Authors note: Thank you for the endless support and reviews this story has received. We're no where near the end, I hope you all decide to continue on this crazy ride with me.

Garrett,

I wish I didn't have to write this down, I wish I didn't have to be frightened of your imposed consequences for saying any of this aloud and to your face. I wish a lot of things, sometimes I wish I'd never met you.

I don't know if I'm angry right now, or if I'm just broken. I feel like a shell of my former self, like you've beaten out of me my individuality and my will to fight for a better future. You isolated me, made me feel like an adulterer for keeping in contact with friends from college and med school, you made me feel like I was being unfaithful to you by interacting on a professional level with my superiors and teachers. It happened so quickly and so slowly, like I blinked and suddenly I had no contact with friends or family and it was just you.

You made sure that all I had was you.

I am angry, angry that you took everyone from my life and still saw it reasonable to beat me to a bloody pulp. There was that time just after New Years Eve, remember? When we had that gala at your parents house and you fought with Sumner about Jocelyn, and when we got home you broke my clavicle and you made me lie at the hospital and tell them I was intoxicated and fell down the staircase. Two days later you bought me an emerald ring and told me you were sorry - do you really think that makes it better? It makes it worse, it makes me feel like I'm selling you my body to use as a punching bag, to use as a sex object and that jewellery is an appropriate payment.

I think if you had it your way, I'd never leave the house and I wouldn't cry after you strangled me or raped me. It's still rape even if we're married, I think you forget that.

That night the police came to our house, I want you to know I didn't make the call. I'm terrified of you when you're in that state and I'm not naive enough to believe a domestic assault charge will force you to change. I still don't understand why that switch had to flick, why you changed so quickly and so dramatically after we got married. I thought marriage was supposed to revolve around love and trust, and Garrett I haven't trusted you since our wedding ceremony.

I think I've stopped loving you too, although I think I'm too scared to let that love go completely. Maybe you'd see the disdain in my eyes and finish what you started two weeks after our honeymoon.

Sometimes I just want to stand on the edge of a cliff and scream 'you don't own me' until my throat is raw. Sometimes, I wish you'd be there to hear it.

You don't own me, Garrett Fairfield. No matter how many times you leave your fingerprints on my skin or leave our history in my broken bones. I hope I find the courage to leave you before you kill me.

Maura.

They made her read it aloud in court, the last of her journal entries, seated in the stand where every member of the twelve person jury could see her. The assistant district attorney prosecuting the case had made her change her outfit twice, her usual fitted dress was exchanged for a charcoal skirt that finished at her knees and wasn't too tight, with a pale pink blouse. 'It'll make you look soft and feminine' she'd said 'You'll look like a victim, and it'll make them believe you weren't in on it too.'

No jewellery, because she wasn't supposed to flash her wealth. They'd even made her take off her strand of pearls.

Maura felt naked, sitting there and reading aloud thoughts and feelings she'd never meant to vocalise. It was supposed to help support her claims that Garrett was an abusive husband, but she'd wished desperately that they could have just used a full body x-ray to reveal the healed physical wounds. The emotional trauma felt too personal to share, especially when she could feel the disbelieving gaze of jurors boring holes into her.

"Why didn't you leave, if Garrett was as aggressive as you claim?" Was the accusation pointed at her by the defence team.

"I was scared," was all Maura could answer, swallowing a lump in her throat that made it difficult to breathe. "I thought he'd kill me if I tried to leave."

"You claim that you were scared that he'd kill you if you stayed. What's the difference?"

Maura squared her shoulders, pursed her lips and exhaled slowly. "Better the devil you know, I think is the turn of phrase."

"Better the devil you know?" The lawyer repeated, said like he was testing the words out on his tongue. "Better to stay and allegedly be abused, than chance freedom. I wouldn't have thought so."

"Objection, your honour!" The prosecution spoke over the tail end of Garrett's lawyer spiel, as if he'd spoken a word that triggered her outburst. "Conjecture!"

Before the judge could rule, the defence lawyer took a step back with both hands in front of his chest, palms open and a charming smile on his face. "That's all, your honour."

She hadn't cried, not when Adam had been pronounced dead at the scene, not when Garrett had screamed after her retreating figure that he'd kill her too if she said a word. Not even when the doctors had found the rapid but steady 'thump thump' of her baby's heartbeat. It was as if she'd been held in a permanent state of prolonged shock and if she allowed herself to crumble early, she wouldn't be able to piece herself together in time to get through the necessary things she had to. At the end of the ninth day of trial though, after she'd been questioned and accused over and over by the defence lawyer, her neatly varnished facade cracked.

It cracked when Jane hugged her fiercely outside of the courthouse, it cracked when Angela Rizzoli delivered bunny shaped pancakes to her hotel room because it was the only way she knew how to help a woman she barely knew, and it cracked when Jane whispered 'I love you' in her ear.

Maura understood that it wasn't love in the romantic sense, but those three words directed at her were her metaphorical undoing, like the thread was cut at the seam of her composure and everything was free to spill out.

"Oh, Maur." Jane had mumbled, pulling the doctor into another firm hug.

"I just wish it could be over, Jane. I thought I'd feel free but I feel more trapped than ever." Her words jumbled with her sobs, tears burning tracks down her cheeks and carving paths through her makeup.

"I know sweetheart, but it's almost over. He'll be convicted for murdering his brother and you will be free."

"God, what do I tell his child? How can I bring a baby into this mess?" The thought freed more tears from the corners of her eyes, eyes that still shone that marvelous mixture of lagoon green and gold that Jane had noticed the first time they'd met.

"You tell your child that you saved both of you by leaving and bringing Garrett to justice. You tell your child that regardless of who their father is, they aren't destined to be bad and that they are in charge of what kind of person they become." Jane pulled back momentarily to run the pads of her thumbs under Maura's eyes, collecting rolling tears.

"I don't know if I'm strong enough for this, Jane."

"You're strong enough for anything, Mo. For absolutely anything."

"Can you stay... again?" The question was timid, as if it was alarming that she should need any more support. Jane had been there, every night since she'd pulled her from the small confides of that guest bedroom closet.

Unbeknownst to Maura, Jane would be there for as long as she needed her to be, and then some.

"For as long as you want me, Maur."

For as long as you want me. That become their new subtly.

It took her two weeks post release from the hospital to sell the house she'd shared with her husband - for a steal really, although considering the recent murder anyone prone to superstition wouldn't be so sure. It took her significantly longer to make a decision regarding her new living arrangements however. With the trial continuing - albeit slowly, she'd felt - and the sale of her home and almost everything found in it, it all felt overwhelmingly final. Maura was grateful to be free of Garrett's influence, but in a way it had shaken her too. She didn't feel the relief everyone told her she'd feel, didn't feel freedom and choice but rather a stressful expectation to move on with her life as quickly as possible without a mournful moment for what she'd lost.

He'd murdered his brother for money, and he'd beaten her to a bloody pulp more times than she could count on fingers, but it was still terrifying and soul-wrenching to say goodbye to everything she knew. She'd still lost something.

Jane had been the unyielding patience, the proverbial angel on her shoulder that soothed her through all of those impossible moments without a second thought. She'd graciously offered her guest bedroom when Maura voiced her reluctance at buying her own home, and the doctor had been fluttering between the hotel room still being charged to her credit card, and the double bed in Jane's small apartment. And it was small, smaller than anywhere Maura had ever inhabited, smaller than her suite at the hotel, but the sparse distance between parallel walls was an odd comfort she'd never felt before. The wardrobe built into the wall opposite the foot of her bed struggled to contain a mere fraction of her clothing, to which Jane had endlessly mocked as she'd helped her unpack.

Maura supposed it must have been what having friends in childhood was like. Slumber parties and movie nights on the couch in comfortable clothing. And God, was Maura Isles the most comfortable she'd been in her life, in that cramped little apartment with a woman who had against all odds and personality differences, become her best friend.

She was painfully aware that she'd be dead, if it weren't for the detective. A debt that she could never possibly repay.

It was a concept that had been ruminating in the back of her mind all day and was responsible for the dazed expression on her face that had Jane frowning.

"You alright there, Maur?" She asked, tone laced with concern as she slumped down on the sofa with a beer clasped in one hand.

Her voice drew Maura back, who shook her head as if to expel her train of thought. "Oh, yes. I just got lost for a minute, I think." The honey blonde turned as she spoke, a soft smile pulling at her mouth.

"Hey, don't get too lost in there. It's my night to pick a movie, and we're watching Terminator!" The detective smirked, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table and settling into the worn cushions of the sofa.

"It seems like there are going to be numerous plot holes," Maura hummed, putting down the empty DVD case after reading the summary.

"Plot holes, shmot holes Mo. This is action packed at its finest." The child-like excitement was endlessly endearing.

Maura decided she disagreed with Jane halfway through the movie, but kept said opinion to herself in favour of resting her head against her friends shoulder. There was something about the way they curled together on the sofa like they'd been doing it for half their lives that made Maura wonder as to how platonic their relationship ran. She didn't have a catalogue of friendships to compare it to however, and the brunette had never once made a comment or expression that indicated that the way they behaved was out of the ordinary.

It struck Maura that if it was what most friendships were like, she didn't think she'd like to experience it with anyone else. The level of comfort she felt around Jane was unsettling in a way that was new to her - it was equal parts soothing and anxiety-provoking to allow your guard down so completely.

The doctor wasn't sure what pulled her from her thoughts first - the explosion that boomed from the television speakers, or the movement she felt flutter across her stomach. It startled her so that she jumped and Jane looked down to her in surprise.

"How did that make you jump but the scene where-" She didn't get a chance to finish, interrupted by the surprised squeak of the blonde leaning against her side.

"The baby just… I think I just felt a kick." Moss green eyes looked up to dark brown ones, searching for the same level of shock and wonderment that she felt.

Jane's opportunity to reply was cut short when Maura grabbed her hand and covered it with her own, palm flat on the subtle round of her stomach. Beneath her fingertips, Jane felt a flutter of nudges as if something was rolling beneath her hands.

"Oh my God, Maur." Came Jane's delayed and hushed reply, overwhelmed with the thought that she'd just felt the first noticeable movement of an unborn baby, of Maura's unborn baby. A wide smile spread across her face as she looked down to meet her friends gaze. "That's your baby."

Time stood still for two reasons. The first being that Maura felt like she was on the brink of one of those major transitional life moments for no particular reason.

The second being that she couldn't fathom what possibly possessed her to lean up, her hand still covering Jane's over her own stomach, and softly press her lips against those of her best friend.

She kissed Jane, soft and chaste but in a way that couldn't be interpreted as platonic.

It froze time, and it was a mistake.