DISCLAIMER: I do not own Rizzoli & Isles nor any of the characters from the show. I am writing this purely for entertainment, not profit. Rizzoli and Isles are property of Tess Gerritsen and TNT.

Please find the full disclaimers in the beginning of Chapter 1.


Chapter 3

"Wanna some wine?" Jane offered from the kitchen.

"No, I drank enough for a day, more than I should have…"

"It is your birthday, you are supposed to drink more than normal…" Jane teased, and Maura squeezed her eyes threateningly at her.

"If you have some tea, though…" Maura conceded, as a peace offering.

Jane prepared some tea while her food re-heat.

Jane came back with a beer for her, tea for Maura, and then picked her plate from the microwave, where she had re-heated it.

"Are you sure you ate enough?" Jane asked, offering Maura her own plate before she began eating.

"Yes, thank you, Jane."

Jane shrugged, and began to eat, observing while Maura sipped her tea, in a very pensive mood. Her own mind was in a whirlpool, and she had lost her appetite, but she ate enough not to raise Maura's suspicions.

After Jane finished, she washed her plate and came back with another beer to sit across Maura.

"Hey…" Jane tried.

"Hi…" Maura replied, raising her eyes, that had been lost in thought.

"I know in normal circumstances you would be talking to a shrink by now, doing therapy to help you handle all that happened…"

Maura sighed. "You should also be doing the same. Although I know you don't believe in therapy. But we realistically can't do that."

"Yeah… So… What if we… talk? And try to help each other?"

"Who are you and what did you do to Jane Rizzoli?" Maura eyed her suspiciously.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Jane asked, offended.

"You, asking to talk about feelings?" Maura tilted her head.

Jane chuckled. "You got a point… But given there is no other alternative, I think we need to talk. It is not healthy for you to bottle up how you feel about this double life. I don't know if I will know how to help you, but I am here for you, Maura. Always." Jane offered sheepishly.

"Only if you also talk… It is not healthy that every one of my delays will place you in high alert, Jane… You were in fight or flight mode when I entered that door today…" Maura was gentle.

And Jane knew Maura would feel that it was even less healthy if Jane told her she had driven all the way to the Agency campus to look for her.

"Fair enough, I suppose…" Jane admitted, reluctantly. "But you go first…"

Maura chuckled. Of course. Typical of Jane. Distract her.

"I am not sure where to begin…" Maura was honest.

"Hmmm… What about you begin when this nightmare began, Maura?"

Jane watched Maura swallowing hard, and picking her mug of tea, as if organizing her thoughts, before she started, in a small voice.

"For me it all began when I saw the dispatch victim I was called for was Hope…" Jane watched as Maura's eyes welled in tears, and saw Maura shaking her head as if to dispel a vision. "I don't think I told you, Jane, but for the first time in my life I got sick to my stomach in a crime scene…" Maura admitted. Frankie had mentioned it to Jane in what seemed to have been a lifetime ago, but Jane and Maura had not talked about it.

"You were not the ME getting sick at a crime scene, Maura. You were a daughter getting sick because you were seeing your mother murdered." Jane offered, compassion and warmth in her eyes.

Maura nodded.

"And I knew it was murder, not a suspicious death. It was such a blow, Jane…" Maura didn't stop the tear escaping her eye. "The bridge Hope and I had been trying to build was irreparably broken… And all I could think of was what I still had wanted to achieve with her, all that I still wanted to be able to say to her…"

Jane nodded.

"I felt lost. Frankie was so sweet and compassionate, and I was grateful it was him with me and not any other detective. We called for Kent, and then he got Nina to drive me home. He asked me about Cailin, and I called her while I was in the car with Nina. I told him that I would call you, and so he focused on calling your mother, before returning to the investigation. Cailin was dumbfounded with the news, I didn't know she was in London, so it was a big shock for her. I probably handled giving her the news very poorly…"

"You were in shock, Maura, so it can be excused… Did you connect with her to spell out your situation?"

"No… After I came back from the dead, I spoke to Frankie, asking about her. He told me he had been the one giving her the news about my death. That she stayed in Boston long enough to handle Hope's funeral, that your mother and him helped her navigate the bureaucracy, and that when she mentioned her preference to go back to London and probably reestablish herself there, he was supportive, because it was a good way for her not to accidentally fall under the crosshairs of whoever had killed all of us. She departed about a week after all had happened."

"Would you like to re-connect with her?"

"I debated about it for a while. One side of me thinks that if she handled her ghosts, bringing back one that was a shadow for her entire life growing up might not be pleasant. The other side thinks she might be all alone in the world, when she could still have a half-sister. But since having me as a half-sister means danger to her, her safety has been a heavy weight on my decision to keep quiet so far…"

Jane was pleased they were talking. She has had absolutely no idea about any of this…

"I think is a fair assessment, but we might need to table that, to maybe try to find out how she is really doing? Because we might find out that if she is feeling all alone, knowing you are alive might be a fabulous consolation…" Jane knew it had been for her, at least.

"As it was for you?" Maura asked, as if reading Jane's mind.

"Learning you were alive was more than a consolation, Maura..." Jane admitted, somberly.

"Tell me, Jane." Maura asked, softly.

"As you were speaking on the phone with me about Hope, I was desperate to get to you. I could hear in your voice you were hurting, and it broke my heart… I wanted to tele-transport there to be there for you, you know, to help you. The flight could not land early enough. When I didn't see you waiting for me at the airport, and you didn't answer your phone, I had this dreadful feeling washing over me. When Frank told me, I broke down, Maura. In the middle of the airport. I stood against a column, and I slumped down to the floor."

"It is understandable, you were shocked…"

Jane shook her head. "It was more than shock, Maura. The grief… I couldn't breathe…"

Maura nodded. "I couldn't breathe either when I was sure you were dead after jumping that bridge…" Maura shuddered.

"At first, I thought it was not real. Then Nina picked me up at the airport. I was numb. Ma, she was sobbing, and I recall trying to draw comfort from her. But your house, your things, and your perfume all around me… I still was doubting the reality of the situation, until Dean told us of your parents' decision, and until he showed me the video of the shooting. It was only then I fully realized you were gone…"

Maura watched Jane swallowing hard.

"And I ran… I could not stay there without you. I flew back to DC that same night. I sat in the sofa the entire weekend. The pain was unbearable, Maura... I tried going back to work on Monday morning as a distraction, and I didn't last five minutes. That was when I put my unpaid leave request, without talking to anyone, bought as much vodka and bourbon as there was in the liquor store on my way back home. And tried to forget…"

"What exactly were you trying to forget Jane?" Maura asked, gently. She could see the pain. But she knew in therapy it was important to understand the pain, to slice and dice the pain until it was not haunting you. "Were you trying to forget that I was gone? Or that I had been murdered?"

"That you were dead, at first. And then I was trying to forget about you… Every time I thought about you, it hurt, Maura, it hurt so badly... And I drank, because when I didn't drink, I too many times had my gun on my hands, considering how easy it would be to join you, if I could just be brave enough to pull the trigger..." Jane was crying quietly.

Maura looked at her, haunted. She recalled seeing the liquor the moment she had landed back with Jane from the farm where WitSec had kept her. Jane had shown Maura the bottles on her kitchen cabinet herself. But the consideration about suicide, that horrified Maura.

"Oh God…" Maura covered her mouth with her delicate hand. "If you had done it…" Maura shook her head, her tears matching Jane's.

Jane met Maura in the middle, hugging her, while they both cried.

"I didn't. Dean brought the news about you being alive before I took action..."

"You had your life, your job, your family, Jane. Your life is so precious…" Maura shook her head again, feeling guilty.

"Yet it felt worthless without you…" Jane admitted, tensing up.

Maura nodded. "It was how I felt when I told you that it didn't feel worthy to have survived if it was to be alone…" she admitted, in a very small voice.

And Maura realized they were in treacherous waters now, both having admitted very raw feelings that none had likely dissected before.

Maura cleared her throat, and separated from Jane.

"I think, as the shrinks would say, we need a timeout to digest what we talked about…"

Jane nodded, relieved, standing up.

"Same time next week, Dr. Freud?" Jane tried to tease.

"It is a date." Maura confirmed, in a lighter tone. "And I will go back to my apartment because I just got older today and old age is catching up with me."

Jane offered her hand to Maura, who took it to stand up.

"Sorry for worrying you… I got so distracted with the surprise party that it didn't even occur to me to text you to let you know I would be late."

"Don't mention it, Maura. What matters is that you are alright. Good night…" Jane walked her to the door.