Chapter Text
Jane sat in the dim glow of her apartment; the place had become her cocoon. Her recovery was going to be slow, and most likely, she wouldn't be the Jane from before. Her hands betray her constantly with their weakness, trembling when she tries to hold a cup of coffee, fumbling over simple tasks. Her fingers didn't obey the way they used to. Once, she could field strip her Glock blindfolded, complete her paperwork in half the time of her colleagues, and hold a cup of coffee without spilling it. Now, every small movement was a negotiation. She knew the odds; she would never be cleared for duty again. Her badge was her identity. Her weapon, her shield. All stripped from her by a man who thrives on the destruction of others' spirits.
She now spent her days in her apartment, barely leaving the place, only for the bare necessities. Groceries, physiotherapy and maybe, if so, a walk around the block. She was not clear for driving yet, either, so she solely relied on what she had around her home and what her mother and brother helped her with. Frankie would come mostly every day to give her some company and her mother, too, which was the catalyst for many of Jane's frustrations. Angela, her helicopter mother, was always hovering and treating her like a baby. Even though Jane needed help combing through her curls at the beginning, her mother was always getting on her nerves with her smooching and hovering. But she was grateful for her mother and her dedication. She knew her mother did it all out of love. But that didn't mean it could be very annoying for Jane, the ever-so-independent Jane Rizzoli.
But being cocooned in her house brought a newfound Hobby. Podcasts. She started listening to podcasts by a mere casualty, and after she had run out of TV shows to watch, she was now devouring podcasts. Moreso, true crime podcasts. Headphones clamped tight over her ears, the voices of strangers filled the loud silence of her apartment, narrating true crimes, dissecting motives and weaving theories. It wasn't the same as standing over a crime scene, but it kept her mind busy, kept her from drifting into dangerous territories, into the silence that evoked the feeling of Hoyt's presence, his scalpels piercing through her skin, the phantom pain in her hands reminding her of what she had lost at the hands of that evil.
So, she listened, and podcasts became the connection between her old self and the new Jane that wasn't so sure of who she was. But in a way, it kept her instincts still sharp in her head. And after a few weeks of listening to podcasts and finding some of them good but inaccurate or lacking necessary details, a thought was fumbling in her head. "What if I do one myself?" she thought. She had the experience, the insights, the fire. If she couldn't work cases in the field, maybe she could tell their stories, shed light and give those affected a voice.
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Across town, an elegant blond was settling into her new role as the Chief Medical Examiner of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Precise, brilliant and driven, Dr. Maura Isles had stepped up into the position a month after Hoyt's attack, but it still lingered; she had heard of the detective who was practically crucified by 'The surgeon'. But they never met.
One quiet evening, she found herself listening to a podcast, one that she had been hearing being talked about at BPD for a couple of days now. Unlike the sensationalised shows that bend facts for drama, this one was different. Methodical, measured, and almost surgical in the attention to the details of the investigation. The host spoke with an authority characteristic of someone who clearly understood the work of a detective and a forensic team and the gravity of a murder. She found herself listening to it more than once, impressed by the clarity, the empathy and the craft of it. She wondered who the person behind it was.
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Jane pressed the record button on her computer with more effort than she cared to admit. Even though her PT was making progress, she was still limited in the functions her hands could perform. The little red light blinked at the bottom of the screen. "Ok, let's not screw this one up," Jane muttered to herself. She cleared her throat and leaned over the cheap microphone she had bought online that sat balanced on a stack of books. "This is Echoes of the Badge," she said in a low voice, testing the words "I'm your host, Jane Riz…" She stopped midsentence and knew that she couldn't use her real name. It would attract attention to her. Her name was all over the news after Hoyt's attack, so she needed a pseudonym. She thought for a second and blurted the first name she thought of, "This is your host, Cassandra Wells."
No Jane, no former detective. Just Cassandra Wells. A name she picked out of nowhere. Well, not completely out of nowhere. Cassandra came from the cursed Greek prophet whom no one believed. Wells, because she was trying to pull herself out of the deep, dark hole she had fallen into.
She tried again, straighter this time, slipping into her old rhythm, as if her living room was an interrogation room. "Each week, I'll walk you through real cases. Some you may know, some you may not. But all of them matter, because behind every case file, there is a person who didn't make it home to her family." Her voice was shaky, but she pushed forward "Tonight's case is the 1992 homicide of a 17-year-old girl found dead in Dorchester. It has been almost 33 years since this murder, and no one has been held accountable. We are going to walk about what went wrong, and maybe what could still be done."
She stopped, staring at the waveform displayed across the screen. For the first time in months, she didn't feel useless.
That night, Jane replayed her draft. She cringed at the strange pauses and her thick accent still audible, even if she had tried to mask it. But it wasn't a bad first attempt, and she needed something to keep herself sane. When she called Frankie, her brother, to vent about the dull, constant ache in her hands, she didn't mention the podcast. She was adamant to keep it as secret as humanly possible. Not yet, at least.
"What's important is your healing," Frankie told her gently. Understanding that this was hard for her sister, who has been so active all her life.
Jane chuckled, "Yeah, if you call healing still dropping forks and leaving off take out because cooking is too hard, healing," Jane shot back at him on the phone.
"Come on, Janie. Don't be so hard on yourself. It'll take time, but you'll get better." He sympathetically said. They talked for a few more minutes and then cut the conversation short.
Back to her laptop, Jane gave the draft a last listen and hovered over the 'upload' button for a little bit before pressing it to the hosting platform. Her pulse kicked up as the progress bar inched forward. "What if no one listens?...What if people do?" she whispered to herself. As the podcast successfully uploaded, Jane fixed her gaze on the screen, "Cassandra Wells, welcome to the crime scene." She closed the laptop and walked to her room.