A/N: I'll admit I'm excited about this project. Merry Christmas.

"You give that permission slip to your teacher today, Giuliana Ballgame?" Jane Rizzoli held the hand of a spritely six-year-old, all awkward limbs and black mane barely contained by a ponytail holder.

"Yeah, Mamma," Elena Giuliana Rizzoli replied, affectionately monikered "Giuliana Ballgame" after Jane's beloved Ted Williams, since names having anything to do with Theodore, Samuel, or Williams had been expressly forbidden by Maura for their daughter. Jane had to admit, even through the squint caused by the sun of mid-afternoon, that Elena looked like her through and through. Before her birth, when Maura had carried her for the both of them, - I love you more than anything, but I will be the one carrying this child, she had said, because I am in far less life-threatening situations - Jane had wanted a plain name, a delicate one. Perhaps Sarah, or Emily. Something English, something easy. Something that signaled the safety for their child that Maura so craved.

But, one look at Elena in Maura's arms after her first gasps, already squirming and head adorned in a shock of dark hair, and she knew her wife had made the right choice: only an Italian-ass name would fit this Italian-ass baby.

Her wife had put it more eloquently of course, something along the lines of I want her to have a name that reflects her heritage, that makes her both aware and proud that she is Italian. Thus, Elena Giuliana. Maura's favorite professor in Med School had been named Elena, and Angela had loved the name Giuliana ever since she had thought Tommy was going to be her second daughter.

Clearly, as her baby brother had been her baby brother for 36 years now, it was not meant to be. Jane mused on this as she gathered her daughter up when they reached the parking lot of the crowded elementary school, a protective holdover from when the girl had just started preschool. Many things in life seem not meant to be, she thought to herself as she waited for a blue Subaru to whiz by them.

Elena noticed. Usually she kicked in Jane's arms - in delight or in protest, depending on her mood, but today, she let her mother hold her and ran tiny fingers along the creases in Jane's forehead. "What's wrong?" Elena asked, as she had a lot lately. Just after her fourth birthday, she mastered contractible copulae. Just after her sixth, she began to inquire on emotional states.

Then, her motive had been pure curiosity: faces contorted around her in a gamut of feelings she had yet to experience, and that was fascinating. Now, almost nine months later, those motives became more personal: turmoil, anxiety bubbled in Elena's viscera, not exposed to her understanding or her consciousness, but nevertheless present. She sought to release them.

"Nothing's wrong, kid," said Jane distractedly, making her way to her cruiser parked toward the back of the lot.

Elena was not convinced. "Yes there is. Your forehead's smushed," she reasoned, continuing her push against the minimal creases in her mother's skin.

Jane sighed. Her exhale rattled and sounded wet with indecision. These moments had been exactly the kind her therapist had told her to watch out for. She could pull out the patented Rizzoli response of deflection and denial, or she could be honest. For a moment, the former option seemed bright, shiny, much more viable than the discomfort of truth. However, the possibility of making her daughter the latest emotional cripple in her family pushed her in the other direction. "There is. I got a lot on my mind. Work, you, your mom, MY mom," she threw in Angela at the last moment and sighed dramatically, causing Elena to giggle. Some things, though, will never change.

"Nanna's a lot to worry about," the young girl answered quietly on the tail end of her laugh. She placed her hand on Jane's shoulder, and Jane swallowed the lump in her throat.

"You got that right, Ballgame. We both got a whole life of experience in that, huh?" the detective muttered, and took her daughter's backpack in her hand. After securing Elena in the backseat, she put the pack next to her in the front, and drove off towards the station.

"Hey Ma," Jane breathed when she saw her mother waiting for her outside the Division One Cafe. She tugged Elena along, the girl being preoccupied with some spot on her purple shirt. Maura had taken to dressing their child from the moment she could, and Jane wondered if she wouldn't look like her daughter's twin had she let Maura dress the both of them. "Thanks for doin' this. I would have taken the rest of the day, but, you know."

Angela, hair still up from work and purse in hand, hugged her daughter with gusto. "Thank you for picking her up, and going to her observation. I was slammed over at the Robber so I couldn't take my usual break in the afternoon. Vince loves all the foot traffic we're getting, but I don't know if I do," she said next to Jane's ear. "That means afternoons with my Giuliana are gonna be spent with Blue Moon and bar peanuts!" she exclaimed as she knelt to open her arms for her granddaughter to run into them.

The girl obliged but rethought her decision when she was showered with kisses. "Nanna!" she shrieked, dissatisfied but unable to contain her chuckles, and Jane allowed herself a brief indulgence in the happiness that fizzed around her heart.

"I'll pick her up when I get off, ok? Should be around six. If not, I'll get Maura to do it. She's got somebody comin' to the house to look at the upstairs bathroom around 5:00, but I'm sure if she has to, she can reschedule it."

Angela's features turned incredulous. "She's payin' a plumber? Why didn't she ask you to look at it?"

"I don't know, Ma. But it's what she wanted so I ain't gonna argue."

"That's nonsense, Janie. You do better work than half the plumbers in the area. You do better work than your father, for goodness' sake."

Jane shrugged. Elena hung on her grandmother's hand, suddenly very interested in her shoes and the straps of her backpack. The detective glanced between the two generations with reserve.

"If you don't talk some sense into-" Angela began.

"Ma!" Jane cut off whatever was about to be said. "Drop it," she growled with a pointed look toward her daughter, and Angela put up her free hand in surrender.

"Don't worry about it if you two can't pick her up, baby," the matriarch said. "I'm at the Robber until nine tonight; I'll find some time to bring her home for dinner."

Jane moved to hug her mother, and they embraced for several long seconds. "Thanks again, Ma," she breathed out so quietly that she wondered if her mother even heard. She was rewarded with an extra tight squeeze. It had been another one of her therapy goals - express gratitude more often.

"Don't even think about it. You know I love my grandbabies more than anything," said Angela as the detective moved to hug her daughter tight. "Isn't that right, Elena?"

The girl nodded and tugged toward the door. "Can I get some fries at the Robber?" She asked with a bounce in her body. Jane winked at her and nodded to her mother.

"Coming' right up," Angela laughed. "And Jane? Don't let all this get to you, alright? I know work and stuff's a mess right now, but everything's gonna be ok."

Jane so desperately wanted to believe it.

"Maura! We're here," said Jane awkwardly as she stepped through the front door of the Beacon Hill space that had been the only place that'd felt like home in the past ten years. She remembered walking in it for the first time when she was 32 - young, naive, and so fascinated by Maura Isles. It was a year after she first met Maura, and it signaled the start of four more that moved from friendship to courtship, then to marriage and Elena.

42 brought so much more knowledge, experience, and insight with it.

Elena plopped herself in front of the couch, at the coffee table, and took out her coloring book, something that her doctor mother had insisted would help with her eyesight. Jane had feared for Elena's emotional well-being after hearing that she needed glasses at four, but Elena had absorbed them into her life with little to no qualms.

Not long after she began her activity, Maura emerged from upstairs. "Hi," she said, donning a dark blouse and jeans, her at-home attire. She was barefoot and moved into the kitchen to set the teapot to boil.

"Hey," Jane said simply, fiddling with her keys at the counter. She waited, as she had done for a while now, for Maura to speak first. Therapy was teaching her lots of things, she figured.

"How was it with Elena's teacher?" Maura asked, moving to give her full attention to Jane. She muted her tone; a signal that whatever was about to be discussed, their daughter was not meant to hear it.

"Good, real good. She said Elena turned in that permission slip for the aquarium, but I asked Elena before we got to the car, just in case," Jane shifted on her feet. Whisper-talking was not really in the Rizzoli vocal register.

"I'm not sure why she's been so forgetful lately," Maura mused, trouble etched across her forehead and mouth.

"Well, Ms. Dougherty says it isn't really translating to schoolwork," Jane offered as a consolation.

Maura only nodded as she took out a tea bag and a mug.

"I think you were right, though," the detective said, shoving her keys back into her pocket, jingling them with nervous attention. "I watched her today. For like a half hour."

"And?"

"She needs to skip a grade. She's heads and shoulders above a lot of those kids," with that, Jane looked lovingly at the head just visible past the back of the couch.

Maura watched her wife watch their child and struggled to keep tears at bay. "I can talk to administrators about it on Monday. I'm glad you see my point."

"Yeah," Jane shrugged. "Guess I was just a little worried about her bein' picked on. But after her thing with her glasses went so well, I think she'll be fine."

Maura smiled. "She's a Rizzoli and that can't be doubted."

"No kidding. So how'd it go with the plumber?" the detective asked, switching subjects in half a heartbeat. She felt icy pangs of regret in her spine, however, when her wife immediately closed off.

"I'm not sure. He said it would take at least a week before he could complete the job," said Maura. She looked into her mug with concentration.

As she expected, Jane's features turned severe. "A week?" Her voice rose. "He doin' an entire remodel?!"

Maura looked up with defiance. "He has to order a part, because my bathtub is custom-made. It's going to take a while to get here. I am more than willing to wait if it means getting the problem fixed."

"You also willing to pay an arm and a leg?! C'mon. You know I could do it in half the time." Jane returned to whispering, but the harsh quality of her previous utterance remained.

"I needed to prove to myself that I could take care of these things. You're not always going to be around to do them," Maura hissed back. All the while, their daughter stayed unaware of the mounting tension between her parents.

"Well I didn't kick me out, Maura," Jane responded with acidity.

"You're right. I did," they stood toe to toe, and the doctor's gaze bled as much intensity as she was given.

It was what dismantled Jane. Her face fell, softened, and her shoulders slumped. "Why didn't you ask me to do it, Maura? You know I woulda done it. No strings attached. Just because I love my family."

Maura sighed as a stalling tactic to keep from crying, again. "I don't want Elena Giuliana getting the wrong idea. I don't want her expecting you here, Jane."

"Would it be so bad? If she expected me here? You know, where she lives?" asked Jane. She inched toward her estranged spouse, inhaling with gusto, searching out any hint of the scent that she had been deprived of for months now. She remembered falling asleep to that smell, the one of vanilla and honey. It stayed with her as she showered, or when she buried her face into one of Maura's sweaters that she had stolen when no one was looking.

One look at the flared nostrils and ballooning chest, and Maura knew. She let it happen, turned her neck a certain way so that a little bit of her perfume wafted toward the taller of the two them. "Yes, it would be," the steadfastness of her words belied the softness, openness of her body. When Jane recoiled as if in pain, she clarified. "You and I aren't together, Jane. We're married, but we're not together. I don't want to lie to my daughter by giving her false hope."

"That doesn't mean I automatically get relegated to absentee parent, Maura," barked Jane. Elena turned back for a moment, but then turned around when she saw the anger radiating off of her mother.

"I didn't say that," Maura countered, "but there's a middle road between those two extremes."

Jane seemed to consider this for a moment. "Maybe you're right. But I really don't think paying hundreds of dollars and waiting hundreds of hours for a plumber to do what I could do in a weekend is a stop on that middle road, either."

Maura stood, scrutinizing her wife for a long few minutes, watching those Sicilian eyes gloss through what must have been ten different emotions. She wanted to reach out, to soothe, as she had done so many times before. She sighed instead - long and loud, something she had gotten used to doing. "I suppose… I suppose that you're right. And I suppose that you can take a look at the bathtub."

Jane gave her a smile that exposed nearly all her teeth. "Good. Good."

"Elena, sweetheart, your mother and I are going to go upstairs to look at the broken bathtub. Wash up for dinner, ok?" Maura adopted her sweet clinical voice, the one that was syrupy, but unrelenting.

"Is Ma gonna fix it?" Elena asked as she hopped up from her spot to her feet, a heavy hopefulness in her voice.

Maura couldn't bring herself to answer. Jane did it for her. "I'm gonna see what I can do, Elena. Listen to your Mom and get washed up, yeah?"

There was a slight hesitation before Elena's nod in affirmation, and Maura knew it intimately. She saw the question that had died on her daughter's lips before it left them, the are you staying for dinner that Maura never let Jane say yes to. She waved Jane up the stairs in urgency, desperate to hide the guilt taking over her, and to hide the vulnerability that churned in her at the sight of a Rizzoli resigned, a young Rizzoli at that.

Either Jane didn't see, or didn't want to, because when they reached the top of the stairs, she gave Maura a short grin and pointed toward the master bedroom. "Lead the way."

Maura did as asked. She stepped through the doorway and onto the carpet, the disarray of the bathroom creeping back into her memory. She shivered and calmed her overdriven cleaning impulse. She focused on the comfortable, on the positives - her bed was made, pillows in place and symmetrical, there were no clothes strewn about, her dresser and various tables were immaculate. After a hefty look-through, she turned to Jane to let her into the room and eventually the en suite.

Jane didn't move.

Suddenly, Maura knew why: Jane hadn't been in what was their bedroom for eight months. Once her things had been cleared, Maura had insisted she leave this as an untouched space. Memories must have hit Jane with enough power to stun her: her breaths halted before they became shallow, her skin flushed, and she began to sweat.

"C'mon," Maura said softly, taking Jane's wrist. She sympathized, she really did. She saw her wife's ghost every time she put her head down to sleep, she knew the power of love lost. "He said that the leak was hard to find, and he suspects the overflow gasket? He's still not sure I suppose; he said it could be several things, and he will hunt for it when he comes back."

"Well, good thing I'm a detective, then, huh?" Jane attempted humor to bolster herself, but her shaky whisper betrayed her. So, she knelt toward the hole in the drywall and looked inside. "When, uh, when did you first suspect it was leakin'?" she asked, suddenly all business.

Maura grabbed a flashlight and one of her dentist's mirrors from under the sink without thinking and handed them to Jane - an artifact from the many times she had helped her with plumbing work throughout their life together. "I noticed a spot on the ceiling in the study about a week ago," she said, licking her lips when Jane's fingers brushed her own to take the tools.

"Well, there's the spot," said Jane, pointing to the wide discoloration in the wet wall directly below the bathtub, "and that's concerning," she finished as she pointed to the water streaks on the copper piping in front of her. "Ok. I'm gonna check for leaks now. Turn the tub on for me? Fill it a few inches and then we're gonna let it stand for a few minutes."

Maura disappeared around the corner to turn the knob on the tub wordlessly, and when Jane heard the pipes groan to life, she placed the mirror under the tub near the drain. Her wife returned after she shut it off and crouched next to her as they waited. They watched the mirror together for those few minutes.

"Well, your plumber's an idiot," croaked Jane, "because it' ain't the tub."

Of course thought Maura. Of course I pick the one shitty plumber in Beacon Hill. "Well, dammit. What should I do?" She cursed, and Jane had to chuckle at her frustration and cute-ass pout.

"Hey, don't get bent out of shape so fast, a'right?" Jane reasoned with her hand on the small of the other woman's back. "Just do me a favor and turn the shower on."

The little touch sparked Maura into action, and she did what she was told.

"Bingo!" she heard Jane yell from the other side of the wall. There's the leak!"

"So…?" the doctor waited on bated breath for the results, having trotted back to look at Jane with anticipation.

"Good news is when I looked up there, I saw the shower arm leaking onto the valve. That means I don't have to cut another hole in the drywall to fix it. More good news is that it's gonna cost nothing near what you were quoted. Bad news is that plumber is either helplessly stupid, or I'm gonna have to lock him up for fraud," Jane winked when she finished, the tell-tale signs of exhilaration on her features. Be it murder or plumbing or anything in between, deduction was a good look on her.

Maura's heart fluttered a beat, then two: once in arousal, once in anger: must Jane always throw her weight around? And at Maura's expense, too. "Alright, alright. Where would I be without you?" She rolled her eyes, despite the fact that she couldn't help but mirror the detective's grin.

It was unequivocally the wrong thing to say.

Jane's eyes were sad, and then hard. She cleared her throat. "I uh, I can come by this weekend to fix it up. No special European parts needed."

Maura wanted to go to Jane, to hold her, to see the sadness leave her. Part of her also wanted Jane to reap the consequences of her actions. "What would I owe you?"

Jane seemed affronted at the idea. "Absolutely nothing. Who do you think I am, Maura?"

"It's customary to pay someone when they do work of this nature, at least in some capacity."

"But you're my wife, separated or not. I don't want anything but your time."

Maura felt a beat between her legs, rather than between her lungs. "You know that I'm… I'm not ready to give that, Jane." It sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

Jane latched onto the vulnerability and walked several long strides back into the bedroom to make herself almost flush with the woman in front of her. "Look, I fucked up, ok? I know I fucked up. But my kid needs me, Maura. My kid needs me and I know you want me still. Somewhere deep down."

Of course that was true. It was true especially when the spice of Jane's androgynous perfume and sweat lapped at Maura's nostrils, and when Jane's heat was so close to her. She forced herself to remember why they were in this position in the first place, in order to fortify her stance. "It's dinner time, Jane, so I need you to say goodbye to Elena and go."