AN- I'm not sure how to delete the last chapter I some how posted it twice but here the actual next chapter.

11 months earlier

Harrison's point of view.

I know who it is before I even answer the phone.

"What's up, Jimmy?"

"Your girl is at it again. Getting belligerent and disrupting my customers."

"Awesome." I groan under my breath. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

"Five minutes. This is my last courtesy call. Next time, I'm calling the cops."

"I hear you loud and clear."

"Good."

Fuck. I shrug on a pair of jeans and run my fingers through my hair. The first time I can sleep through the night in six years and Jane repeatedly picksthree a.m.to self destruct. If it were anyone else, I'd have told Jimmy to toss her in the gutter and let her sleep it off. But I can't do that, not to Jane. At least not this time, but possibly the next. This shit is getting old.

It takes me exactly seven minutes to drive to the hole Jane has taken up residence in the last three months. Transitioning without Maura has significantly been hard for her. Leaving Maura destroyed her, more so than even I could have predicted. She was fucked up when it came to women to begin with, and getting wrapped up with Maura only magnified her issues twentyfold. Sometimes I worry she has reached a point of no return.

I walk into the dark little bar with a rainbow of shady characters Jane couldn't just pick any bar to get drunk in She had to pick the one where the baddest motherfuckers in town hang out. A place where the wrong look can get you stabbed or the wrong word will earn you a bottle smashed over your head.

I spot her in the corner being corralled by two linebackers in motorcycle jackets. Just fucking great. She's swaying on her feet with her bottom lip busted wide open. But it's the look in her eyes that has me worried. Her stare is dark and removed like her soul has disappeared.

"You're late." Jimmy sneers from behind the bar.

"Keep your shirt on. I'm here, aren't I? What happened?" I ask as we walk the length of the room side by side toward Jane.

"What happened is your friend came, got shitfaced, and started a fight. Again." He snarls. "I've had it. She's out, and if she shows her face in here one more time, I'm not going to intervene when she gets what's coming to her. Got me?"

"I got it." I wave my hand. I'm sure if I was anyone else, I'd be intimidated. But I don't have time for hard asses who think they're tough shit.

I squeeze through the two mountains blocking Jane. "Excuse me, fellas. I got it from here." I grab Jane's arm, and she growls at me. "Easy, killer. Just taking you to get some air." I pull her through the bar, stumbling drunk, and cursing like a sailor. To be honest, I'm impressed she has the ability to speak given the condition she's in.

Once outside, I haul off and punch her in the gut. Why? Because the last thing I need is a ticking time bomb. Which is exactly what Jane is at the moment what she's been since the moment she walked out of maura's life. And the only way for her to come to terms with what she's feeling is to face it head on. I have learned this about her the hard way.

Jane hunches over, caught off guard for a second, and then retaliates by tackling me against the car. "Come on, get it all out." I continue with the kidney shots as she crushes me against the driver's side door.

"You left her! And you have to fucking accept that!" I scream at her.

"I can't!" Jane howls like a wounded animal then slumps to the ground, trying and failing miserably to hide the emotion leaking out of her eyes. I prop her up on the sidewalk. She hits my soft spot every time.

"You can't keep doing this to yourself." I clasp her shoulder as she clumsily sits on the curb, pulling her legs up to steady herself. "You're going to wind up getting hurt, or worse, getting yourself killed. Is that what you worked so hard for? Sacrificed so much of your life for?" I shake her. "To be buried six feet under?"

"I'd be better off dead." She wipes her cheeks roughly with the palms of her hands, her elbows resting on her knees.

"That's the alcohol talking."

"No, it's not. What's the point of living if you have nothing to live for?" She looks up at me with bloodshot eyes.

My flesh actually heats.

"You selfish scumbag. You have nothing to live for? What the fuck am I?"

"What?" Her expression falls. "No . . . That's not . . . You're my best friend." She stumbles over her words.

"Well, how do you think I would feel if you end up dead?" I get in her face.

Jane shrugs. "Shitty?"

"Yeah. Pretty. Fucking. Shitty," I snap.

Jane stares at me blankly. I know she's in there somewhere. Then she drops her head in her hands pathetically. "I just miss her so damn much."

"I know."

"I just can't stand not being with her. It's killing me." Her voice cracks as she buries her face in the crook of her arm and recoils into a ball.

"For now." I assert. "That doesn't mean this will last forever forever."

"How can you possibly know that?" She raises her head and sniffs.

I roll my eyes. "Haven't you learned yet? I know everything."

Jane actually chuckles. It's a deranged sound, but at least she's connecting with me on some coherent level.

We stare at each other for some time before I concede. It's late, I'm tired, and she's smashed.

"Come on. Let's get you home and cleaned up. You bled all over yourself." Splattered red stains are covering her white shirt.

"Not my blood." She grins up at me. "It's the fucker's who was stupid enough to fight me. He never got a shot in."

"Then what happened to your lip?"

"Fell off the barstool."

"You what?" Oh, for Christ's sake, she can throw down in a bar fight, but she can't take a damn leak.

"Let's go." I hold out my hand exasperated.

Jane teeters a bit before her palm finally connects with mine. I haul her to her feet, and it feels like I'm pulling on a steel anchor. Once standing, I rest her against the car and manually unlock the doors.

After I dump her in the front seat, I slide behind the wheel and start the engine.

I glance over at Jane, she looks green and is barely conscious. "Listen, you puke in here, and I'm tossing you out while we're still moving."

Jane smirks, her head bobbing all over the place as I pull away. In no time at all, she's passed out.

What am I going to do with her? She's a wreck.

I can't fault her completely. She's had a rough life. Abused, neglected, and cast aside. It's tragic, really. And then, when she finally gets one tiny flicker of happiness, what happens? It's corrupted and shrouded in darkness by Hoyt.

"Maura." Jane moans miserably beside me in her drunken sleep.

All I can do is shake my head, what a fucking mess.

The present.

Maura's point of view.

Its fear I try to hide beneath a smile as I sit beside Jane the next morning having breakfast with her family, like nothing is wrong the only noise coming from Theo. Jane remains stubbornly mute, and I am left huddled against this pervasive fear that I will lose her. That she will be taken from me.

She lifts our joined hands and gently kisses my palm. The gesture is soft and sweet, and

a tremor ripples through my body, and I turn away. I am terrified of losing her. Terrified that whatever good we've discovered together despite her past will be ripped away. I press my lips together to hold back an anguished scream, because that is all I want to do right now...scream and yell and cry until Jane does whatever she has to do to fix this and make all the horror go away.

But I don't. Instead I stand firm like a rock, knowing that the slightest motion could set me off. I feel wild and volatile and dangerous. And right now, the last thing either of us needs is an explosion.

I close my hand in her's. I know every line of her face. Every angle, every curve. I know her lips, her expressions. I can close my own eyes and picture her, dark with desire, bright with laughter. I have only to look at her dark colored hair to imagine the soft, thick locks between my fingers. There is nothing about her that is not intimately familiar to me, and yet every glance at her hits me like a shock, reverberating through me with enough power to knock me to my knees. Empirically, she is gorgeous. But it is not simply her looks that overwhelm. It is the whole package. The power, the confidence, the bone-deep sensuality that she couldn't shake even if she tried.

"Jane." I whisper, because I can't wait any longer to feel her name against my lips.

Her mouth curves into a slow smile. She tugs my hand, pulling me onto her lap, I settle there eagerly, but I don't lean against her. I want to sit back enough that I can see her face.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I know what her answer will be, and yet I hold my breath, praying that I am wrong.

"No." She says. "I just want to hold you."

I smile as if her words are sweetly romantic, refusing to let her see how much they chill me. I need her touch, yes. But I need the woman more.

I stroke her cheek. The shock of our connection rumbles through me, and my chest feels tight, my breath uneven. Will there ever come a time when I can be near her without yearning for her. Without craving the touch of her skin against my own?

It's not even a sexual longing...not entirely, anyway. Instead, it's a craving. As if my very survival depends on her. As if we are two halves of a whole and neither can survive without the other.

With Jane, I am happier than I have ever been. But at the same time, I'm more miserable, too. Because now I truly understand fear. I force a smile, because the one thing I will not do is let Jane see how terrified I am of losing her. It doesn't matter; Jane knows me too well.

"You're scared." She says, and the sadness that colors her voice is enough to melt me. "You're the one person in all the world I cannot bear to hurt, and yet I'm the one who put fear in your eyes."

"No." I say. "I'm not scared at all."

"Liar." She says gently."

"You forget that I've seen you in action, Jane Rizzoli. You're a force of nature. They can't possibly hold you. Maybe they don't know it yet, but I do. You're going to walk away from this. You're going home a free woman. There's no other way that this can end." I say the words because I need to believe them. But she is right. I am desperately afraid. Jane, of course, sees through me. Gently, she tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.

"You should be scared. This is the kind of case that has prosecutors salivating."

"You didn't kill Charles Hoyt."

Her expression darkens. "Truth is a malleable thing, and once I walk into that courtroom, the truth is what the jury says it is."

"Then you need to make sure the jury knows the real truth. Dammit, Jane, you didn't kill him. But even if you had, there were mitigating circumstances."

"Maura." She pulls me against her, her arms swooping around my waist and shifting me on her lap so quickly that I gasp. "You know I can't do what you're asking."

"I'm not asking anything." I say, but the words sound brittle, because of course I'm asking. I'm begging. Jane knows it, too. And yet she is denying me.

Anger flares within me, but before it explodes, her mouth crushes against mine. The kiss is deep and raw and all consuming, and warm desire blooms within me. It doesn't erase my anger or my fear, but it does soothe it, and I shift closer to her, wishing I never had to leave the safety of her arms.

After a moment, I pull back, breathless. "I love you." I say.

"I know." She says, and though I wait for the reciprocal words to come, she doesn't say them back to me.

My heart twists a little, and I force a smile. The kind of smile I show the public, but not Jane."

I tell myself that she's just tired, but I don't believe it. Jane does nothing without a purpose. And though it is impossible to truly get inside that head of hers, I know her well enough to guess at her motivations, and I want to jump to my feet and scream at her. I want to beg her not to push me away. I want to shout that I get it, that she's trying to protect me because she knows that she might lose the trial. That she might be ripped from me. But doesn't she know that all she's doing is hurting me?

I believe with all my heart that Jane loves me. What I fear is that love isn't enough. Not when she's determined to push me away in some misguided attempt to protect me. So I don't lash out. That's not a fight I can win, but I can play the game my own way. With renewed resolve, I kick the wattage up on my smile and slide off her lap, my hand extended to her. "You have to be at the police station at ten, Jane. I think you'd better come with me."

She stands, her expression wary. "Are you going to tell me I have to get some sleep?"

"No."

Her gaze slides over me, and my body quivers in response as if she had physically touched me. "Good." She says, and that one simple word not only conveys a world of promises but takes the edge off the chilly fear that has filled me.

I allow the corner of my mouth to quirk up into a hint of a smile. "Not that, either."

The confusion on her face brings a genuine smile to my lips, but she doesn't have the chance to ask

"Walk with me."

I take her outside to Angela's garden. I love how quiet it is out here.

"Maura." My name is soft upon her lips, and she lets go of my hand as she moves to stand behind me. Her palms press down on my shoulders, the pressure warm and sweet. I feel the gentle touch of her lips upon the top of my head, and the soft squeeze of her fingers as she strokes my arms. "I pissed you off that first day we met, remember? I should have let you stay pissed. I should have walked away from you and never looked back."

My mouth is dry, and my chest feels tight. I do not want to hear these words. I don't want to believe that there is even some tiny part of her that would prefer to have never been with me, not even if that fantasy springs from a desire to protect me. "No." I say. It's the only word I can manage, and it sounds strangled and raw. She turns me gently, then presses her palm to my cheek.

"It rips me apart to see the fear in your eyes." Her words are soft and gentle, but they hit me with as much force as a kick in the chest, and I respond in kind, surprising both of us.

"Stop it!" I shout, all of my self control exploding out in a maelstrom of wild emotions. "Just stop it! You think that's a solution? Wishing that we'd never gotten together? Jane, I'm so in love with you it hurts, but you're going to coddle me? I don't need you to soothe me, I need you to do something."

"Maura." Her voice isn't soothing now. It's raw and dangerous and I know that I've pushed her too far, but I don't care. As far as I'm concerned, I can't push her far enough, because right then, all I want is to break her.

To break through that stubbornness and somehow get through her head that the only way to save herself...to save us...is to put forward a defense.

"They're going to put you away for life." My voice is clipped and precise. "How can you not be scared? I'm so scared I can barely get out of bed every day!"

She stares at me as if I'm speaking Greek.

"Not afraid?" Her words are heavy with barely contained fury. I don't know if it's directed at me or not, but it is strong enough that it makes her tremble. "Is that what you think?" I take an involuntary step back, but she stops me, her hands clutching my arms, her fingers digging into my flesh and holding me firmly in place. "Is that really what you think? Jesus Christ, Maura I'm terrified of being ripped away from you. Of not being able to touch you. To kiss you. To hear you laugh, to look at you. To be with you."

She leans in close, her lips brushing my cheek. "I can handle anything except the thought of losing you. Not scared?" She whispers. "I'm more terrified than I've ever been in my life." She says, and then her mouth closes over mine. For one beautiful, blissful moment I am lost in her kiss, in her arms. I've forgotten where we are and why we are here. There is only Jane and the sensual, comforting warmth of her body pressed against mine.

Then something snaps inside me. I press my palms up hard against her chest and push her back again.

"How dare you be afraid Jane, how dare you say that you're afraid of losing me when you could make it all go away. You could make this be over. You could end it.

She's staring at me, and there is infinite sadness in her eyes. "If I could take away your fear, I would."

"If you could?" I repeat. "You can, and you damn well know it, and I'm mad that you won't do anything about it." I'm screaming at her, and I hate it. Hate myself. But dammit, right now I hate Jane, too.

Tears stream down my face, and my legs seem to fall out from under me. I start to collapse and Jane catches me, easing me down to my knees. The irony isn't lost on me. Jane will always be there to catch me. At least I thought she would. Now I don't know, and for the first time, I feel alone in Jane's arms.

"I've thought about it." Her voice is low and as serious as I've ever heard. I freeze. I never knew that hope could feel so cold and lifeless, but it does. "Thought about what?" I ask cautiously.

She hesitates so long that I begin to think she's not going to answer. When she speaks, the words come slowly. "I've wanted you for so long." She says. "And now that I have you, I'm risking everything there is between us."

Yes, I want to shout. Yes! I realize that I'm digging my fingernails into the soft, damp earth, and I force myself to relax as I try not to anticipate her next words. As I try not to get my hopes up.

"I'm not convinced that revealing what Doyle did is the panacea you and Maynard and the rest of them think it is. But maybe I should try. If it means that the charges will go away, and then risk the whole Irish mob on my ass the rest of my life. Or I could play the victim, there's no shame in that, right?" I hear the bitterness in her voice, and I want to reach for her and hold her hand tight in mine. I don't, though. I stay absolutely, perfectly still. "So why should I care that the world knows all the vile things he did to me? Why should it matter that the press writes about the debasing things he made me do. Things that I wish I could forget." She meets my eyes, but I see only the hard lines and angles of her face. "If it means that I can walk to you as a free woman, shouldn't I want to make my personal hell fodder for the whole damn world again?" Something cool brushes my cheek, and I realize that I am crying.

I think I hear footsteps but I'm not sure until I hear a voice. "Jane I have a solution to your problem." It's Harrison. "I'm going to tell them I killed Hoyt."