Loss wasn't new. Grieving, pain, regrets, none of that was new. But something here was different for Nick. Schanke's death was more than any of those things. It was… disorienting, unbalancing, it shifted things off their axis. Maybe LaCroix and Janette were right, that he'd become much more part of the mortal world now than ever before, more than he should be. None of that mattered now. Nick was lost somewhere he'd never even imagined. There was an echo, of what he'd felt for those fleeting moments when he believed Maura was dead. But different. So different.
Maura was there, as always, she wept and held him, sharing the unspeakable loss to the limit of her understanding. It was a loss to her as well, but different somehow. Everything was different.
How many friends, lovers, family, how many had died honorably or disgracefully or meaningless in his life? Countless, and some had been close enough to trigger pain that was nearly unbearable. This was different.
"She's right, you know," Maura had said, having kept herself sensibly absent when Natalie stormed in. After Natalie trounced him, chapter and verse, reciting his selfish need to run away, and his ability to ignore everything he claimed to care about, she'd come quietly to his side when the echo of the sharpness of clicking heels and slamming elevator door had faded into silence, leaving his piano to fill the empty air.
"She's right, there are more people here than one to feel responsible for. And excuse me, but I have to remind you that you aren't the reason for everything. People live and die, and they do it for reasons and no reasons at all that have nothing to do with Nicolas de Brabant. You didn't kill Donnie, Nick, any more than you could have saved him. So stop pretending that hurting everyone who's left behind could be penance for someone you think you've let down. It's not true and it's not fair. You remember what I told you after Jerry took me, that what connected Donnie and me was how we loved you? Those were his words, not mine. There was nothing about you, nothing you said or did or not that he didn't accept as okay, because he loved you that much. Stop this bullshit of responsibility, bad shit happens, it always has and always will or you wouldn't have a job, and you'll never be powerful enough to control it." Maura forced herself to tell him, even as she bled inside for the loss of Don Schanke in ways she could never explain. After Nick's predictable lament about the need to move on and his guilty habit of "killing friends" which she knew was untrue, after every available annoying selfish argument he was capable of, she told him. And when finally Nick turned to her, arms limp and palms turned outward as if awaiting punishment, his eyes bewildered and face washed red with tears, she went to him in a rush to absorb any unreasonable torment that remained.
"I love you, Nick, I love you," a mantra when she reached Nick as his knees buckled, not quite strong enough to catch him but strong enough to fall with him, not letting him reach the floor without her. She stayed there with him on the carpet all night as he came apart in ways she'd never seen before but always knew were possible, the only three words that made sense repeated over and over. His tears she'd seen, his regrets and sorrows, but nothing like this. Maura hoped against hope she was strong enough to hold Nick together, the same way he'd held her though her own past loss and sorrows. She held on tight as truth as he shuddered and wracked with the grief she knew she couldn't ever fully understand. She could share his pain but she could never really feel it, because she'd never know enough about him to make it her own. Please let love be enough, she prayed to any deity who might be adequate to the task. How did he do it, she wondered, when she'd believed she'd lost everything, how did he help her understand that there was so much left?
The only person who could tell her was gone.