lecturer podium open.

"Oh." A student with freckles splashed about his face and short blonde hair smiled apologetically. "Sorry, I didn't know anyone would be in here."

Maua waved. "It's quite alright, what class were you looking for?"

"No class." He nodded. "Just some…relief. I'll try the study hall. Sorry to bother you Professor—"

Maura stood but watched as the young student took a step back into the hall as if not wanting to be seen fully. "Doctor Isles." She studied his features and attempted to ease whatever plagued his alternating facial expressions with a smile of her own. "I was guest lecturing on Pathology here, I work for the county… quietly." She joked. "You're more than welcome to sit in."

He hesitated but then shook his head. "I gotta go."

Maura nodded. "Okay." She watched him leave just as quietly as he came before turning back to her small desk just in time to see her cell phone begin to buzz. She reached for it and checked the caller before answering with a smile. "I murdered it, Jane."

Jane chuckled softly on the other line. "It's I killed it, Maura."

The doctor shrugged as she got back into her seat facing the giant room. "It went well."

"Good, good, I know you were nervous."

"Opera singers report feeling an extreme rise in endorphins and dopamine after a particularly long act. The idea of filling an area as large as an auditorium with your own sound, its quiet miraculous."

"You yelled science at a bunch of kids?"

Maura chuckled. "I did not yell science, and they are hardly children."

Jane smiled. "Well you sound happy."

"Yes, I am just about done here. I should be back soon. Was there something you needed?"

Jane was sitting in a parking lot of one of the locations where Knowles worked watching the comings and goings. "Nah, not really." She checked her watch and used her free hand to scribble on her note pad another coming and going. This particular store housed the reginal manager's office upstairs and although her mark wasn't directly in charge of hiring he had to have interacted with Knowles on some level. "I am gonna be working late tonight."

"Has there been a development in the case?"

"I don't know yet. I just have a—"

"Feeling?" Maura finished for her.

Jane focused her attention back on the other woman's voice and smiled gently. "Yeah, I guess you already know how this whole thing goes."

"You called, that's an improvement."

Jane chuckled. "I always call." After jumping off the bridge it had been their silent compromise. Sometime she didn't have time to, the development of the cases would move too fast to know which way they would go or where they would be, but Jane tried her best to reach out to Maura because she knew that having the badge wasn't just her responsibility and she trusted her friend to relay the right information to her mother and hold back the rest.

"Sometimes."

"Sometimes." Jane agreed. She watched another man in a suit enter the store and jotted down the time and a short about his description. "Hey um, so what do you think about seafood?"

"Cooked for the right time and temperature it can be quiet enjoyable." Jane rolled her eyes. "What for? Sunday dinner?"

"Will you be back from your biker gang thing in time for that?"

"Yes, and it is for motorcycle enthusiasts, Jane." She paused. "Although members of organized crimes may be in attendance, it's not my motivation for going. Frankie will be there, you don't have to worry."

"Well no not for Sunday, but if there is anything that's not lasagna on the Sunday table it better at least taste like lasagna. I'm taking about um… our thing, the date." She bit her lip wondering for the first time if any of this was real.

"…Seafood sounds lovely."

The line was quiet.

"Cool."

Maura smiled. "Can I share something that may further your discomfort?"

Jane chuckled. "No."

"I'm glad you called."

The detective sat back in her seat a moment and smiled to herself. "Yeah, me too." This wasn't so different was it? "Will you let me know when you're back at HQ?"

"I will."

##

"Meditation teaches us a wide range of willpower skills, including attention, focus, stress management, impulse control and self-awareness. It changes both the function and structure of the brain to support self-control but often times even with the most skilled of minds we lose sight of why we meditate in the first place." The soft padding of feet could be heard amongst the darkness in the room as their instructor circled his students that were lying on the ground with their eyes closed. "Now that we are in most vulnerable of states" He continued softly. "I want you all to join hands with the people beside you." There was some fumbling of movements. "Yes that's right, take the other persons hand."

On her right Jane could feel the slightly damp hand of the man who was sitting beside her. They were strong hands, working hands. For some reason it made her appreciate him even though she hadn't even known him for a full forty five minutes. On her left Maura's soft hand found hers shyly and they immediately laced fingers. Jane knew she wasn't supposed to but she poked her left eye open and noticed with a mixture of amusement and fondness that Maura's face was relaxed completely into a submissive trance. Jane admired how she truly looked at a place of peace and with a small nod internally she closed her eyes and tried to get a hold of what the instructor was saying.

This had been important to Maura, for them.

"Good." He continued to pad around the room. "Note the initial discomfort you felt and then lean into that discomfort fully allowing yourself to accept the other person as not a stranger, but a fellow human being. Lean all the way in…." Jane exhaled slowly and felt herself warm internally as if standing in the sun. "Meditation is not about being able to drown out the world and its discomfort; it is about finding the peace within to accept it, to live in harmony with it…To hold its hand." He continued to pad the room. "Lead with that thought and that thought only as we transition to sound guided meditations."

Twenty two minutes later the lights were turned on. Jane smiled at the man next to her who smiled back before letting go of her hand and wishing an enlightened day. She turned to look over at Maura who was beginning to stir. Jane looked down at her and then their joined hands.

"Not the worst way to spend a Saturday morning." She whispered as the room slowly came to life again around them.

Maua opened her eyes and smiled brightly. "How relaxing." She sat up to match Jane's potion and glanced at their hands as well. "How do you feel?"

Jane looked about and nodded before looking back at her. "Thought this guy would talk less."

The Chief Medical Examiner nodded. "He doesn't always but there were many new faces today. It's beneficial to have a guide while delving into the mind don't you think?"

"Hm."

Maura lifted their joint hands. "Thank you for holding my hand." They separated and Jane blushed which Maura seemed to enjoy seeing because on their way to Jane's parked car after changing she took the detective's hand again just briefly several times testing for an objection of sorts. All the mini experiment seemed to produce was a redder faced Jane Rizzoli and Maura realized then that she stumbled upon a new form of teasing her friend and she quite liked the upper hand it presented.

"Maura." Jane groaned as the shorter woman reached for her hand again.

The ME had a twinkle in her eye of mischief. "Are you embarrassed?"

"You're doing it on purpose." Jane stuffed her hands into her jean pockets and wriggled as a teenager might when being kissed by a caregiver in front of their friends as Maura playfully reached for her hands. "Hey!"

Maura let out a laugh at their struggle before sighing and wrapping her right arm around Jane's left as they walked. "I am."

AN: Song in the beginning is "I Say a Little Prayer" by the great Aretha Franklin. The idea of Maura singing "A Natural Woman" in the shower just really tickled me and added a layer to her character that I wanted to explore. Anyway review!

KathleenDee