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It had been unnerving enough – finding dozens of unsolicited photographs of herself, strung up from the ceiling and plastered across a wall. It had been worse still to realize she wasn’t the only one in them. She sees Isobel once and then can’t stop seeing her, wide eyes flickering from one image to the next. The two of them leaving the office together, outside of a bar, grabbing coffee, at the front gate of Isobel’s brownstone. Maggie had led him right to her, and there are plenty more pictures of Isobel alone, but somehow that isn’t enough.
The most recent is from just yesterday, and she isn't by herself in this one either, but it isn’t Isobel with her – it's Claire. Her blood runs cold. “Oh my god,” she breathes, horrified. They’d just been getting ice-cream while Isobel was in court, but even that had just been another opportunity for this guy. Maggie frantically scans the wall, and her flashlight’s beam highlights Claire at least twice more. She resists the urge to rip the photos down and has to force herself to take her own pictures of them instead.
Targeting her is one thing – retaliation is always a risk in their line of work, she knows that all too well – but looking at Isobel and Claire’s faces bathed in the darkroom’s red light fills her with an unparalleled fear and anger. It’s only justice that she gets a chance to take even a fraction of it out on the fucker responsible, giving chase the instant she hears a floorboard creak behind them.
She doesn’t come away from the ensuing fight unscathed, but in the moment, she doesn’t notice, too high on adrenaline and rage to completely feel the metal pipe when it collides with her abdomen. It’s not the only hit Distefano lands on her, but everything else is negligible compared to that. It’s certainly not enough to stop her from getting the upper hand, and Maggie doesn’t think beating the shit out of someone has ever been so satisfying. It takes more self-control than she cares to admit to not choke the life out of him when she has her hand around his throat.
It isn’t until they’re almost back at headquarters that the pain finally starts to hit her. Without a doubt, she’s going to have one hell of a bruise by tonight, trying not to wince when she climbs out of the car. She hasn’t figured out, yet, how she’s going to break this situation to Isobel. If Maggie was the only victim of the stalking, it’d be easy – she’d mention it offhandedly, and Isobel would give her that little worried look that she doesn’t anyone else, trying not to fuss.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Maggie knows in her heart that Isobel would never blame her for this, when she has never held anything against her, and yet the guilt has convinced her otherwise. It's only because of being close to her that Isobel and Claire were in danger, and Maggie knows from experience just how brutal Ray Distefano can be. Knowing that he ever laid eyes on them makes her feel sick.
She doesn’t particularly want to be in the same room as him, and perhaps she shouldn’t be given their history, but his obsession with her is more likely to make him talk. If she isn’t there, he might just refuse altogether. So, she sits down opposite him and tries to ignore it as her skin crawls and her veins thrum with anger. She focuses on the case, on the murdered women, on trying to stop there from being any more victims.
It’s been a long time since an interrogation has tested her composure so much, but she manages to hold it together. At first. Unfortunately, that obsession of his means he knows exactly what her pressure point is. “You spend a lot of time with this oaf,” he remarks, jerking his head in OA’s direction, though his eyes never leave her. “But he’s not your baby daddy.” He smirks and leans closer, across the edge of the table. “You’re playing happy families with your boss. Pretty woman. I’d love to cut a face like that."
The moment the words leave his mouth, Maggie moves so fast that OA almost doesn’t grab her in time, and she strains against his arms as he pulls her back from the table. Distefano laughs. “You’d never forget me then, Maggie,” he taunts, and OA nearly loses his hold on her. He might be twice Maggie’s size, but it takes most of his effort to get her out of the door, and the first thing she does when he lets go of her is punch the wall opposite them.
Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t help when it’s not Distefano’s face, and although she barely feels it, that’ll be another bruise because of this case. She keeps her hand firmly curled into a fist and flexes the other in and out of one, resisting the urge to punch something else. “You need to take a break,” OA advises, eyeing her with concern. It’s rare to see Maggie lose her temper like that during an interrogation – he doesn’t even remember the last time – but he isn't oblivious. He knows Isobel is her Achilles’ heel and vice versa. “I’ll handle Distefano.”
“I didn’t...” Maggie’s voice catches, and she takes a deep breath. “I didn’t realize how close he was to me," she says, shoulders falling as some of her anger gives way to guilt. “To them.” She’s meant to be an FBI agent, but she didn’t even have an inkling that she was being followed, not until it was already too late – until this fucker was already familiar with the people she cares about most.
“But they’re okay, he can’t touch them," OA assures her. Despite Distefano’s threats, he hasn’t laid a hand on either of them, and now he’s not going to get the chance. “We’re gonna send him down, you don’t have to worry about him.” Unfortunately, his words do nothing to make Maggie feel better. Isobel and Claire might be safe, but it doesn’t change that they were targets in the first place, that pictures of them were hanging up in that psycho’s darkroom.
Not even the thought of him rotting away in a prison cell again does much to put her at ease. She gets an uncomfortable feeling that it won’t be for as long as OA thinks, though she doesn't hang around to find out if that instinct is correct. She can’t even stand to observe from the other room, knowing her anger will only reignite the moment she sees Distefano’s face through the camera, and removes herself entirely.
If it wasn’t so cold outside, she’d go up to the roof and clear her head. Instead, she settles for an empty boardroom on the other side of the building and slumps into a chair. The silence is stifling. Even with her eyes open, staring into space, she still only sees that wall of photographs.
She thinks back to the coffee shop, and the bar, and the ice-cream van, and Isobel’s front gate, and tries to remember if there were any warning signs, something – anything – that should’ve given her reason to suspect she was being watched. Maybe if she’d noticed sooner, Distefano never would’ve had the chance to lay his sights on Isobel and Claire. Maggie hates to wonder what might’ve happened if not for this case inadvertently bringing it to light, his threat echoing in her head.
She knows she has to tell Isobel, even if doing so comes at the cost of an insurmountable distance forming between them, even if the thought of that hurts like hell. By the time she finds the courage and feels at least a little calmer, she’s long lost track of time. Her watch tells her it’s only been half an hour, although it certainly felt twice as long. She reluctantly makes her way towards Isobel’s office, but she doesn’t even get halfway there before Isobel finds her first.
“Maggie!” she calls the moment she turns into the corridor and sees her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Her tone is nowhere near accusatory or disapproving, but Maggie still feels guilty for disappearing nonetheless. Even if she needed to clear her head to be of any use, they’re still in the middle of a high-stakes case.
“Did something happen?” she asks, wondering if they’ve made any useful progress in her absence. She knows the medical examiner was trying to pull prints from the dress of their latest victim, but it turns out that updating her isn’t Isobel’s priority.
“I wanted to check on you,” she answers, stopping in front of her. “I heard you were hit with a pipe.” Well, so much for hiding that from her. Maggie knows she should’ve seen this coming, watching as Isobel's expression shifts into concern and her eyes immediately wander, taking her in. “How bad is it?”
Maggie hasn’t actually bothered to look since it happened, so preoccupied that she managed to forget about it altogether until right now, her abdomen immediately twinging with pain at the reminder. "I haven’t checked,” she admits, unsurprised by the mildly exasperated look Isobel gives her.
“Show me,” she instructs, inevitably unwilling to let her get away with it so easily. Maggie, of course, doesn’t hesitate to comply, though she fails to conceal her wince as well as she’d like when she untucks her shirt, rolling it up to uncover where she was hit. There’s a long, vivid red bruise across her abdomen that’s already starting to purple in places. Ah. Not ideal.
Isobel evidently thinks the same, leaning down to closely examine it herself. “Does it hurt?” she asks quietly, one hand resting on Maggie’s hip as she uses the other to ghost her fingers along the edge of the mark. Strangely, her touch manages to make it feel a little less painful.
“No,” Maggie claims, if only to try and stop her from worrying about it more than she already is, but Isobel immediately scowls up at her in response, impossible to convince.
“Liar,” she mutters, standing straight again, closer than before. She pauses, head tilting slightly as she regards Maggie with soft eyes, but the next words out of Isobel’s mouth hit her almost as hard as the pipe did. “OA told me about the darkroom.”
Maggie immediately goes tense. This isn’t how she’d planned for her to find out. She suspects OA only mentioned it to explain where she was, but Isobel should’ve heard it from her personally – it's the least she deserved. “I’m sorry...” Maggie says, but it doesn’t feel like enough, and she braces herself for Isobel’s dismay, anger, disappointment, something.
Instead, she’s met with an endearing frown. “For what?” Isobel asks, clearly confused.
Maggie falters, caught off-guard by the reaction. She hadn’t planned for that, either. “Putting you and Claire in danger,” she answers slowly, having thought it was obvious. It’s being around her that placed them in the firing line, however inadvertently. Worse still, it was only a few years ago that a killer followed Isobel home and studied her routine, just to break in and almost murder her. Maggie hadn’t been there then, and now she has helped subject her and Claire to the same threat for a second time.
“¿Qué voy a hacer contigo?” Isobel murmurs under her breath, but her gaze remains nothing except tender, and when she speaks again, her voice is soothingly gentle. “You didn’t ask to be stalked, Maggie.” She doesn’t know what it is about Isobel that always manages to be so comforting, even when she feels at her worst – even when she was laying trapped in a hospital bed. Perhaps it is simply because she’s Isobel, a deity even if only to Maggie.
“I know,” she concedes, her guilt already starting to ease at Isobel’s reassurance, “but you trusted me with Claire, and now...” Even if for just a few hours at a time, it was Maggie’s job to keep her safe, and instead, she failed to notice as some creep took illicit pictures of her.
“I trust you with her because I know you’d never let her get hurt,” Isobel affirms, still steadfast in that belief. There is nobody she trusts more, and this hasn't changed that. “If he’d tried something, you would’ve put him six feet under.” That, she has no doubt about. She sighs, reaching out to straighten the hem of Maggie’s shirt. “Mi amado idiota.” Maggie only understands two of the three words in that sentence, but she’s sure it’s affectionate if only for the way Isobel looks at her as she says it. “Did he get you anywhere else?”
Maggie hesitates before gesturing to her temple. “Just a punch,” she admits, only for Isobel to immediately cradle her face in both hands, worriedly looking for any damage. Maggie doesn’t think there’s a bruise there, at least, and opts not to tell her about the one that might form on the back of her hand from hitting the wall – as if Isobel needs more reason to fuss.
“Maybe I should take you to the ER,” she suggests, turning Maggie’s head and examining the other side for good measure. It looks fine, but that’s not her main concern. Being hit full force with a metal pipe is no joke, and although Isobel has already memorized the size and shape of the bruise it left behind, she wouldn’t put it past Maggie to try and walk off a broken rib – intentionally or not.
“Isobel,” she whines in protest, unsurprisingly against the idea. She doesn’t want to waste time sitting around in a waiting room or cubicle when they still likely have a budding serial killer to catch, but while her priority is the case, Isobel’s is her.
“Don’t Isobel me! Why didn’t you call for an ambulance?” she scolds, holding Maggie's face a little tighter as she angles it back towards hers. She’s come to expect, even if not quite accept, this level of self-disregard from her, but she’d at least thought OA would have the presence of mind to insist on her being looked over.
Maggie averts her gaze, knowing Isobel won’t like her answer – or any reason she tries to give. “Was kinda busy...” she mumbles. She'd been consumed by the chase and her anger and the satisfaction of screwing over Distefano for a second time – it hadn’t helped that she'd barely felt any pain in the moment. The disapproving look Isobel immediately gives her is to be expected, but Maggie still hates to see it.
"Tu cabeza está vacía," she mutters, finally letting her hands fall away from Maggie’s face. She doesn’t think she will ever get used to her recklessness and lack of self-preservation, no matter how many more times she comes back injured – and she will, Isobel knows. It’s as inevitable as her own concern.
She shakes her head slightly, but to Maggie's relief, her expression quickly softens again. “The M.E. lifted a fingerprint,” she reveals, reluctantly returning to the case at hand. "It looks like Distefano’s not our killer, but he’ll do hard time, I'll make sure of it.” Murderer or not, he still stalked two FBI agents and a child. Add on assaulting Maggie and this being far from his first offense, and Isobel will see that he gets another twelve years minimum. “He won’t come near you again."
Maggie has no doubt that she means it, reassured by the protective thunder in Isobel’s eyes – reserved just for her. “They never told me he was out,” she reveals with a faint scowl, unable to help feeling angry. If someone had alerted her, she would’ve been more vigilant – they likely would've caught Distefano before he could fill an entire wall with photographs. This oversight put more than just her in danger.
“I know. I’ll get to the bottom of that, too,” Isobel tells her gently. As soon as they find their killer and start to close this case, it’ll be her first priority. The warning might not have prevented this situation entirely, but it certainly would’ve helped. She wants someone held accountable. “In the meantime, you’re going to stay here. No more field work.”
Maggie immediately protests exactly as expected. “Isobel, I’m fine,” she insists, as if Isobel hasn’t seen the extensive bruise across her midsection. That certainly didn’t look fine to her – she would feel considerably more at ease having Maggie close enough to keep an eye on. She, of course, would prefer to throw herself right back into the fray, though she does at least try to show consideration for Isobel’s worry. “I’ll even be extra careful just for you.”
Said to anyone else, the words would be empty – just a way to get them off her back, when careful rarely feels like part of Maggie's vocabulary – but with Isobel, there is no doubt the assurance is genuine. Still, she refuses to let it sway her, only narrowing her eyes in response. Maggie has no choice but to play her ace, tilting her head slightly as she gives Isobel her saddest imploring eyes. “Please?”
Isobel immediately purses her lips, trying to hold strong, but she knows this is the look she will be met with all day if she follows through. Not for the first time, she’s left caught between concern and her dislike of seeing Maggie miserable, eventually relenting with an irritated huff. “If I see you in even a hint of pain, you are coming right back here, got it?” she commands, planning to personally drag her back should she so much as wince in the field.
“I promise," Maggie says brightly, amused when Isobel simply continues to scowl at her, clearly unimpressed with the result. She turns to leave and Maggie instantly follows, their footsteps perfectly in time as she stares across at her. “Don’t make that face, I know you love me.”
Isobel sighs. “God knows why,” she murmurs, but Maggie doesn’t miss the faint smile she says it with, her own expression lighting up further still at the sight of it.