Author Note: I have been thinking a lot about post-season 7 fics, and this is the first I've really come up with, aside from something very sad that I'm sure you'd all love to read right now.

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for SEASON SEVEN

Disclaimer: I don't own them, or their past, but their future? Well, nobody else is gonna write it... (except other fanfic writers)

00:59 merged into 01:00.

Jane stared at the clock, desperately hoping it would fast forward to 06:00. At least then she could get up. She sat up in bed and perched her laptop on her knee, browsing the photo album Maura had put together before their trip to Paris. Photo after photo of crime scenes, case after case, victim after victim. Beside the case photos, she had a folder designated to the photographs they'd taken in Paris, but it was too hard to look at them right now.

After ten minutes scrolling through photographs, she moved the cursor to the Skype icon and clicked the button to start a call with Maura. She waited, watching it twirl around, until Maura's face appeared on the screen.

"You know the case with the monkey," she said. "Did the guys wife do it or was it his girlfriend?"

Maura frowned, rubbed her eyes, and stared back at Jane. "It was his second girlfriend."

"Of course it was!"

"Jane," she said. "Why are you ringing me at one in the morning to ask me about an old case? Not that it isn't lovely to hear from you, but I thought you'd decided not to contact any of us for at least two weeks."

"I was just looking through the photos you put together." Jane split the screen, scanning the rest of the photos on the right hand side.

"Okay."

"I miss you."

She turned her head to the side, Maura's eyes glistened under the dull light from what Jane could only assume was her beside lamp. "I miss you, too."

Screen Maura was not the same. Jane reached a hand out to her face, to brush a strand of hair to one side, then pulled her hand back. It wouldn't work. She was too far away.

"Everything's different here," she said, slouching down. She lifted a pillow up and squashed it beneath her head. "It's not the same."

Maura smiled. A sympathy smile. Jane knew it anywhere. "That is how new jobs, and new cities, work."

"I don't understand the subway."

"Why would you need to?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "But if I wanted to, I don't know how it works."

"I imagine it's not that different to the T," Maura said.

"The lines have weird names."

"I thought they were the same," Maura said. "When I did some research they had the same names as the T."

"I live on the yellow line."

"Is that a problem?"

"There's no yellow line in Boston."

"I thought the FBI had helped you to purchase a car."

She pushed out her bottom lip and glared at Maura. She reached the bottom of the photographs, and scrolled back up.

"Who was the Barbie killer again?"

"The Barbie killer?" Maura frowned. "I don't recall that case."

"You know, the girl who looked like she was a Barbie doll. She wore a pink dress, and her hair was bleach blonde. She was six feet tall and had tits the size of Boston Harbour."

"Ah. Samantha Girard, her best friend."

"How do you remember that?"

Maura shrugged. "I don't know."

"Everybody at the FBI is horrible."

"I'm sure that's not true," Maura said. "It will take some time to get to know them."

"They're not like the people at BPD."

"That's because they're new. Remember when Nina joined us and you hated her?"

"I didn't hate Nina."

"No, but I specifically remember you saying you hated her the first day she came. You were actually upset that we had a new Crime Scene Analyst. You didn't like the way she sat in Frost's chair in the BRIC."

"She made it too low."

"It's going to take a while for you to get to know the people there."

"I know." She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I don't want to have to do that. I don't want to have to get to know new people."

"You're homesick."

"No, I'm not."

"What are you then?" Maura asked.

She stared at Maura again, her heart in her throat. "I'm Paris sick. I'm Maura sick."

"You wish we were back in Paris?"

"I want to be back in the sixth arrondissement drinking coffee and eating smelly cheese."

"We can plan another trip, maybe next year."

"It won't be the same." Jane sighed. "Not when we're living hundreds of miles apart."

"It's late," Maura said. "You should get some sleep, or you won't be fit for work in the morning."

"I guess."

"Has it helped seeing my face?"

"More than you'll know," she whispered. "Yeah."

"Try to get to your two weeks," Maura said. "It'll be easier to make new friends if you're not pining after your old ones."

"I don't pine."

Maura raised an eyebrow. "You're pining right now."

"I don't like DC."

"What about Agent Davies? Can't he help?"

"No." She rolled her eyes. "He's married."

"What?"

"He claims they're separated, but she looks at him like a lost puppy. I don't want complicated."

"A friendship doesn't have to be complicated."

"It does when we've slept together, and his wife is still in love with him."

Maura smiled, her eyes glistened. She reached a hand up to the screen. "Get some sleep, you'll feel better for it."

"Okay."

"Goodnight, Jane."

"Night, Maura."

x

"Hello," Maura said. "Or should that be good morning?"

Jane shrugged. "I haven't gone to bed, yet."

"I know." Maura sighed. "It's not that I'm not happy to hear from you, but this is the fifth night in a row. What happened to getting used to your new colleagues?"

She glared at the screen. She would never get used to the digital version of Maura; it wasn't enough. She pursed her lips. "They hate me."

"I'm sure that's not true," Maura said, disappearing from the screen briefly. "I know you can be a little difficult to get to know at first, but that's not to say nobody will try."

"Where did you go?"

"I had to put down my glass of water."

"Agent Davies' wife is on the team," Jane said. "Talk about awkward. I knew she worked there but I didn't realise I'd have to see her every day. It's like a big old awkward dinner party, all the time."

"Does she know you slept with her husband?"

"No."

"Then how do you know it's awkward?"

"I can feel it, obviously."

She opened up the photo album from their trip to Paris. Every single photograph she'd taken had Maura in it; Maura in front of the Eiffel Tower, Maura down the Champs-Elysees, Maura eating mussels on the banks of Seine.

"What I mean," Maura said. "Is that it may feel awkward for you, but is it awkward for her?"

"I guess not. She keeps talking to me like I'm her best friend or something."

"That's nice."

"I don't need another best friend, Maura," Jane said, whining. She hated when she whined. Yet the moment required it. She stared at her again. Maura reached across to one side. "What are you doing?"

"Why do you need to know what I'm doing?"

"Because I can't see."

Maura smiled. "You don't need to see me flick a spider from my bedsheets."

"Ew."

Occasionally her face popped up in the corner of a photograph, or they did a joint selfie. The more photos she looked at, the harder it became. She hated to remember the good days, before.

"If you don't stop waking me up at one in the morning, you're going to have no best friends," Maura said.

"What?"

"I'm joking." Maura's smirk matched the expression in the photo she took at a restaurant in their third week. Their days had a rhythm to them; a walk to the nearest boulangerie for fresh bread, breakfast at the apartment Maura had rented, a run along the River Seine, lunch at a restaurant, sight-seeing, dinner, then wine on the balcony. "However, I do need more sleep. Perhaps tomorrow you can call me around nine."

"Why nine?"

"Why not nine?"

"Can't I call you at eleven?"

"Eleven would be okay," Maura said. "It means I can write another chapter before your call."

Some nights Maura wrote her novel, some mornings they stayed in bed until noon. Or at least Jane did, she expected Maura probably continued their routine, or visited one of the sights Jane refused to go to.

"Do I have to go to bed now?"

"Yes, Jane." Maura smiled, and held up a framed photograph of them stood side by side under the Arc de Triumph. "I got some of our photographs printed, this one's my favourite. Would you like a copy?"

"That was a brilliant day," Jane said, leaning closer to the screen. "Please."

"You're always in my thoughts," Maura said. "Even when you're not in my presence."

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "I guess it's goodnight."

"It's for your good as much as mine."

"But I can't sleep in this bed," she said. "The mattress is lumpy."

"It's Sunday, perhaps you could order yourself a new mattress, since it's your day off."

"That's an option, I suppose."

"Good night, Jane."

"Night, Maura."