Notes: This is the last part of this piece. Thanks for all the comments.

Pt 3: Peace

Jane flipped on the lights as they entered the apartment and cringed. Jesus Christ. It was like the state of Kentucky exploded in her living room.

"Gah," she sighed, "It looks like a herd of horses barfed all over my apartment."

"Actually, horses can't vomit, the muscle that connects the esophagus to the stomach is strictly one way…" Maura paused, her voice quieting, "…she just wanted to do something fun for you. We all just wanted to do something fun for you, and it's ruined."

"Hey," Jane pulled Maura into their umpteenth hug of the past several hours, she'd honestly lost count but it was all she wanted. To have Maura next to her, Maura's skin against her skin, Maura in her arms. "I know."

"May I please have some real clothes to put on?" Maura mumbled into Jane's shoulder.

The bedroom had at least been left a safe haven from the pony party décor. Jane rooted through her dresser for something comfortable for Maura to wear, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Maura had already stripped off her jacket and blood-stained shirt and had begun to shed the hospital scrub pants only to realize she didn't have on any underwear.

"I…don't have any underwear that hasn't been worn," Jane pulled the newest pair of cotton panties that she had from the drawer.

"As long as they're clean," Maura took them and turned her back, all modesty having pretty much been lost over the course of the day's events she let the scrubs drop to the floor and stepped into the panties, turning back around to face Jane.

She had never seen Maura look so meek. Legs stuck tightly together, shoulders slumped forward; her hair was a mess and her eyes swollen and red.

"This is what you've felt like…all these years?" Maura walked forward and reached for Jane's face, running her thumbs along prominent cheekbones, "Why haven't you cried since we left the prison?"

"I have," Jane muttered, "when you were in the shower and couldn't see me." Jane reached for Maura's wrists and pulled them down as she tilted her head back, her eyes clenching shut as fiery tears singed her already weary skin.

And then, that feeling again. Peace. Maura's arms wrapped around her and their bodies were pressed together tightly. She could feel light breaths on her neck. It didn't make sense, she never would have expected that something so simple, an embrace, could make her feel so whole at a time when she should feel nothing but rent asunder.

"It won't feel like this forever," Jane reassured her, unabashedly letting one hand stroke from just under Maura's bra clasp down her bare back to the top of the cotton panties and back up again. "I didn't feel like this all the time…after the first time."

"What helped?" Maura asked, her breath was hot as she spoke and it made Jane tingle.

We've already shared so much. Things that we shouldn't, things I didn't want to share. What's one more? "You…you helped. When I met you and we became friends. And I…finally had someone. Someone that wasn't family but…became like it. I don't know, sometimes you just need someone in your life that isn't your mother or your brother. And the nightmares started to go away."

There was silence, but both tightened their arms around the other. Jane never wanted to share this with Maura, the terror, the self-loathing and all of the things that came with it, the anxiety and the nightmares, but for so long there was no one who could really understand. No one until now. Some part of that was guiltily comforting. It's so hard to be alone.

"He was going to make you watch," Maura sniffled, the damn crying, she felt like a child. That's what Hoyt had reduced her to, an adolescent who had no control, no control when he was hovering over her whispering in her ear that the best part of raping her was going to be making Jane watch, no control now when she couldn't stop the waves of tears from clawing their way out…again…and again.

"Rape the wife, make the husband watch," Jane mumbled. It sickened her, literally turned her stomach; curdled its contents. Her gut felt like pure acid and it raged upwards into her chest and throat, boiling in her esophagus and threatening to send her reeling to the toilet, if she could even make it in time.

Maura shook her head against Jane's shoulder, "But…we're not…we're not even lovers."

Jane wrenched herself from Maura's embrace, body shaking as she turned and walked, "I can't…I can't…I can't," she ran her hands frantically through her hair. She paced the room, glancing occasionally towards Maura, little whimpers clawing their way through tightly pursed lips as she did so.

Maura turned her back to Jane and reached behind her self to unhook her bra, throwing it unceremoniously to the floor with her other clothes as she pulled on the t-shirt that Jane had pulled out for her. When she turned around Jane had taken a seat on the edge of her bed and was rocking back and forth. Maura pulled another shirt from the dresser, an old worn Red Sox t-shirt that she knew Jane loved, and made her way to the bed. She knelt down in front of her, pulling off one boot and sock and then the other; she waited on Jane to take over but she just sat there, eyes closed, a never-ending barrage of tears torturing her nearly fully blocked sinuses.

Maura's fingers were light on her belt, unfastening it and unzipping her pants. Jane lifted her hips and let the pants be pulled off. The bed dipped and Jane finally opened her eyes, she turned to face Maura and watched as previously trembling hands were stilled by purpose as they popped button after button down the front of her shirt.

"Talk to me," Maura's voice was pleading as she lifted Jane's undershirt over her head. Her eyes settled on the scars from the shooting. The scar was an angry red from the excitement. Maura reached for it, her fingers caressing over the gnarly tissue. Hoyt was worse. Hoyt made her feel more helpless than watching Jane shoot herself had. At least then she had been able to run to her, try to hold her life inside. Today, in the prison infirmary, only feet apart and she had never felt so far away from Jane.

"He was going to make me watch him," Jane started, pausing to take a deep breath, "rape you." Maura nodded, tears dripping from her hung head and landing on Jane's bare knee and thigh. "Because Charles fucking Hoyt's practically a goddamned psychic and he…he can get in your head and he knows exactly, EXACTLY what to fucking say or do to absolutely destroy a person. And he knew today, Maura, he knew that you were my weakness. He was going to make me watch him rape you because he knew it would utterly tear me apart. And only after he'd had his sadistic fill of torturing me by making me watch him torture you would he kill me. If he had…if he would have…" she didn't want to say it, rape you, "I think I would have let him kill me."

Maura's body shook, with the recollection of that fear: He was sitting across the table in the interview room from her, wearing that bright orange jumpsuit. I won't kill you Doctor, his fists slamming to the table as he tried to stand, RAPE you maybe, but not kill you. And then there he was, holding that stun gun, hovering over her, breathing in her face, hot putrid breath that burned her nostrils. He leaned closer, slicing her neck, his chest pressing down on hers. She loves you, he whispered, but she's never told you that. She wants to touch you, slip her fingers inside your hot, tight little body. But she hasn't. I'm going to fuck you like she's always wanted to, and when her voice is hoarse from screaming; you're going to watch me kill her. But don't worry Doctor, I told you before I wouldn't kill you, and I won't.

The fear was more than for her impending assault. What split her skin and cracked her chest and reached deep into the bloody mess was the fear that Hoyt was right. That Jane loved her and that she would have to watch that monster rape her, have it be the last thing she ever saw and that she would die without Maura having the opportunity to tell her that she loved her too.

Jane's voice was steadier as she started to speak again, "But he didn't know that you're also my strength. I never would have wished for you to be there. But if you hadn't been…I don't know if I could have found that strength. As soon as I knew what he was going to do, I can't explain it, it's like I wasn't even in control of my body I just knew that I would die making sure that bastard didn't lay a finger on you."

Maura reached for Jane's hands and held them, running her thumbs over the scars on the back of both palms. She slumped forward to let her cheek rest on the top of Jane's left and held the other close to her face, close enough that Jane could feel her light exhalations ghost over needy skin. "He told me that you…"

She'd almost died. Twice. In fact, not a handful of hours ago she was more sure of her imminent death than she had been when she pulled the cold steel barrel of that gun into her side, felt the white hot stab of the bullet as it ripped through her. It was masochism: keeping the secret. Daily torture. Enough torture. Enough denial and constant heartbreak of not having her, pain that set every night and rose every morning. She wanted her, body and heart, most of all her heart. Love. Someone to give it to, someone who would give it back to her.

"He told you that I loved you." Maura nodded as Jane tilted her face up. "I do. So goddamned obvious even Charles Hoyt could tell on his proverbial deathbed. Obvious, maybe to everyone but the two of us. I love you, Maura. I can't keep punishing myself by denying it; it hurts too much. I hate that this is what it took for me to say it and it's ok if you don't…"

Peace. Maura's lips pressed against her own, soft and tender. The pain was gone. And it didn't matter that the catalyst had been Charles Hoyt. In fact, in that moment, as twisted as it was, she found herself thanking him. This was her justice, their justice. He'd tried to ruin them, break them, cement them in pain so deep it would be unbearable that the only choice left was to sink, let the concrete drag them down. He had lost and they had won.

"I love you too," Maura whispered as their lips separated.

Jane leaned back against her pillow, pulling Maura along side of her. "It will be enough right?"

Maura let her head settle into the crook of Jane's neck, her hand traced lightly across Jane's bare chest and down the center, over the front clasp of her bra and down to her abdomen until she settled again over the mark of their earlier trial. "He didn't break you before. And I feel unbroken now."