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.

For full disclaimers, please refer to the first chapter.

Chapter 6

Jane had handled the bureaucracy with the Girls' Scout's leaders in a daze of pain. She was thankful Frankie had approached her to help, because she was completely numb. The pain and the grief were crushing her chest, and she could barely breath.

Maura had gone with Kent to the morgue. Jane was not sure if that was a good idea. But nothing sounded like a good idea. Jane was sure Maura had gone because she couldn't stand to be by Jane. Jane was the one who had suggested to have Mia in the Girls' Scout in the first place. And Jane, the physical animal, had always been the one to incentivize Mia on the competitive sports.

And this was how it had ended.

"Kent confirmed it was a congenital heart disease, Jane." Frankie gently pulled her aside when he saw the text from Kent on his phone. "There was nothing else that could have been done."

Jane felt sick to her stomach. She had already thrown up twice, there was nothing else for her to throw up. What didn't stop her stomach from protesting. It was almost as if her guilt had materialized in the form of bitter bile. Because there was something she could have done. She could have kept her mouth shut. She could have never suggested Mia to join the Girls' Scouts in the first place. She could have found fault with Mia joining the competition. Or something. Anything that could have prevented Mia from overexerting herself and ending that way.

"Jane… Sit down. Let me handle this…" Frankie pleaded her, his hand protectively on her back as she doubled over, retching.

"I can do it." Jane insisted when she raised her head, cleaning her mouth with the back of her hand, tears washing her face, steeling herself. If she couldn't at least own what she had done, she was worse than useless.

It took hours. Jane wondered what had happened to the rest of the family, since everyone had been there to watch and cheer for Mia in the competition: Nina, Stella, Tommy, TJ, her mother. God… But she figured out they had likely found their way home.

"Let's get you home, Jane, it is late… And there is nothing else you can do here." Frankie tried, seeing how lost she looked now that the bureaucracy had been taken care of.

Jane shook her head no. She was not ready to face her family. To face Maura. God… Everything had been her fault, she couldn't face any of them. Not now. Likely not ever.

"I can't, Frankie…" she began hyperventilating, and Frankie held her forearms.

"Jane? Breathe… Please… Breathe…" he helped her to lower her head, her hands on her knees, as she tried to regain control of her breathing.

"This is all my fault, Frankie. I can't face them all.I can't face Maura. I...I can't even face myself… I want Mia… I want my daughter back…" Jane sobbed.

"Jane… You need to rest. It has been a long day. Please?" he tried, his voice breaking. He knew she was in no state to have an intelligible discussion right now.

Jane didn't feel the boundaries of her own skin any longer. It was as if she was delineated by pain and grief and guilt. But somewhere in her mind it registered Frankie was guiding her slowly back to the car, supporting more of her weight than she was doing herself.

Jane didn't recall the drive back to her home.

But she would never forget arriving there. Her mother was waiting for her. Frankie was still helping her out of the car, and Angela was already screaming at her while she cried.

"Why, Jane? Why did you have to put her on the Girls' Scouts? Why did you have to incentivize her to participate in the games?"

Jane's step faltered. If the weight of her guilt had been crushing her before, now she was feeling the definitive blow.

"Ma…" Frankie pleaded, trying to keep a wavering Jane upright. "Please stop… Where is Maura?"

"Maura…" Angela almost sneered. "Maura is gone. Not even Maura could stand what you've done, Jane."

Jane snapped her head up in an almost unnatural way, her eyes wild. She was crying and sobbing, drool and snot and tears dripping from her chin.

"What?" Jane managed to get out in a grimace of pain and disbelief.

"Maura is gone. She also couldn't face you." Angela almost spit out the last sentence.

"Ma…." Frankie practically growled. "Enough."

Jane's knees buckled, and Frankie had to hold her by the waist for her not to fall down.

Jane's hand reached for the door handle, and she fell to her knees as she opened it.

"Jane…"

"Go… She needs you…" Jane said in a broken voice, her head pointing in Angela's overall direction, as she kept wailing.

"You too…"

"Go, Frankie." Jane pleaded, nodding at him and closing the door behind her, locking it, still on her knees, resting her forehead on the hard wood.

She still could hear her mother screaming and wailing outside. She could almost picture Frankie holding her by the waist, and pulling her into the guesthouse, trying to calm her down.

Inside her own house, everything was quiet. Jane was on all fours. She knew she didn't have the strength to stand up. Her mother. Maura. Could she blame them for blaming her? No… None of them blamed her harder than Jane blamed herself. Jane knew she was the only one to blame…

She crawled on all fours the few steps to Mia's bedroom – the former guest bedroom used until Mia became too grown up to sleep on the den upstairs.

Jane cried out loud seeing everything as Mia had left when they were hurrying out in the morning. Her PJs were balled on the corner of the bed – that she had made given Maura's rule of never leaving her bedroom before at least making her bed. But the balled PJs were Mia's defiance.

Jane picked the PJ's, that still held Mia's scent, and hugged it desperately to her chest, curling into fetal position on top of Mia's bed, and let grief, pain and guilt consume her being.

She must have fallen asleep, because she woke up with a startle. It was almost 4AM and everything was dark. Mia's scent was gone from the clothes she was holding to her face.

Jane tried to stand, but stumbled and fell. She was weak, dehydrated, exhausted physically and emotionally. She found her way to the office with faltering steps, not only falling because her hand was finding support against the wall. She unlocked the safe Maura had installed years ago, and that Jane used religiously to store her gun and shield whenever she arrived from work, given TJ and Stella and Mia were always around the house.

Jane fumbled with the safe locking mechanism, but got it to work, and she picked her Glock. She rolled it in her scarred hands. That was it. A single shot could end all that pain. Jane unlocked it, and pointed it to her temple. But she was trembling so badly she knew chances were she would miss it. It would be pathetic if she could not even do this right. She moved it to point it to the roof of her mouth, the smell of the oil she used to keep the gun in perfect using conditions making her sick.

She immediately was reminded of the messy scenes of suicides where people blew up their heads, too many for her to count. She removed the gun from her mouth. She could not be guilty of adding still that indignity to the pile of indignities for her family to handle. She sighed, locked the gun again, and left it with the shield on top of a high shelf. Frankie would need to return it to BPD. She picked her passport from the safe, and locked it again.

Jane walked back to the kitchen, the wall again supporting her, and drank water thirstily directly from the tap. Feeling a bit more stable on her feet, Jane grabbed her gym bag from the laundry, placed a couple changes of clothes directly from the drier in it, and picking her wallet, her phone, and her passport and shoving them on the bag, she walked out on the street.

It would be another hour and a half before the sun would be up, so Jane began walking, stumbling every few steps as if she was drunk, without a specific direction or plan. The only clear thing in her mind was that she couldn't stay home. She could not face her family. She spotted a cab when the sun finally came up, being already a couple of miles away from her home, and gave the direction to a cheap motel she had a stake out on a couple of months back. When she arrived to the rundown place, she paid for the cab, without waiting for the change, distracted by a massive outdoor for the military service.

Jane registered with a fake name and paid in cash. She didn't want to be found. She entered the room that had been assigned to her, locked it from the inside, and immediately searched the internet for military options. If she was not even capable of killing herself, she could at least disappear, vanish in the thin air, in some secret mission, where she could easily get killed.

After a couple of hours of feverish research and a few phone calls, she grabbed her things and left.

"I can't return your money." The receptionist dumbly informed her when she said she was checking out and handed him the key back.

"You can keep it." Jane said over her shoulder, hailing a cab to get to an office in the city.

After paperwork, they handed her a packaged standard uniform, a rucksack, and her papers with her orders, and directed her to another camp just outside town where she would go through a battery of tests for her aim, and wait before being shipped for camp training and from there to her mission.

From the camp, she wrote her resignation letter, informing Frankie would hand her gun and shield back in the upcoming days. And then she wrote a letter to Frankie with the information that had been provided to her about where they could write to get anything re-directed to her.

She held on to the letters until she was leaving Boston two days later. Only then she deposited the letters on the mailbox, knowing it would reach BPD and her family when she would be long gone from Boston.

She had found a channel for her grief, for her pain, and for her guilty. And she had no doubt she would disappear in the process.