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After everything happened, after all the paperwork went through, after the FBI went back where it came from and Korsak and Frost made their fragile peace, Maura found herself staring at a snapshot of Hoyt in the interrogation room, his eyes wide and his smile wider.
He showed less evidence of trauma than she expected. She'd heard stories about what happened to bad guys in prison, truly bad men. Even criminals have standards. Korsak and Jane had chuckled about it more than once, when they sent someone evil away. Maura believed them. And yet . . . he'd never even had his nose broken. Korsak had shot him, had rescued Jane, but the evidence didn't show on his face. Not the way everything else had.
Maura didn't like what this case had done to her. She liked even less what it had done to Jane, facing that man a second time.
Jane pulled through, like she always did, and pulled her brother and Maura through with her. Scared out of her mind and unafraid to show it. Stronger for showing it. No cop in the building would call Jane weak because she'd been a victim.
Maura had never really been afraid. She'd grown up a privileged child in a privileged world, and had chosen her profession because of fascination and an affinity with the dead, a desire to speak for them when so many turned away.
Gut-clenching, hand-trembling fear hadn't been a part of her life until Jane Rizzoli strolled into it in her off-the-rack blazers and practical flats.
"The problem with computers is you can't file 'em away in a box in the basement."
Maura gasped and spun around. Korsak stood in the doorway of the morgue, his eyebrows raised.
"Korsak!" Maura protested. "I didn't hear you."
"Looking at that more ain't gonna change what happened. You're letting him mess with your head, and he's back in prison. Don't let him."
"I just . . ." she trailed off. Turned back to the screen and Hoyt's face. She was rarely without words. "He said I was like him."
"What did Jane say?"
Maura got caught up in the wrinkles around his eyes, the story they told about his life. The way his skin pulled, how it revealed age and inclination.
She'd never turned the facial analysis on herself. Maybe she should.
"Jane said I was nothing like him. Nothing."
Korsak walked over, his footfalls heavy on the tiled floor. He reached out and turned the monitor off with a flick. "Jane's been around. I'd trust her over that psycho any day."
Maura nodded. She did trust Jane, somehow. She trusted Jane with almost everything.
What she didn't quite trust Jane with--that had come too close to the surface in this case. Hoyt had a talent for bringing out things his victims would rather keep hidden. Maura wasn't bothered by thinking of herself as a victim of Hoyt's, even if it was just to his mind games. He was evil. She'd certainly come out of it better than others had.
"Is there anything you need?" Maura asked, the oddity of Korsak coming to her morgue after shift suddenly striking her.
Korsak shook his head. "Jane's looking for you. Last I checked, she was upstairs arguing with the captain."
Maura nodded decisively and snatched up her coat and bag. "Lead the way." She gestured toward the door and Korsak headed out. Maura flicked the lights off and locked the door behind her.
#
She and Korsak parted ways after the elevator. Maura passed the captain on the way out and caught a glimpse of him catching up with Korsak, the two of them laughing as they left the station. She shook her head and was about to head for Jane's desk when she literally ran into Jane, who was speed-walking toward the elevators.
"There you are!" Jane sounded a little manic, but that was to be expected. Her friend hadn't even taken a day off, and no new case had come up to distract her, so she'd probably spent the day going through cold cases and twitching while the detectives around her filed paperwork on Hoyt's Stockholm Syndrome victim. "Come on."
Jane took her arm and led Maura back toward the elevators. "Where are we going?"
"I have a plan," Jane announced.
"Um . . . good?" Maura ventured. Jane was a physical person, but she didn't usually drag Maura around like this. A little guilty part of Maura liked it.
Jane touching her could never be a bad thing.
"Where are we going?" Maura finally asked as the elevator disgorged them in the basement again.
Jane took her down a hallway the opposite direction from her morgue and deposited them in front of a heavy door with a lock.
"Here."
Maura eyed the sign on the door and turned around to stare at Jane, arms crossed over her chest. "Is this because of what I did at your apartment? I didn't do anything wrong, and nothing happened while I was there, anyway."
"Yes, it is, and no, it didn't, but that might not be true next time."
Jane unlocked the door and chivvied her through. Maura went, reluctantly.
The smell of cordite hung in the air, and the bare brick walls were darker, dirtier than they were in the rest of the building, even the basement. Maura guessed that not many of the cleaning staff had access to the station's small armory and shooting range.
"Come on, take off the jacket and purse and leave them here. Come on."
Jane coaxed Maura through divesting herself of trailing clothing, and through the initial lecture--make, model, specifications, stopping power, math and physics shaped to kill. Numbers, facts that Maura could grasp. She suspected that was why Jane was bothering--she knew Maura well enough to guess it would all stay with her, and be better than whatever layman's lecture rookie officers were given.
Jane watched like a hawk while Maura disassembled and reassembled the gun. Their fingers brushed every time Jane corrected her, standing close enough beside her that their elbows kept bumping.
Maura took deep breaths and tried to bury her reaction. Jane didn't need this, not with Hoyt gone only a day and the investigator left not long after. They worked well together, they had one of the best relationships Maura had even been in, platonic or romantic. Introducing new elements would destabilize the equation, and without convincing evidence that the new result would be worth the risk, Maura didn't rock the boat.
Then they moved to the shooting range.
Suddenly, their earlier banging-elbows proximity seemed like an oceanic gulf. Jane's hands were on her forearms, her wrists, her shoulders. Jane stood close enough behind her that Maura felt the hair all over her body stand on end.
Ten rounds in her first paper cutout--well, six rounds in the paper, four in the walls around it--Maura lowered the gun and shifted backward. She found herself pressed against Jane's front; the other woman must have been standing a hair's breadth behind her.
Maura took a sharp breath and startled away.
"Wait, Maura." Jane's hands came up and touched her shoulders. Maura froze, still facing the range.
I don't--I can't--this is too much. Maura cleared her throat and said, in as close to a normal voice as she could, "What's going on, Jane?"
Jane's hands rubbed her shoulders for a moment, and in her mind Maura could see the look that must be on her face, the gathering-her-thoughts look. Then Jane let out a breath and Maura felt her step close again, felt her rest her forehead against Maura's hair. Maura gulped quietly.
"I was really really scared."
Maura set the gun down gently on the counter and put her hands on top of Jane's, stilling them. "I know," she said, and squeezed.
If that's what this was, if this was Jane being overprotective because of Hoyt, Maura could handle it. She would handle it. The last few days had given her quite the crash course in being afraid, and in Jane Rizzoli being afraid. The tension in the air, the way Jane hadn't left her personal space--it was because she was trying to keep Maura safe. That's all.
Her gut disagreed, but Maura had never trusted her gut. Evidence suggested this was a reaction to Hoyt, and Maura wouldn't let her gut convince her otherwise. It would be taking advantage of her best friend, of someone she loved, and she couldn't do that.
"It was bad enough it was Frankie. I keep thinking What if." Jane's breath ghosted against Maura's neck. "What if I'd invited you to dinner, What if we hadn't killed her and you'd come in with Frost and Korsak. What if she'd gone after you in the first place, instead of going after my brother. Hoyt knows how close we are, he could have used that. A lot of people, a lot of bad people, know how close we are. I don't want you to get hurt because of me, because I'm--"
Jane stopped. Maura felt like her heart was in her throat, and she'd never properly appreciated that hyperbole before.
She tightened her hands around Jane's fingers and said, "Because you're what?"
Jane took a shuddering breath, Maura could hear it almost in her ear, and said, "It doesn't matter. I just don't want you to get hurt because of me."
Maura squeezed Jane's fingers again, and then let go and turned around. She needed to see Jane's face. She had to know whether the fluttering her heart was doing was something real, or just Maura hearing what she wanted to hear.
Jane wouldn't quite look at her, her arms crossed over her chest and her hands clutching her ribs under her arms.
"It does matter," Maura insisted. She looked at Jane's eyes; she didn't know how else to look. Not with the truth in her voice, if not--explicitly--in her words. "You matter."
"If he hurt you, if he made her hurt you," Jane's voice was low, "I'd have come back here and hit him till he confessed to everything, and goddamn the mistrial."
Oh. Oh.
"And I know you don't--" Jane's voice broke, and when she looked up at the ceiling her eyes were shining and red-rimmed. "You probably don't want to know that I care that much, but I do and I can't help it, I'll keep it out of our friendship but it would kill me, Maura, if he hurt you to get at me, if--"
"Wait," Maura stepped close to Jane and touched her elbow with one hand. Jane fell silent and looked down again, off to the side, away from Maura. Maura felt like she'd been drinking just a little, enough to set her world spinning.
You probably don't want to know that I care that much, but I do and I can't help it.
"Jane." Maura's hand tightened on Jane's arm. "Jane, I don't--how could you think I don't care? Why did you think I wouldn't want to know?"
"You're a scientist, Maura," Jane said. "I kept waiting for you to put the evidence together, to figure it out, and when you never said anything I just thought you knew and you were, I don't know, ignoring it to keep the friendship."
In a split second a thousand little moments sifted through a new filter in Maura's head, each coming into new light. She started to smile, and brought her other hand up to Jane's shoulder.
"I attributed my evidence to investigator bias," she admitted.
For the first time since Maura fired those shots, Jane looked at her. Her eyes were still shining, but this time with more than withheld tears.
"Investigator bias?"
"Seeing what I wanted to see," Maura clarified. "It's a phenomenon wherein--"
"I'm a detective, I know what investigator bias is," Jane interrupted. The corners of her mouth lifted, not quite a smile but getting there, infinitely better than the bleakness of a moment before. "Seeing what you wanted to see, huh?"
"Yes," Maura confirmed with a sharp little nod. "It's everything I wanted, you see, and I couldn't trust that I wasn't making it up. I'm not good with the living."
Jane laughed, and her body beneath Maura's hands loosened as she unwrapped her arms from around her ribs and put them on Maura's hips. The fear of the past few days, the tension Maura had carried around with her since she almost couldn't remember when, dissipated. Maura grinned.
"Would empirical evidence help?" Jane asked, shifting so close that Maura could feel the heat off her body.
"It would, ye--"
Jane cut her off with a kiss.
Maura was flushed a little when they parted, her hands in Jane's hair and Jane's on her back. Jane was smiling in that pleased, almost smug way of hers.
A tear had spilled down her cheek on one side, and Maura thumbed it away. "Would you like to have dinner with me?" she asked, hoping Jane understood that she meant go out to dinner, not let's eat.
Jane's smile turned a little more smug, and Maura knew she'd come through loud and clear. "Definitely, Dr. Isles. First, though," Jane pulled away and Maura let her go reluctantly, bowing to the practicality of not always being able to touch Jane. The detective went over to the gun she'd given Maura, cleaned it quickly, and locked it away. Maura gathered up her coat and bag. Jane turned back and offered her arm. "Shall we?"
Maura accepted Jane's arm and fell into step with her as they headed for the elevator. As Jane reached for the button and the doors began to close, Maura said, "We should have breakfast, too."
Jane let out a shocked, pleased bark of laughter as the doors closed in front of them, and Maura leaned over to kiss her again. She might not be good with the living, but she knew Jane Rizzoli, and that laugh meant yes.