Maura watched Jane cross the grey, hazy expanse between them.
She was dirty, exhausted, barely recognizable.
Her eyes were lifeless, her hands bloody and trembling.
This isn't what Maura imagined would become of them.
It isn't anything Maura ever expected.
It's bullets and bloodshed and tense words and really, she should have known better.
The work they do turns saints into sinners, soldiers into martyrs, lovers into fighters.
There is no way to battle the darkness, these monsters, without eventually falling prey to their siren call.
Eventually, the dirt and grime get under your skin and you cannot wash it clean. Cannot rid yourself of the stain.
They've seen it happen time and time again.
And now Jane has shot Maura's father and the world was crumbling around her and she'd never really know who she is, who she belongs to, who her family was.
She'll never know, and Jane is to blame.
And it made the edges of her vision blur and the ringing in her ears turn deafening and the pounding of her heart pulse incessantly.
Jane, who Maura always imagined was flawless. Fearless.
Maura could see the fear now, reflected clearly in Jane's eyes.
It made her doubt herself.
If Jane was afraid, Maura should be terrified.
And she was.
But not because her father was probably dead.
Not because she'd never truly know who she was.
Maura was terrified because she had lost the only person who ever made her feel at home, who made her feel like family, who loved her unconditionally and who she loved completely in return.
Jane.
Maura wished there was something she could do, something she could say, but words seem to fail her entirely.
Jane understood innately, and the ache in Maura's chest increased ten-fold at that realization.
Turning, Maura avoided Jane's approach, focusing instead on the way the paramedics painstakingly loaded her biological father into an ambulance, his vitals shaky.
Sirens blared, voices yelled, but everything seemed to slow when Maura felt a gentle touch on her shoulder.
Barry's wide, sad eyes met her and Maura couldn't even find the energy to respond, to reciprocate.
He squeezed softly and then released her, indicating his unmarked car with a nod, and Maura climbed blindly into the passenger seat with this bare encouragement.
They left the scene with sirens blaring and lights flashing and the car seemed to be simultaneously speeding and moving at a snails pace.
Boston blurred past her outside the window but Maura felt nothing.
Jane had broken something between them today.
Well, Jane and Paddy Doyle.
They'd torn a ragged, bleeding edge between the two women and Maura knew with surgical precision that it was a split that could not easily be sutured.
It was a tear that could not easily be repaired.
It was jagged and messy and no matter what expertise was applied to correcting it, to stopping the bleeding and setting it right…
There would always be a scar- a rigid, painful reminder of what had transpired.
Maura thought fleetingly of Jane's hands, and knew, with a certainty that knocked her breath away, that this would always be between them.
Just as surely as the knots on Jane's palms would always rasp between Jane's touch and her own skin…
This would never go away.
There would always be something between them now.
There could never be anything between them now.
And to her dismay, that knowledge hurt her more than Paddy Doyle's death ever could.