Chapter Three

Maura fingered the report lying on her desk, her own neat, but hurried handwriting staring back at her. The small, straight lettering and the oval-shaped loops said that she was practical, well-adjusted, rational. The haphazard, glaringly intrusive thoughts that impeded her brain, however, proved otherwise.

"Through-and-through ballistic pathway through the primary bronchus and the aorta," she read, the sound of her voice bringing her back to her task of finishing her report. Her concentration was at times thin, almost non-existent now. "Quite efficient." The young man's heart would have stopped within minutes, leaving his organs to exhaust the rest of his oxygen supply before shutting down completely. Death would have come quickly for him.

Hoyt would have never utilized such an efficient method.

Maura's head snapped imperceptibly, as if purging her mind from the frightening flare of insight into the monster who still wormed his way inside her at odd, quiet moments. The remembered hiss of his voice was palpably thick in her mind, as if he still stood behind her, whispering, pouring venom into her ear. She stood, her chair pushing back with a grating scrape, and paced. There was a time when she sat for hours, absorbed in her work, but now she paced often, perusing her paperwork as she moved.

A knock at her door made her turn, and she waved Susie inside, plastering a practiced, authoritative smile on her face. "What can I do for you, Ms. Chang?"

Her assistant's eyes, normally bright and direct, were downcast as she fidgeted with a manila file folder. "I just need your signature on a final LPMR," she answered. "Unfortunately, Dr. Pike failed to sign it. The state just sent it back."

"Oh." Maura reached for it, sharing a colluding smile with the young tech who had become more of a deputy of sorts under her mentorship. "Who would have thought, with such obsessive-compulsive tendencies, that Dr. Pike would forget to sign anything." Her attempt at humor seemed to make the younger woman more uncomfortable, as she shifted her heavy, black-rimmed glasses higher onto her nose. Maura reached once again for the folder.

"It's one of the six," Susie said quietly, finally looking up at her. "Hoyt's six."

The air around her thinned. Maura swallowed, her lips frozen in an unnatural smile. "That's okay," she managed, reaching for the folder, a tremor running through her fingers. As if to prove that she was, indeed, okay, she opened it, letting her eyes scan over the page. As the Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this was her duty: to officially sign off on death, the administrative equivalent of the Reaper. Guilt hung heavily from her, the white pages of the file weighing her down. She had yet to seek out the records of the women that had hung amidst the shadows of her mind like ghostly cobwebs. Shame had effectively keeping her curiosity at bay.

A bold, typed name jumped out at her from the top of the page: Leslie Crenshaw. She fumbled into the pocket of her white coat, searching for a pen, a way to keep her fingers busy as she found the blank line at the bottom that awaited her signature. Scrawling her name shakily across the bottom of the page, she quickly tucked it back inside, enveloping it back in the folder, but the name echoed in her mind as a ghostly meditation.

Susie reached for it. "I'll file it," she offered, a finality in her tone.

Maura stared down at her hand, which didn't seem to want to give it up. "No," she protested, the word leaking from her throat, even as she wanted the girl, and her name, far from her. "I'll hold onto it for now."

"Are you certain, Doc?"

Maura looked up, morphing her mouth into a thin line of authority. "Yes. Yes, I'll take care of it." Susie glanced once more at the offending folder before nodding. She turned, heading back through the doorway to the lab, her rubber-soled shoes almost silent on the tiled floor. Maura sank into her chair, fingering the edge of the folder, the name burning itself into the repetitive horror reel running through her mind, as she wondered which pair of terrified eyes this particular name belonged to. She had never learned their names. He had seen to that.

He stood behind her, his presence prickling the back of her neck. The girl on the metal slab jumped as she pressed the sponge of iodine against the slash along her pale arm. Her brown eyes were now clenched tightly shut, but she had looked up at Maura with the same hatred as the others had, the same fear she had reserved for their captors.

"What is your name?" Maura asked quietly. Hoyt gave no warning, and she kept talking, wanting to make some connection with the girl on the table. She wasn't a monster; for some reason, she needed them to know that.

The girl's terrified eyes flicked behind Maura toward Hoyt, then at the jagged, stained knife pressed against her neck. Her eyes closed again as her lips wavered. "Jane."

Coldness ripped through Maura, but she had learned to remain calm, storing fear, terror, and disgust in the pit of her stomach. Hoyt excelled at taunting her: with pain, with psychosis, with drugs, and now, with her own victims. Moving her hand slowly toward the table beside her, she reached for the bottle of ethanol that she knew would be there. She uncapped it, moving her already saturated sponge back to it, aware of Hoyt's position behind her, studying her every move. The liquid sloshed gently in the bottle, the only sound in the cavernous room besides the painful pants of the brown-haired girl. Maura shot her arm forward, expelling the noxious contents of the bottle towards the second man's eyes. His pained grunts, and the clink of the knife as it fell, propelled her backward into Hoyt as she slashed erratically with the blunt scalpel she jerked from the table. She slipped into the chaos, welcoming it with flailing, jerky limbs after hours of silence. The clink of the knife resounded in her head; she had to get to it first.

A foot rammed into her, and the sound of his laughter mixed with her own pleas as her unheroic ploy came to an end."Please don't hurt her, please don't hurt her," she mumbled blindly.

Hoyt's face loomed over her, his jagged teeth showing through his lips. "Too late."

She jumped at the sound of a voice outside her door. Her brain had trouble processing it until she glanced over, her eyes still wide, her shoulders rigid, half expecting to see Hoyt's image in the doorway. Jane walked briskly towards her, carrying what looked to be lunch, but she tossed it carelessly onto the desk, her brown eyes narrowed in concern as she knelt in front of her. "Another one?" she asked lowly.

Maura nodded, waving her hand as her breath returned to her. "I'm okay." Jane had heard those words so many times, Maura wondered if they meant anything to her anymore.

"Do you want to talk it out?"

She shook her head vigorously, pointing instead at the clear plastic salad container, its bed of green sprinkled with tomatoes, carrots, and a plethora of brightly colored ingredients. "That looks exquisite."

Jane's eyes held hers for a minute, but finally caved, accepting her need to change the subject. "All the colors of the rainbow, so it must be good," she sighed. "Either that, or it's just a gay salad."

Maura smiled, edging the container closer. They both knew she didn't care where it came from; her appetite was much less avant-garde now. As long as it was in some way healthy, she ate it, most of the time not tasting it, but knowing it was essential to replenish the empty cells running through her.

"But," Jane said, flourishing something else in a small, white paper bag, "I also went down the street and got you some macarons from that place you like. I forget the name. 'La aureola du pasties' or whatever it is."

"You got me macarons from Le Petite Patisserie?" Maura asked, standing and reaching for the bag with an enthusiasm that she didn't know she had left in her. It had been a long time since she'd craved anything, but the thought of the tiny, delicate cookies sparked an epicurean longing that had long disappeared. It was the feeling of wanting something that moved her, more so than the promise of the pastries themselves.

"On a whim, yeah, but I still expect full credit for it. Consider this premeditated sweetness."

"Duly noted," Maura replied, plucking a cookie out of the bag, and smiling widely at her, hoping to convey her gratitude for more than just the simple gesture. "You have to try one."

"No, thank you," Jane declined with a grin. "I prefer my desserts a little greasier and with a lot more cream than that. I've got a pack of Ho-Hos waiting for me at my desk."

Maura rolled her eyes, taking a dainty bite in to the cookie, for the moment forgetting about the salad. Jane rolled her shoulders, wincing. "Did you pull something?" Maura asked.

Jane's hand went up to her shoulder, but brushed off any discomfort with a shake of her head. "Damn these young perps," she said, pursing her lips. "It gets harder and harder to chase them down. They keep getting younger and I keep getting older."

Maura sat the bag of pastries down on her desk, rounding it and guiding Jane towards a chair. "You must have pinched something," she observed, her fingers already working a tight ball of nerves along the back of Jane's neck, the explanation seeping from her almost effortlessly. "More than likely the rotatoris cervicus longus. It connects to the thoracic nerve." As if demonstrating, she let her fingers trace down the middle of Jane's back, smiling briefly as she felt her girlfriend lean into the touch. Her ability to care for Jane had been fleeting lately, and she jumped at the chance to offer a comforting touch.

"All for nothing, too. The little twerp didn't give us anything to go on once we finally caught him." Jane craned her neck again, as if she could leach all the pain from her shoulder by simply repeating the same uncomfortable motion.

"Sit still, and let me help," Maura insisted, still working her fingers into the knot.

"Nah, it's fine," Jane replied easily, bolstering out of the touch. "It's just a little pain." Maura nodded, but felt herself drifting, a chill running through her at the sudden familiarity of her partner's words. She focused on the blue of Jane's shirt and the feel of it beneath her fingers. "You know what they say," Jane continued with a sigh. "No pain, no gain. Gives me more motivation." She chuckled, but the words sounded hollow in Maura's brain, as they slowly took on a much more sinister voice.

"Jane reacted well to physical pain. She fought it well. As I hurt her, I could watch the emotions play out in her eyes." The scalpel traveled upwards along the edge of her jaw and came to rest at her temple. "But you are different, Doctor." The blade dug in slightly as he twisted it. "You hold all of your pain here. Don't you?" She didn't answer. "So do I."

He fished in his pocket, something crinkling, like a candy wrapper, and she caught the plastic bag of a syringe, which he extricated quickly. "Why don't we get to know each other a little better?" She shook her head first, until the movement seemed to govern her entire body, jerking her legs, hoping to get him off of her. He yanked her head to the side, the familiar sting prickling her scalp.

"If your pulse beats any faster, we won't have any need for this," he said, holding up the syringe. "Another test: twenty-two parts carbon, twenty-eight parts hydrogen, two parts nitrogen. A dose should induce euphoria and a prolonged analgesic state." He grinned, his smile curling the deep etches along his mouth. "What is it?"

Again, she used the silence to her advantage, and offered him nothing.

"You have Jane's resolve, but I expected nothing less. In less than three minutes, Doctor, you will be an open book. We are going to get to know one another, otherwise, how will we work together?" His eyebrows raised as he squirted the air out of the needle and pushed it into her neck.

A hand on her own, tracing small circles onto her flesh, pulled her back. She cringed, but as Jane's voice penetrated the fog of memory, she eventually relaxed into it. "Maura."

She blinked, glancing down, her fingers now rigid against Jane's shoulders. She had turned, looking up at Maura with caring eyes. "You back with me?"

Maura nodded, taking a step back as Jane got to her feet, guiding her gently to the couch. "Tough afternoon, huh?" she asked lightly, but her gaze was dark. "Something trigger it?"

"No," Maura said, swallowing the lump in her throat as she sat. "No, sometimes they just randomly come."

"You can share them, you know."

"I do. I share them with Dr. Cabot."

"You can share them with me."

It hadn't always been such a foreign thought, but the idea of sharing Hoyt's psychosis, his desire to hurt Jane even more, wasn't something Maura was willing to share. She hadn't shared the details of Hoyt's taunting, his words, with anyone other than her therapist. They hadn't found a way into her statement, or in official records, nothing. They were her memories and hers alone.

It was a paltry promise, but it was all she had. "You can field the next one," she said with an attempted smile. She pressed her hand onto Jane's knee. "For now, how about you let me work the rest of that muscle, okay?"

As Jane turned, she wondered when her body had begun to allow her to lie.

Korsak flipped through the leather-bound book, something ball shaped in his throat. He had meant to take the book down to evidence after taking it from Frost, but instead had left it in his desk, almost like a reminder that he had done the right thing in killing such a cold-blooded psychopath. He had done the world a favor, avenged Jane and Maura. Rather than heroic dreams or exalted visions, though, he had nightmares.

He had seen a lot on the job over the past twenty-seven years, but he had seen it all through a wall that kept he and his fellow officers separated from the victims he saw each day. Until Hoyt.

He still sometimes saw Jane's wide, frightened eyes, and heard her quick, pained breaths as Hoyt loomed over her. That day, Korsak had managed to get to her in time, but by then Hoyt had already done his damage. Jane had bounced back almost too quickly, as if by brushing off the encounter she could make up for how powerless she felt when it happened. Of course, Korsak never told her, but he was the one who felt absolutely powerless.

He finally recognized that his opaque wall was just a thin, sheer sheet of nothing after Hoyt struck again. Watching Jane suffer through that powerlessness all over again, at the hands of the same madman that had already gotten to her, had ripped a hole in him. Knowing what he was capable of, and still trying to stave off the worst of Jane's fears as they searched for Maura, had been the hardest thing he'd ever done on the job. Killing Hoyt that last day had been the easiest.

He fingered the journal, his thumb tapping it before he opened it, letting it fall to whatever nightmare of a page it chose.

February 10:

Her mind is brilliant. She has a knowledge of the human body that I haven't seen in awhile. She has studied it so much over the years, that she knows exactly what her pain will be like before I even touch her. It takes her much less time to obey than the others. I sometimes wonder if the hours of solitude bother her; she is, after all, a loner. A recluse, like me.

A shuffling startled him, and he slammed the notebook closed as Frost walked past him. "Well, we got the prints off the gun," the younger detective called cheerfully, waving a sheet of paper. The levity left his voice as he caught a glimpse of the book, and his eyes suddenly fell. " I thought you took that downstairs."

That had, of course, been his intention. To walk the book down to evidence and to lock it away with the other reminders of Hoyt's crimes: boxes of them that had come to line more than just a shelf in the basement, but had come to settle into the folds of his subconscious.

"Are you going to tell Jane about that?" Frost ask, voicing the question Korsak had already relayed over and over in his own mind.

"Of course I'll tell her," he said quickly, surprised by his answer, as if it had simply dropped into his lap. "I have to tell her," he repeated, this time more resigned. Jane wasn't one to backtrack down memory lane like he was, and sift through old evidence boxes. But, if she ever found out the notebook had been withheld, she would feel even more betrayed. Terror was something she could handle, but betrayal, that was something different entirely. He didn't know many good cops who could handle it well. "The two of you get that bullet today?"

"Yeah. Maura's finishing up the ballistic pathway to match it."

Korsak nodded. "Good. Damn, it's nice not to have to stay on Pike about this stuff."

"Hell yeah," Frost agreed. "It's good to have her back." His head sank for a second, and his legs soon followed as he slumped into his chair, turning his attention to his computer. Korsak didn't quite remember when they started calling the medical examiner by her first name, rather than by her more formal title.

"Hey losers," Jane said as she breezed by him toward her desk. "Maura said the angle of the wound matches where we found it at the apartment. I'd say we've got enough to charge." She glanced at Korsak. "Who's going to do the honors of making an arrest?"

Korsak felt Frost's eyes on him, but rather than give an answer, he doled out orders. "Frost, you order the warrant." He glanced up at Jane, all too aware of the leather weight in his desk drawer. "You got a minute?"

The question caused her to pause, but Jane was more than a pro at covering up weakness. "For you, Sergeant Detective Korsak, I've got two minutes." She grinned, but he saw her shoulders stiffen. Suddenly, she seemed to understand that whatever he was about to say wasn't something she wanted to hear in the company of her peers. "What?" she asked quietly.

Korsak stood, gripping the journal in his hand, pointing her toward the interrogation room that had become like a personal office for her during the eleven days of hell that Maura had been missing. Her eyes, narrowed and thin, were on him as she stepped into the room. "What are you not telling me?" He had seen that look before, one of uncertainty and fear, and he hated being responsible for bringing that look back.

"What are you not telling me?" she asked, her voice a pitch higher than normal as she looked from Frost back to him. Stalling was something he never did, but for some reason the words hung in his throat. "Just say it. What did you find?"

He spoke, knowing his words would set her onto a path toward her own private hell. "Hoyt's no longer at Walpole. There was a mishap with the processing of a deceased prisoner. Hoyt took the guy's place, probably with the help of a guard named Sean McEnroe. They just found the body of the dead prisoner."

Jane tightened, her whole torso curling over as she placed her hands on her knees, as if fighting a wave of nausea. When she rose again, breathing hard, her mouth crumpling even as she tried to regain her composure, he felt a protective wave rush through him, and he stood. She put her hand out, keeping him at bay. "I want statements from every fucking person at that prison. I want a warrant for the guard's house, now." Her voice cracked, but she continued, her chest heaving. "They have a ten-hour head start."

"I already put in for the warrant, Jane, we should have any minute. Frost is already on his way to the prison."

They stood, facing each other, Jane's expression morphing from its authoritative determination into something wholly vulnerable, and she backed into the wall. Her knees collapsed, and she sunk slowly, her head automatically falling to her hands. "I need a few minutes," she said, her voice dark and muffled.

"Jane, we'll find her."

Her shoulders rocked with guilt, but she was silent, except for her repeated, fragile plea. "I just need a few minutes."

He knew she wanted him to leave, but he didn't, and instead winced as he lowered down beside her. They sat in silence, until Jane finally lifted her head, her eyes raw and red. "Maura."

It was all she said. Grief, pain, fear, wrapped in that small name.

"Korsak, what the hell is it?" Jane asked again as she shifted impatiently. He laid the journal on the table, not wanting to prolong her uncertainty. He had seen her live in it for too long, over the course of eleven days when she had ceased to exist: barely eating, barely speaking outside of her own worry. "This was recovered from the scene of Hoyt's cellar."

Her eyes flashed towards the book, her lips pursing in a straight line, but she swallowed, and he saw her thumbs circle the scars on her hands. "Who knows about this?"

"Just Frost and me and the goons that brought it over," Korsak replied, hoping to set her at ease. "I wanted you to know about it before I took it down to evidence."

"Did you look at it?" she asked, her voice wound tightly, as if any moment it would spiral out of control.

"It's just a bunch of psychotic ramblings, Jane," he answered. "And this fucker won't be writing anything ever again." He watched as she fingered the edge of it, almost afraid of opening it, as if it would release a hold onslaught of demons that she had worked to slay over the past three months. "I don't know if Maura will want to see it - " he began, but she cut him off with a deep, cutting glare.

"She doesn't need to know about this."

He nodded, placating her, the last one to offer advice on the subject. Still, he knew about trauma, and he had watched his partner process it after her own encounter with Hoyt. And the only thing that had helped her through the aftermath was slowly regaining control. "Jane, I know it's not on anyone's reading list, but she should at least know - "

"No." Jane pushed the journal away from her. "It's my job to protect her, and this will only send her right back down in that goddamn cellar."

"It's your job to help her, Jane, not protect her. Remember that." He pointed towards the book. "You want me to take it downstairs?"

She looked over at him, her eyes suddenly less angry. "What's in there?" she asked quietly.

Korsak stared at her for a moment. He had no idea what Maura had disclosed of her abduction, but he had seen Jane bent over her police statements and affidavits, studying them, as if looking for clues as to what had truly happened in that basement. "You already know what's in there."

Her shoulders slumped forward. "I don't know what happened to her." She looked over at him with a pair of exhausted eyes. "I only know what's in her statement." She balled her fists, pressing them onto the metal table. "It's been three months. I don't know what happened down there."

Korsak glanced once more at the book. "You gotta decide if that matters to you." He took a step toward her, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Because looking through that book sure as hell isn't going to make things any easier." She didn't respond, but he didn't expect her to. Instead, she lifted the book, fingering its smooth leather before hurling it hard against the far wall. Its pages clacked loudly as if fluttered to the tiled floor, splayed open.

"Goddamn him," she breathed, angry tears leaking from her eyes. She wiped them away with a tight fist, more of a punishing gesture than anything else. "Just give me a minute," she said hoarsely. "Tell Frost I want to go with him to bag that son-of-a-bitch." She breathed again, her eyes still on the fluttered white pages of the book. "Just give me a minute."

Korsak pursed his lips, deciding to give her space. Before he left, he returned his hand to her shoulder, squeezing it gently. "Whatever's in that book, whether you read it or burn it, just know that it's not your fault." He knew she would blame herself anyway, but it was the quiet, tough moments when he felt it his duty to remind her. He left quietly, shutting the door behind him, and giving his detective the space, and the silence, that she needed.

Jane felt her phone at her tip like a ten-pound weight, each moment of its silence ratcheting up her panic. It was a fear based solely on projection, not based in reality, but she felt her heart pounding anyway. It had been less than half an hour since she had called Maura, letting her know that work would keep her later than usual. It hadn't been the arrest, or the questioning that had kept her, but her time in the interrogation room, staring at mud-brown cover of Hoyt's journal. She had finally ended her torturous internal debate by stuffing it into her desk drawer, where she could keep it as a talisman of guilt, even if she never summoned the courage to open it.

She tried their home number again, an outdated artifact that they'd kept just as a precaution, but got nothing. She ran through their previous conversations, but nothing alluded to any reason why Maura would be unreachable at such an hour. This panic, this fear, was once again life after Hoyt.

She walked speedily down the basement hallway toward the morgue, peeking her head in the lab doors, but it was dark, spotless, and empty. She made her way to Maura's office, and felt the first sense of ease as she noticed the light still burning. "Maura?" she said, walking inside.

Her partner was curled onto the couch, a small pile of printed pages resting precariously in her hands, with several already fanned out on the floor. Her face was peaceful, a restiveness that Jane rarely saw anymore, and she was reluctant to wake her. Neither of them had been sleeping very well, but Maura's deprivation was unhealthy, and it took coaxing from Jane to make her take anything. Not that Jane could blame her. She knew about nightmares, about how they made you wake up just as exhausted as if you'd been awake all night.

She reached over and picked up the pages from the floor, glancing only briefly down at them. Rarely did she understand any of the medical jargon Maura read. It was like reading another language entirely. But this paper, she understood immediately. Strengthening Relationships through Post-Traumatic Stress. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she sat in the red chair across from the couch, now relishing its hardness, and bent her head towards the paper. It was written by two men and one woman, their names all followed by a whole alphabet of degrees.

The paper was no different than any of the others she had seen Maura read, highlight, and then discard. They both knew how to navigate their relationship, but ever the scientist, Maura consistently needed corroboration and new insight.

The sound of the rest of the papers falling to the floor startled her, and apparently the same applied to Maura, as the smaller blonde opened her eyes. She smiled breezily over at Jane, and it was these moments that they both craved: unbridled, unburdened existence, one not troubled by memories.

"You know, we have a bed at home," Jane said with a smile.

Maura leaned up, stretching her neck. "You said you were working late, so I thought I'd finish up some work here," she replied, the pockets under her eyes still prominent despite the extra sleep.

Jane held up the pages in her hand. "Looks like extra-curricular work to me."

Maura smiled faintly. "It wasn't that great of an article, apparently. Put me right to sleep."

Jane shrugged. "I'm surprised everything you read doesn't put you to sleep."

Maura tapped the couch next to her. "Come here," she offered.

Jane slipped up from her spot on the rigid, plastic chair, and slouched comfortably onto the couch, laying on her back and putting her head in Maura's lap. Her partner's fingers ran through her hair, a gesture entirely comforting that relaxed her forehead, which had been tightening with a headache for the past few hours. "Keep doing that, and you're going to put me to sleep," she said with a content smile.

"How's the case?" Maura asked. "Today was a long day for you all."

Jane sighed, enjoying the feel of her girlfriend's fingers in her hair. "It would have been better if we could have found the perp without a three-hour search," she said. "But we got him." She reached up, gently rubbing Maura's fingers before taking her hand. It was a tentative gesture she was used to doing now, as if asking permission to touch her girlfriend. She kissed the inside of Maura's wrist, a habit that she had before the abduction, which had only become more meaningful now that the skin had been marred. "Why don't we talk about something else?" she pressed. "Like getting out of here."

"Actions speak louder than words," Maura replied, already shifting. Jane followed her lead, swinging her feet back to the floor. Maura moved to her desk, flipping off her computer. "Maybe we can see if your mother wants to join us for dinner."

"Do we have dinner?"

"We can get dinner."

Jane nodded, now more than used to eating out of take-out containers and microwaving frozen meals. She watched Maura stack the journal articles neatly on her desk, although she more than likely didn't need to keep them. Still, they peppered her office, they were sprinkled over her desk at home, like constant affirmations of healing.

"Will you grab my jacket and purse from the closet?" Maura asked. "I think there's an umbrella in there, too, in case it's still raining."

Jane laughed softly. "Clearly you haven't been out of the lab all day. It stopped raining hours ago, Maur."

"Sometimes I really wish I had windows down here." She paused, and a darkness passed over her face, but she caught Jane's eye and smiled.

Jane reached into the closet, grabbing Maura's blazer, a familiar sensation running through the tips of her fingers as she recalled the last time she touched it.

She slipped inside the bedroom, her feet taking her towards their closet. She had subconsciously avoided it, she realized, mostly living out of a drawer for the five days Maura had been gone. Stepping inside, she flicked on the light. Maura's side, brightly colored and feminine, with scattered lines and fabrics contrasted with her own side, which was sleek with black suits.

She ran her hands over the clothes, pulling down a particularly versatile black blazer that Maura managed to pair with almost anything in her closet. She remembered the last time she had seen Maura wear it. Her wife's pomegranate scent still drifted from it. Numbness had enveloped her for the past two days, but as the familiar scent tickled something inside her, she felt a burst of explosive pain rock through her, buckling her knees.

Her sob came as a heavy gasp and she pressed her face into the soft material of the jacket, muffling her fears and terror with its feminine scent. She had no idea how long she cried, but when she awoke on the closet floor, still gripping the jacket, her bedroom was dark. Her mother was asleep on the couch, CNN still blasting in the background. Jane muted it and went back to her post at the dining room table, where new statements, maps, and boxes of old evidence now colored her world.

"Jane?" Maura's voice was right behind her, and her arms wrapped around her waist, her head resting along her back. "What's wrong?"

"I'm wondering why we don't have a closet downstairs," she covered with a faint smile. "Frost needs somewhere to hang his plum-colored dress shirts."

Maura's muffled chuckle did nothing to thwart her feeling of cowardice, but she turned and pressed a kiss against the blonde hair.

"I already ate the whole bag of macarons," Maura said, giving her a sheepish smile. It was the old Maura, the one who had always looked hopefully up at her, waiting for a smile or a sarcastic frown. She rarely saw this old Maura, and she wanted nothing to erase the smile that peered up at her.

Jane wished she had some retort ready, but the smile caught her off guard, and she could do nothing but pull the smaller woman into her. "What's that add up to, like one whole cookie?" she asked, wrapping her hands around the now sinewy muscles of her back. "I think you could afford to eat a couple of more bags."

Maura pulled back from her, reaching around her to grab the black blazer. "Then maybe you can bring me more tomorrow," she replied with a tiny flicker of frivolity in her eye.

Intent on preserving the mood, Jane nodded. "Only if you let me eat something that comes with fries tonight." She waited, watching as Maura performed a last once-over of her office before flicking off the light and locking the door. As Jane followed her back upstairs and toward their cars, a hand constantly on the small of partner's back, she felt her burden of guilt slowly melt away, at least for a few moments. For now, her only goal was to protect Maura, and that meant protecting her from the monsters of her past.

As always, please let me know your thoughts. Thanks for reading.