"Stop Maura Isles, stop," the scythe disappears but the cloaked figure doesn't.
She stops.
"You aren't supposed to be here," the voice isn't chilling, isn't cold.
She looks at the hood, picturing hollowed sockets like countless lore had depicted.
"You can't revoke our deal, I made a mistake, I won't go near her again," she worries, and she fears.
"You're forgetting why she was happy in the first place," the voice sounds almost cordial, pained, but conversational.
She watches as the hood falls, and her eyes connect with another - nothing at all like what some texts would suggest.
"Love never dies does it Maura Isles?" The voice questions. "I can't take away anything that love has touched, that love has tainted," the eyes reflect sadness, the voice is simply pained.
She's listening and looking, right at death, right at pain, with a cloak concealing - as Jane might suggest - a body of bones.
"I don't understand," she simply responds, "Jane's just my best friend," a statement she delivers fluently and yet leaden with great weight as her hand chooses to hold and not hover, over the only reminder of a truth she wishes to never really forgo or denounce, regardless of what Jane might never feel towards her - reciprocity is something she's used to not having; she's used to being alone.
"You lie Maura Isles," death almost smiles, "But her reality, and your reality does not," death gestures behind her, "The house you welcome her so often in, is more her home than where she spent the past nights crying for a person she lost in her dreams."
She can see Jane walking around in her house, in their home.
"It stands, everything she cares for stands, and couldn't be erased," death explains, "I keep my words, I do not lie, but love does not die, and if it lives, I cannot intervene."
She can feel perspiration pooling at the small of her back - Jane's walking towards the door, towards her.
"If she can remember your name, our deal remains," death's standing next to her, "But I can give you both a day, and that's better than what some others can never have," death removes her cloak, "She's right isn't she? You're always ready for a photo shoot," death smiles, and she does too - Jane's very words resurface, from that night when she first opened up her house, and her heart, to her best friend Jane.