Disclaimer: I don't own the show or any of the characters.

Spoilers: Season 1 finale.

Author's Note: My first Rizzoli & Isles fanfic, so please be kind! How could I not write one, after the way the finale ended? Jane and Frankie are my favorite characters, too! I hope you like it!

Frankie stared at his sister's still form. The only sound in the room came from the myriad of machines attached to her body, keeping it alive until it could do for itself again. Because that day would come, he reminded himself; his sister would wake, and she would heal, and then she would be right back at pushing him around and keeping anyone else from pushing him around, like she always had. It wasn't like he needed it anymore - he was a grown man and able to take care of himself, and had been for some time - but at that moment, as he watched her lying still in the hospital bed, the movement of her breaths forced by a machine that kept her clinging to life, he knew he still needed it after all, because it was her.

When he'd woken up, she hadn't been there. It was the middle of the night and their parents had gone home to rest because the strain of almost losing two of their children at once was becoming unbearable, and who could face that without even trying to sleep now and then? His mother would be out cold, having insisted she could keep a vigil over her babies until exhaustion forced her to fold, and his father would be with her because that was the only place he would feel of use. But Jane… she would have used her badge to stay with him after hours, long into the night, just to be certain he didn't wake alone. The fact that she wasn't there had been more frightening than the disorientation, the pain breaking through the fog of morphine, and the shattered fragments of memory that taunted the edges of his consciousness but refused to fall into any recognizable order.

True, he hadn't woken to an empty hospital room; Korsak had been there in his sister's place. The older man had gently held him down as he'd tried to struggle, unsure of where he was and remembering only the panic, and the pain, and as he'd listened to the familiar, gravelly voice and settled, he'd realized it wasn't the right voice. He should be hearing his sister and she wasn't there.

"Jane," he'd whispered roughly, his throat dry and his lungs in agony, the one word forced past his lips because he had to know, had to, no matter how much it hurt.

"She's alive," his sister's former partner assured him, his voice close to breaking, "and right now, that's the best news we can hope for."

Frankie knew there was something Korsak wasn't saying, but then the nursing staff entered the room and he was poked and prodded and checked and medicated, and it wasn't until the fog of the drugs started to lift and he found Korsak once again at his bedside that he got answers. At first, he'd been unable to believe that his sister had shot herself, even to take down a bad guy, but then it all made sense; she'd done it so they could get to him. She'd put her own life on the line to save his. She'd probably believed she would die, and that had been worth it to her.

As soon as he was able, days later, the nurses had helped him into a wheelchair and allowed Korsak to push him to his sister's room, and there he stayed until visiting time was up, restricted to fifteen minute intervals. He visited whenever he was allowed. He caught sight of her current partner, Frost, sleeping in the waiting room once or twice, his own jacket draped over him like a crude blanket. When he wasn't sleeping, he was pacing, and sometimes he wasn't there at all, gone home to shower and change rumpled clothes or to sleep, or to take a break from the crushing weight of Jane's condition.

Frankie was glad for the fifteen minute limit. He would have liked to spend more time with her, but each visit left him exhausted. Visiting hours left him exhausted, too; his mother was nothing if not overbearing, and while he was glad for her presence, he knew that his sister was in no shape to handle the emotional strain their mother was capable of bringing to bear. That was, if she could even hear her visitors. He believed she could, and during his time with her, he spoke softly of childhood memories and told her he loved her, missed her, needed his protector back, all things he would never say when she was awake, but things he felt like saying when they were alone and the clock was ticking away their few minutes together.

And here he was, at her side again, the cold room filled with unpleasant mechanical noises, and he gradually became aware of a new sound; it was a faint whimpering, and he realized it was coming from him. He leaned forward, resting his head on his sister's bed and holding her hand, and he let himself cry for her and for himself. It was all too much, and he couldn't hold it back anymore, and there was no one there to see anyway, at least not for eleven more minutes. So he cried, and he held her hand, and when her fingers squeezed his, he squeezed back, accepting his sister's comfort an instant before he realized what it meant, and then the sounds of some of the machines broke slightly from their uniform regularity, and a nurse was there, and he was wheeled out of her way but not out of the room. He saw his sister's eyelids flutter as she fought the tube, as her hand weakly groped for his, and he pushed himself back to her to catch it again, a monumental effort in his weakened state but worth it as she seized his hand in hers with a familiar fierceness that he'd worried he would never know again.

Jane Rizzoli was finally waking up.