Chapter Text
Chapter One
Dr Maura Isles hated Patrick Doyle.
That statement had once been complicated by the feeling that biology had to mean something, by the fact that he obviously cared about her in his own twisted way born from a violent upbringing void of ‘normal’ love. She would toil over caring about a monster, about what it meant to be the progeny of a person who could take another life, who would be willing to cause the injuries she saw on a daily basis in excruciating detail.
It was somewhat comforting to discover that he lived by a code, that he would only go after the guilty and, even then, he would never hurt a woman or a child.
Any semblance of respect for the mob boss was abolished, however, upon discovering that there was one thing that would make him break his code.
Much to no one’s surprise, he had weaseled his way out of custody based on a technicality, which had inexplicably made Maura happy at the time. If it were any other criminal, she would have bemoaned the American justice system’s penchant for allowing bad people to walk free if they had the funds, but this was her biological father.
After thinking that there was a chance that he wouldn’t survive his injuries, it was natural that she would be elated that he wouldn’t be given the death sentence, right? Even if it was because the state found it impossible to find anyone who would willingly testify against him.
Things had steeply gone downhill from there. It would become a sequence of events that she would recall each night as she stared at the ceiling of her living room for hours on end.
She would analyse them in a futile attempt to discern whether it could have been avoided and she always came to the same conclusion.
If she had forgiven Jane Rizzoli, she would still be alive.
She had been so blinded by rage at the warehouse that she hadn’t considered the lengths that Paddy Doyle would go to for revenge. Apparently, the one exception to his code was when he perceived a woman to be guilty of hurting his daughter.
With their feud plastered across so many article headlines, it was impossible that the mob boss wouldn’t have seen the rift that the incident had caused and it didn’t take much for anyone to realise how important Jane’s friendship was to her. How hurt she would be by any betrayal against said friendship.
It was Lieutenant Cavanaugh who had broken the news to her, arriving at her home with a stricken Frost and Korsack in search of Angela Rizzoli.
He was light on the details, more so as the word ‘torture’ incited a wail from the Rizzoli family’s matriarch. Maura sat silently throughout the conversation, painfully aware that she had no right to be there for the notification despite not being sent away. Legally, she was nothing to the Rizzoli family, in fact, she had more a tie to the man who had committed the crime.
Hearing her boss utter, with great difficulty, ‘I’m sorry Angela, Jane…she…died’ brought the truth into stark reality, the reason that she was so angry with her best friend. The logical explanation as to why it hurt so much more to think that Jane would do something to willingly hurt her.
She’d known for a long time that she loved Jane Rizzoli, but hearing her name and ‘died’ in the same sentence made her realise that she was in love with the detective.
The revelation twisted her gut painfully as Angela sobbed openly into the solemn Vince and Frost wiped at his eyes, failing to remain stoic as police officers were trained to in this situation.
With her shaking hand raised to her mouth, silent tears slipped down Maura’s cheeks as she recalled the quips and lack of contact that constituted the final couple of months with the love of her life.
Frankie and Tommy were swiftly called to the ME’s home and the arrival of Frank Sr had her slip out.
It could only be something as tragic as this that would allow Angela to accept a hug from her ex-husband and Maura was aware that she did not belong in what was left of the shattered Rizzoli family.
The days that followed became a blur of insistence that she be allowed to do the autopsy, only to be told that it had been completed and that it was not recommended that anyone close to the victim see the damage inflicted upon her body.
Naturally, Dr Isles attempted to read the report, making it only a few pages before snapping it shut in her rush to find a trashcan to vomit into. Perhaps it was for the best that she wasn’t the one to cut through what was left of her friend?
It may have been enough to banish all memories of the scowls and barbs between them the day before the news, but the gory alternative of seeing exactly what Paddy Doyle was capable of was so much worse.
When it came to the funeral, she wasn’t entirely sure whether she would be welcome.
She had been convinced that the only reason that Angela still persided in her guest house was because grief and moving were not conducive to each other. The woman hadn’t been able to muster the energy to leave her bed most days (a fact that Stanley was thankfully sympathetic to, for how long, no one was sure). She obviously didn’t want to deal with having to find somewhere else to live, but it was surely coming.
Who would want to live with the daughter of the man who had taken her own away for longer than she had to?
Angela had told her that she considered her to be one of her children during their feud, but that could no longer be true.
There were biological imperatives that meant that Angela would always love the children she had birthed more than the one who had stumbled into her family. In the face of the unnatural reality of one of these children dying in her lifetime, Angela would have no choice but to pull away and Maura would be left with nothing but her grief.
And then she had been asked to deliver an eulogy, Frankie barely able to get through his assertion that Jane would want the person she loved the most to be the one to do it. If it hadn’t been for the tears that required a hug to stem, Maura may have interrogated the officer further on the way that he had said this, as if there was something more to it, like he knew more than he would say about just how much Jane loved her best friend.
Following the funeral, she became certain that the Rizzolis did not hate her, it didn’t seem as though had the mental capacity for that as they tried to acclimate to a world without Jane in it.
The homicide squad was much the same way, trying to return to some kind of normal but always acutely aware of what was missing. The jokes and occasional light-heartedness was missing as they solved murders, bringing into stark relief for Maura Isles just how much she had wasted the time she had with Jane.
Still, they tried their best to continue, conversations becoming less stilted as a month passed, likely owing to the reduction in the accidental mentions of the woman they were all missing so dearly.
For Maura, though, it didn’t matter whether anyone said ‘Jane Rizzoli’ or not over the course of a day. She was always thinking about her, imagining what could have been if she had seen the obvious much sooner.
It would have been terrifying to tell her best friend that she was in love with her but it also could have been the best thing that ever happened to her if the feelings were reciprocated. Granted, she probably would have run rigorous tests and experiments in an attempt to ascertain whether the detective felt the same way, but assuming that she did, it could have been amazing.
On the day of the trial, the silence descended back over them all, none of them quite sure what to say about Paddy Doyle probably getting away with yet another murder.
Despite weeks of effort, they hadn’t been able to find physical evidence linking to him without a shadow of a doubt and he wouldn’t confess, not even when Maura asked him to, desperate for justice. The look on his face told her all she needed to know, he wasn’t upset that he was being accused, he took issue with her not being grateful.
This was what led to Maura Isles attending her father’s trial, holding the hand of the victim’s mother throughout the descriptions of what happened, flanked by the three male Rizzolis.
The trial was going about as well as Maura expected from her analyse of the case file. Everyone in Boston knew what Paddy Doyle had done and what he would continue to do, but according to the law, there was no evidence.
She progressively deflated until the prosecutor announced, more confidently than ever, “We would like to call a witness to the crime, Your Honour.”
“Objection,” the opposition called, “We were not given notice.”
“For good reason,” the prosecution said, almost smugly holding up a file, “If I may, Your Honour?”
The judge inclined his head and the bailiff retrieved the document to hand the him.
Maura sat up, unsure how to answer the frown from the line of Rizzolis. If there was a witness to the crime, it made sense to conceal that detail until the last moment with the mob’s track record, but who could it have been?
The judge slowly closed the file and said, “I believe that these qualify as extenuating circumstances, I will allow the witness to be called.”
The prosecutor clasped his hands together and replied to his flabbergasted opponent, “We call Detective Jane Rizzoli to the stand.”