veils
in
crookedhalt
law of the lever (part i); rizzoli & isles
law of the lever (part i/ii)
Her heart drums loud in her ears as she swallows, skin hot with apprehension as she tries to calculate if there’s a way out of this conversation.
jane/maura, maura/oc; pg-13, ~3000 words. no spoilers, also not a ranch au.
notes: when i think about kat, suddenly the chorus of a lot of whitney houston songs are all playing in my head at once.
Archimedes said give me one firm spot on which to stand and I will move the Earth.
Maura thought she knew what that meant, that intellectually she understood that he was referring to the lever, to the three assumptions and the law he had proven so many thousands of years ago.
But now she’s beginning to think there’s a little more to it than that.
When a cop dies, it’s usually the press conferences, the paperwork, the clinical treatment of a colleague that gets to everyone.
This time, for Maura, it’s the knowledge that it should have been someone else.
Jane had been assigned on a sting meant to bring down a heavyweight Boston gangster who was peddling drugs smuggled in straight from Columbia; she was going undercover to smoke the guy out when, fatefully, she had pulled out after busting a hamstring on a run with Maura.
Well, pulled out was a relative term. After the physical her doctor said not engage in strenuous activity, and to Jane’s chagrin “possibly needing to outrun a drug cartel” fell into that category. So she was replaced. (Her family breathed a little easier.)
Detective Anton Bueller was a rookie looking for experience - young, eager, smart, heading up the same path as Jane had a few years before, and Cavanaugh assigned him in her place in the hopes that he’d step up.
And he did, until a low-life gangster shot him three times in the chest.
Jane wakes her for the memorial with a husky Maura and gentle shake to her shoulder. Maura, bleary-eyed, feels her weight shift at the edge of the bed, and the clock reads just after six.
She dresses sombrely, zips the charcoal dress to her waist and sweeps her hair around over one shoulder, keeping it in place with one hand while she walks to the kitchen. Jane is frowning at her espresso machine, and Maura swears she hears the word ‘tamping’ before Jane notices her.
“Your coffee maker is stupid,” she grouses, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. Jane always looks awkward in dresses; even though the navy of this one complements her skin and accentuates the length of her legs she still visibly looks uncomfortable with the way it feels in place of her slacks and a weapon at her hip. The machine hisses and gurgles, and Jane looks alarmed until a thin stream of coffee pours into the travel mug she’s placed on the grate.
“I thought you preferred instant,” Maura quips, and Jane offers her a small grin.
“It’s not for me it’s for you,” she says, fixing a lid to the top of the mug and sliding it across the counter. “Sorry we don’t have time for anything better.”
A feeling of disquiet settles over her at the thought of why they’re awake and in her kitchen in the first place: preparing to pay their respects to someone who died in Jane’s place in a twist of fate. For some reason, it seems wrong to her, arrogant of them to assume that Bueller would want their sympathy when it almost feels like this is their fault.
Jane doesn’t notice her mood, but does see her dress still gaping at the back and stops her endeavour to make coffee for herself to zip it up. She brushes the stray hair away from Maura’s spine, her fingertips splaying cool at the nape of her neck, and her knuckles send a tremor over Maura’s skin when Jane runs the zip up her back. Hands that could almost be a ghost’s.
She swallows hard. “I don’t know if I should go to this, Jane.”
Fingers still pressed to Maura’s back, Jane tenses. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a cop thing, it’s not anything to do with me.”
“But you knew him. Come on Maura, I need you there with me, you’ve come to a dozen cop things - this is no different.”
There’s a familiar whine to her voice, but the way she gently skims Maura’s hair back over her shoulders, lets her hands linger near her waist, belies an element of sincerity to her words. It’s too hard to say no when she’s standing so close.
Maura simply nods, hopes she can put her discomfort aside, and Jane taps her hip.
“I’ll meet you in the car, we gotta go pick up Frost and bagels.”
The memorial is in New London at the family estate, and the morning is grey as they drive out of Boston. A storm is trapped in the hills ahead of them, sky the colour of iron, and it looks like a part of the world that is still half-asleep.
Maura herself feels half-asleep, idly regarding the increasingly rural landscape as they drive into New Hampshire, her brain ticking over with less peaceful thoughts.
She has, of course, been to a lot of cop gatherings, and this one really isn’t technically much different at face value. Jane asks her often now, almost automatically, and she barely even has a reaction to the question anymore. Her you wanna come with me? sounds the same as any other - coffee, dinner, beer, she rarely remembers the connotations behind it are remarkable. But today, on top of everything else, something coils tight around her heart at the idea that Jane asked her over anyone else.
She’d met Anton Bueller’s wife (widow, she corrects herself) once before at some Sergeant’s birthday party - another police event Jane had naturally asked her to come along to - and there Stacey had seemed bright and supportive and happy, genuinely interested to know about Maura’s work. Now, standing next to only a photo of her smiling husband at a cheerless wake, she looks small and empty.
“It’s always hardest to be the one who’s left behind,” Jane’s gravelly voice murmurs next to her.
Maura can’t help but see a split second image of Jane in that photo frame instead of Bueller, and herself next to it, trying bravely to look composed as people give her their hollow condolences. It turns her spine cold, and she thinks of his body still lying on her table back in the morgue. Jane steps forward, always ready to offer whatever comfort she can, and Maura watches her smile sadly, take Stacey’s hand. She wouldn’t know what to do if their places were switched, Jane offers her so much clarity into the complexities of human interaction that without her as an anchor Maura is sure she’d drown.
It’s an ugly metaphor, but it fits.
While Jane mingles with her colleagues and introduces her with a degree of ambiguity that usually presents itself when they’re together, Maura stews. When they finally say their goodbyes, Maura searches out Stacey Bueller for one last fleeting look, and lets Jane steer her outside.
Her thoughts are like vines, like a weed, scenarios spreading out across her mind and setting her heart to hammering loudly against her ribs, the echo resounding in her ears.
All she can think is: today could be the day that Jane dies.
She has felt blood coat her hands, held a wet rib in her palm, stitched up the skin of corpses surrounded by the smell of decay, but she has known none of them the way she knows Jane.
Jane, who beside her is breathing fall air into her lungs, talking quietly to Frost, warm and solid and completely unaware of her train of thought as they walk down the drive. Thinking of her lifeless and ashen on the cold steel of an autopsy table makes Maura feel physically ill, her stomach churning at the thought of running a scalpel in a Y across her chest to find a clue to lead to a killer.
The sound of car wheels crunching on gravel send a sudden chill through her, her hand shooting out to close around Jane’s wrist, and they both stop.
“You okay?” Jane asks, puzzled.
“I-I shouldn’t have worn these heels,” Maura deflects, trying to make her head stop swimming.
“You know I told you they were ridiculous,” Jane admonishes, and tucks Maura’s arm through hers as they head for the car. Maura crooks her fingers into Jane’s elbow, feels comforting heat and muscle under her palm, and melds a little closer to Jane’s side. The wild feeling in her heart is steadied, if only for a moment.
The storm breaks as they pull onto the highway, leaving behind patchwork cows and the feeling of another world.
When Jane parks up outside her house, Maura feels irrationally uneasy to let her just drop her off, so before Jane can say anything she jumps in. “Jane, do you want to come in for a while? I can make tea. Or coffee, I know that your regular caffeine cycle has been disrupted and you might be starting to experience headaches.”
“Feeling lonely?” Jane asks, maybe a little more understanding of Maura’s mood than she thought.
Maura gives her a wan smile, and Jane returns it with a warmer one, nodding. “I’ll stay for a bit.”
She sits close on the couch; every time Jane shifts and Maura feels the movement it makes her want to reach over and put her hands somewhere, anywhere - feel the beat of Jane’s heart under her skin, feel the rough jut of bone in her hip. She stops herself only by virtue of having to explain herself, explain that suddenly she is consumed by the need to know Jane is alive, living, breathing. It’s completely absurd, the idea that without some kind of physicality between them Jane will suddenly drop dead or vanish before her eyes, it defies any kind of logic Maura has ever been governed by.
And yet, her brain signals the muscles in her arm to move, and she feels safer when Jane’s fingers are laced through hers, when she can feel the small knot of a scar against her palm.
Jane looks down, not making an effort to do anything but tighten her grip, run her thumb over Maura’s, smiling at their hands when she reciprocates. Their thumbs twine slowly around each other, the graze of Jane’s nail sending tiny jolts up her arm. The gesture feels strangely intimate, something more than just simple comfort, and Jane must feel it too because she tenses and clears her throat.
“I think Ma said she’d cook tonight,” she pipes up, her thumb still weaving around Maura’s. “Frankie’s been bugging her for ages to make gnocchi again so I think he’s going to be around too, as usual you’re gonna be stuck with half my family around for dinner...”
But Maura’s not really listening, lost in her head about the slide of Jane’s thumb, the hardness of her thigh under their hands. She doesn’t know why Jane makes it sound like a bad thing - a huge family dinner to fill the corners of her large house with warmth and a familial hum that is still so unknown to her; Maura just thinks it sounds nice. Like maybe this is how she could see the rest of her life.
Jane stands, abrupt as ever, and Maura unconsciously clenches her hand when she feels the loss of Jane’s around it.
“So I’ll see you later, okay?” Jane asks, and Maura realises she’s completely missed the conversation.
“Right, dinner,” she says vaguely, still not entirely comprehending.
“Yes...” Jane says, tilting her head. “After I go back and help out with the case some more, Cavanaugh’s running point and he wants everybody available on deck.” She gives Maura a searching look, instinctively knowing something is up, then leans down and presses a kiss to her temple as some gesture of comfort.
That breaks Maura out of her reverie, and suddenly she’s alarmed, everything from before coming rushing back. “The case?!”
Jane, taken aback, nods. “It’s kind of an important one, if you recall.”
“But you can’t go!” she says, standing and trying desperately not to physically sit Jane back down again.
“Maura, what’s going on? You’ve been super weird ever since we got home.”
Her heart drums loud in her ears as she swallows, skin hot with apprehension as she tries to calculate if there’s a way out of this conversation. Judging by Jane’s look as she looms above her, she’s guessing there’s not.
“You could die,” she confesses, and Jane looks bewildered. “You could die investigating this case - any case, but especially this case, Jane. Someone has already died.” For a transient moment, she thinks: can Jane hear her heartbeat too?
“I’ve almost died a lot of times, Maura,” she rasps.
Maura closes her eyes against the sound of her humming blood, the ringing in her ears, and tries to will away the tears unconsciously springing to her eyes. “I know that. I know that,” she attempts. She knows that there is naturally going to be danger involved in Jane’s job, that being a homicide detective is not exactly a low risk career - that is a fact she can put into words. What she can’t articulate is how today of all days she has seen that danger so vividly. “I saw you, today. I saw me.”
She knows Jane won’t get it, and her expression says as much, her brow creased in concern as she sits back down next to Maura on the couch.
“At the memorial,” she continues, irritated that her voice won’t keep steady, “It just hit me that that could be-that I could be going to one for you.”
Anxious and uncomfortable, Jane shifts, and goes on the defensive. “So, what, you want me to just quit my job and lock myself in a padded room? Come on, Maura, you’re starting to sound like every guy I’ve never wanted to date.”
“No, I... I would never want you to stop doing your job, I know what it means to you; I just need you to know how I feel.”
Jane isn’t making it easy for her, choosing to stay silent instead of filling in the blanks, and Maura’s tired. The kind of tired that fatigues more than muscles and neurons; it sinks into her bones and the recesses of her mind and she can’t summon up enough energy to fight anymore.
“It terrifies me.”
She doesn’t say why, she doesn’t say that it’s because the thought of her life without Jane in it leaves her feeling cold. She just says it.
“Maura I don’t... know what you want from me, here,” Jane says, and she sounds almost scared.
Angry that Jane’s deciding she’s the one who can’t handle it, Maura blinks back the blurriness that keeps surfacing, her hands clenching. She stands, feels a little better when she has the advantage of height for once. “I just want you to listen to me,” she says heatedly, then her voice turns too quiet. “I just need you to understand that this is how I feel. That I’m going to be the wife that’s left behind.”
Something clicks for Jane, and she seems to close in on herself for a moment.
She can see her protective instincts kicking in. Maura knows well Jane’s instinct to protect; she’s been a witness to the way she’ll round on anyone who thinks they stand a chance getting past her to Maura more than once. She radiates a predatory heat, and her words may not sting but the cut of her shoulders, the burn of her eyes - bite just as well. It’s always sent a little thrill down Maura’s spine, but right now she knows that Jane is stepping in to protect herself.
“I think I need to go.”
Jane is rough around the edges, and hard to get to know beyond so what kind of music do you like? She’s shot herself in the gut to save a city, but she finds it hard to stir up a conversation to save herself - perfectly capable of being amicable, but unskilled at not playing her cards close to the chest. It’s not like Maura couldn’t have anticipated this reaction, but like with a lot of things today, her usual logic is proving oddly ineffective.
She just nods, and hopes that she can stave off the sob welling in her throat until Jane shuts the door behind her.
Assumption: equal weights at equal distances from the fulcrum will balance. Take something away, and they will not.
In the morning, she marches straight to Jane’s desk at BPD.
“Jane? I’m sorry for interrupting you, but can we talk for a minute?”
She nods, hesitantly, and clears her throat before awkwardly standing. “Sure.”
Maura follows Jane to BRIC, the room quiet except for the whir of computer fans.
Jane looks cagey, unsettled, so she jumps right in. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I think that memorial just caught me a little off-guard. I haven’t been on that side of death for a long time now - I forgot how it felt.”
Softening, Jane smiles in understanding. “It’s hard.”
“Anyway I’m sorry for putting you on the spot like that, it was just a spike in the norepinephrine levels in my amygdala causing me to react irrationally to the situation. I was hoping we could put it behind us, I don’t want you to think I was trying to jeopardise our friendship.”
Jane contemplates for a minute, staring at her feet, then she looks up. “You know I’d never die on purpose, right?”
“That would be suicide,” Maura confirms. “You don’t fit the typical profile.”
Jane just looks blank. “That wasn’t really my point.”
“I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, Jane,” she says quietly, and watches her face break into a reassured smile.
“You wanna get lunch later?”
Maura nods.
“Okay then, I have to get back to work but I’ll call you,” she promises, fingers fleeting and warm on Maura’s arm.
She watches Jane go, trying valiantly to smile, and if it were scientifically possible she feels her heart, in that moment, might have started to crack.
Let it never be said that Maura Isles can’t lie.
part ii
Her heart drums loud in her ears as she swallows, skin hot with apprehension as she tries to calculate if there’s a way out of this conversation.
jane/maura, maura/oc; pg-13, ~3000 words. no spoilers, also not a ranch au.
notes: when i think about kat, suddenly the chorus of a lot of whitney houston songs are all playing in my head at once.
Archimedes said give me one firm spot on which to stand and I will move the Earth.
Maura thought she knew what that meant, that intellectually she understood that he was referring to the lever, to the three assumptions and the law he had proven so many thousands of years ago.
But now she’s beginning to think there’s a little more to it than that.
When a cop dies, it’s usually the press conferences, the paperwork, the clinical treatment of a colleague that gets to everyone.
This time, for Maura, it’s the knowledge that it should have been someone else.
Jane had been assigned on a sting meant to bring down a heavyweight Boston gangster who was peddling drugs smuggled in straight from Columbia; she was going undercover to smoke the guy out when, fatefully, she had pulled out after busting a hamstring on a run with Maura.
Well, pulled out was a relative term. After the physical her doctor said not engage in strenuous activity, and to Jane’s chagrin “possibly needing to outrun a drug cartel” fell into that category. So she was replaced. (Her family breathed a little easier.)
Detective Anton Bueller was a rookie looking for experience - young, eager, smart, heading up the same path as Jane had a few years before, and Cavanaugh assigned him in her place in the hopes that he’d step up.
And he did, until a low-life gangster shot him three times in the chest.
Jane wakes her for the memorial with a husky Maura and gentle shake to her shoulder. Maura, bleary-eyed, feels her weight shift at the edge of the bed, and the clock reads just after six.
She dresses sombrely, zips the charcoal dress to her waist and sweeps her hair around over one shoulder, keeping it in place with one hand while she walks to the kitchen. Jane is frowning at her espresso machine, and Maura swears she hears the word ‘tamping’ before Jane notices her.
“Your coffee maker is stupid,” she grouses, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. Jane always looks awkward in dresses; even though the navy of this one complements her skin and accentuates the length of her legs she still visibly looks uncomfortable with the way it feels in place of her slacks and a weapon at her hip. The machine hisses and gurgles, and Jane looks alarmed until a thin stream of coffee pours into the travel mug she’s placed on the grate.
“I thought you preferred instant,” Maura quips, and Jane offers her a small grin.
“It’s not for me it’s for you,” she says, fixing a lid to the top of the mug and sliding it across the counter. “Sorry we don’t have time for anything better.”
A feeling of disquiet settles over her at the thought of why they’re awake and in her kitchen in the first place: preparing to pay their respects to someone who died in Jane’s place in a twist of fate. For some reason, it seems wrong to her, arrogant of them to assume that Bueller would want their sympathy when it almost feels like this is their fault.
Jane doesn’t notice her mood, but does see her dress still gaping at the back and stops her endeavour to make coffee for herself to zip it up. She brushes the stray hair away from Maura’s spine, her fingertips splaying cool at the nape of her neck, and her knuckles send a tremor over Maura’s skin when Jane runs the zip up her back. Hands that could almost be a ghost’s.
She swallows hard. “I don’t know if I should go to this, Jane.”
Fingers still pressed to Maura’s back, Jane tenses. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a cop thing, it’s not anything to do with me.”
“But you knew him. Come on Maura, I need you there with me, you’ve come to a dozen cop things - this is no different.”
There’s a familiar whine to her voice, but the way she gently skims Maura’s hair back over her shoulders, lets her hands linger near her waist, belies an element of sincerity to her words. It’s too hard to say no when she’s standing so close.
Maura simply nods, hopes she can put her discomfort aside, and Jane taps her hip.
“I’ll meet you in the car, we gotta go pick up Frost and bagels.”
The memorial is in New London at the family estate, and the morning is grey as they drive out of Boston. A storm is trapped in the hills ahead of them, sky the colour of iron, and it looks like a part of the world that is still half-asleep.
Maura herself feels half-asleep, idly regarding the increasingly rural landscape as they drive into New Hampshire, her brain ticking over with less peaceful thoughts.
She has, of course, been to a lot of cop gatherings, and this one really isn’t technically much different at face value. Jane asks her often now, almost automatically, and she barely even has a reaction to the question anymore. Her you wanna come with me? sounds the same as any other - coffee, dinner, beer, she rarely remembers the connotations behind it are remarkable. But today, on top of everything else, something coils tight around her heart at the idea that Jane asked her over anyone else.
She’d met Anton Bueller’s wife (widow, she corrects herself) once before at some Sergeant’s birthday party - another police event Jane had naturally asked her to come along to - and there Stacey had seemed bright and supportive and happy, genuinely interested to know about Maura’s work. Now, standing next to only a photo of her smiling husband at a cheerless wake, she looks small and empty.
“It’s always hardest to be the one who’s left behind,” Jane’s gravelly voice murmurs next to her.
Maura can’t help but see a split second image of Jane in that photo frame instead of Bueller, and herself next to it, trying bravely to look composed as people give her their hollow condolences. It turns her spine cold, and she thinks of his body still lying on her table back in the morgue. Jane steps forward, always ready to offer whatever comfort she can, and Maura watches her smile sadly, take Stacey’s hand. She wouldn’t know what to do if their places were switched, Jane offers her so much clarity into the complexities of human interaction that without her as an anchor Maura is sure she’d drown.
It’s an ugly metaphor, but it fits.
While Jane mingles with her colleagues and introduces her with a degree of ambiguity that usually presents itself when they’re together, Maura stews. When they finally say their goodbyes, Maura searches out Stacey Bueller for one last fleeting look, and lets Jane steer her outside.
Her thoughts are like vines, like a weed, scenarios spreading out across her mind and setting her heart to hammering loudly against her ribs, the echo resounding in her ears.
All she can think is: today could be the day that Jane dies.
She has felt blood coat her hands, held a wet rib in her palm, stitched up the skin of corpses surrounded by the smell of decay, but she has known none of them the way she knows Jane.
Jane, who beside her is breathing fall air into her lungs, talking quietly to Frost, warm and solid and completely unaware of her train of thought as they walk down the drive. Thinking of her lifeless and ashen on the cold steel of an autopsy table makes Maura feel physically ill, her stomach churning at the thought of running a scalpel in a Y across her chest to find a clue to lead to a killer.
The sound of car wheels crunching on gravel send a sudden chill through her, her hand shooting out to close around Jane’s wrist, and they both stop.
“You okay?” Jane asks, puzzled.
“I-I shouldn’t have worn these heels,” Maura deflects, trying to make her head stop swimming.
“You know I told you they were ridiculous,” Jane admonishes, and tucks Maura’s arm through hers as they head for the car. Maura crooks her fingers into Jane’s elbow, feels comforting heat and muscle under her palm, and melds a little closer to Jane’s side. The wild feeling in her heart is steadied, if only for a moment.
The storm breaks as they pull onto the highway, leaving behind patchwork cows and the feeling of another world.
When Jane parks up outside her house, Maura feels irrationally uneasy to let her just drop her off, so before Jane can say anything she jumps in. “Jane, do you want to come in for a while? I can make tea. Or coffee, I know that your regular caffeine cycle has been disrupted and you might be starting to experience headaches.”
“Feeling lonely?” Jane asks, maybe a little more understanding of Maura’s mood than she thought.
Maura gives her a wan smile, and Jane returns it with a warmer one, nodding. “I’ll stay for a bit.”
She sits close on the couch; every time Jane shifts and Maura feels the movement it makes her want to reach over and put her hands somewhere, anywhere - feel the beat of Jane’s heart under her skin, feel the rough jut of bone in her hip. She stops herself only by virtue of having to explain herself, explain that suddenly she is consumed by the need to know Jane is alive, living, breathing. It’s completely absurd, the idea that without some kind of physicality between them Jane will suddenly drop dead or vanish before her eyes, it defies any kind of logic Maura has ever been governed by.
And yet, her brain signals the muscles in her arm to move, and she feels safer when Jane’s fingers are laced through hers, when she can feel the small knot of a scar against her palm.
Jane looks down, not making an effort to do anything but tighten her grip, run her thumb over Maura’s, smiling at their hands when she reciprocates. Their thumbs twine slowly around each other, the graze of Jane’s nail sending tiny jolts up her arm. The gesture feels strangely intimate, something more than just simple comfort, and Jane must feel it too because she tenses and clears her throat.
“I think Ma said she’d cook tonight,” she pipes up, her thumb still weaving around Maura’s. “Frankie’s been bugging her for ages to make gnocchi again so I think he’s going to be around too, as usual you’re gonna be stuck with half my family around for dinner...”
But Maura’s not really listening, lost in her head about the slide of Jane’s thumb, the hardness of her thigh under their hands. She doesn’t know why Jane makes it sound like a bad thing - a huge family dinner to fill the corners of her large house with warmth and a familial hum that is still so unknown to her; Maura just thinks it sounds nice. Like maybe this is how she could see the rest of her life.
Jane stands, abrupt as ever, and Maura unconsciously clenches her hand when she feels the loss of Jane’s around it.
“So I’ll see you later, okay?” Jane asks, and Maura realises she’s completely missed the conversation.
“Right, dinner,” she says vaguely, still not entirely comprehending.
“Yes...” Jane says, tilting her head. “After I go back and help out with the case some more, Cavanaugh’s running point and he wants everybody available on deck.” She gives Maura a searching look, instinctively knowing something is up, then leans down and presses a kiss to her temple as some gesture of comfort.
That breaks Maura out of her reverie, and suddenly she’s alarmed, everything from before coming rushing back. “The case?!”
Jane, taken aback, nods. “It’s kind of an important one, if you recall.”
“But you can’t go!” she says, standing and trying desperately not to physically sit Jane back down again.
“Maura, what’s going on? You’ve been super weird ever since we got home.”
Her heart drums loud in her ears as she swallows, skin hot with apprehension as she tries to calculate if there’s a way out of this conversation. Judging by Jane’s look as she looms above her, she’s guessing there’s not.
“You could die,” she confesses, and Jane looks bewildered. “You could die investigating this case - any case, but especially this case, Jane. Someone has already died.” For a transient moment, she thinks: can Jane hear her heartbeat too?
“I’ve almost died a lot of times, Maura,” she rasps.
Maura closes her eyes against the sound of her humming blood, the ringing in her ears, and tries to will away the tears unconsciously springing to her eyes. “I know that. I know that,” she attempts. She knows that there is naturally going to be danger involved in Jane’s job, that being a homicide detective is not exactly a low risk career - that is a fact she can put into words. What she can’t articulate is how today of all days she has seen that danger so vividly. “I saw you, today. I saw me.”
She knows Jane won’t get it, and her expression says as much, her brow creased in concern as she sits back down next to Maura on the couch.
“At the memorial,” she continues, irritated that her voice won’t keep steady, “It just hit me that that could be-that I could be going to one for you.”
Anxious and uncomfortable, Jane shifts, and goes on the defensive. “So, what, you want me to just quit my job and lock myself in a padded room? Come on, Maura, you’re starting to sound like every guy I’ve never wanted to date.”
“No, I... I would never want you to stop doing your job, I know what it means to you; I just need you to know how I feel.”
Jane isn’t making it easy for her, choosing to stay silent instead of filling in the blanks, and Maura’s tired. The kind of tired that fatigues more than muscles and neurons; it sinks into her bones and the recesses of her mind and she can’t summon up enough energy to fight anymore.
“It terrifies me.”
She doesn’t say why, she doesn’t say that it’s because the thought of her life without Jane in it leaves her feeling cold. She just says it.
“Maura I don’t... know what you want from me, here,” Jane says, and she sounds almost scared.
Angry that Jane’s deciding she’s the one who can’t handle it, Maura blinks back the blurriness that keeps surfacing, her hands clenching. She stands, feels a little better when she has the advantage of height for once. “I just want you to listen to me,” she says heatedly, then her voice turns too quiet. “I just need you to understand that this is how I feel. That I’m going to be the wife that’s left behind.”
Something clicks for Jane, and she seems to close in on herself for a moment.
She can see her protective instincts kicking in. Maura knows well Jane’s instinct to protect; she’s been a witness to the way she’ll round on anyone who thinks they stand a chance getting past her to Maura more than once. She radiates a predatory heat, and her words may not sting but the cut of her shoulders, the burn of her eyes - bite just as well. It’s always sent a little thrill down Maura’s spine, but right now she knows that Jane is stepping in to protect herself.
“I think I need to go.”
Jane is rough around the edges, and hard to get to know beyond so what kind of music do you like? She’s shot herself in the gut to save a city, but she finds it hard to stir up a conversation to save herself - perfectly capable of being amicable, but unskilled at not playing her cards close to the chest. It’s not like Maura couldn’t have anticipated this reaction, but like with a lot of things today, her usual logic is proving oddly ineffective.
She just nods, and hopes that she can stave off the sob welling in her throat until Jane shuts the door behind her.
Assumption: equal weights at equal distances from the fulcrum will balance. Take something away, and they will not.
In the morning, she marches straight to Jane’s desk at BPD.
“Jane? I’m sorry for interrupting you, but can we talk for a minute?”
She nods, hesitantly, and clears her throat before awkwardly standing. “Sure.”
Maura follows Jane to BRIC, the room quiet except for the whir of computer fans.
Jane looks cagey, unsettled, so she jumps right in. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I think that memorial just caught me a little off-guard. I haven’t been on that side of death for a long time now - I forgot how it felt.”
Softening, Jane smiles in understanding. “It’s hard.”
“Anyway I’m sorry for putting you on the spot like that, it was just a spike in the norepinephrine levels in my amygdala causing me to react irrationally to the situation. I was hoping we could put it behind us, I don’t want you to think I was trying to jeopardise our friendship.”
Jane contemplates for a minute, staring at her feet, then she looks up. “You know I’d never die on purpose, right?”
“That would be suicide,” Maura confirms. “You don’t fit the typical profile.”
Jane just looks blank. “That wasn’t really my point.”
“I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, Jane,” she says quietly, and watches her face break into a reassured smile.
“You wanna get lunch later?”
Maura nods.
“Okay then, I have to get back to work but I’ll call you,” she promises, fingers fleeting and warm on Maura’s arm.
She watches Jane go, trying valiantly to smile, and if it were scientifically possible she feels her heart, in that moment, might have started to crack.
Let it never be said that Maura Isles can’t lie.
part ii