A/N: Quick question, any of you guys watched/know Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Need to run something by someone who knows both that show and GMW :)


April 9th 2020

Chapter 100
Their Sounds of Creation

Maya was fortunate to say that, for the most part, she had never had to reach very far to find inspiration. There would be notes, or words, not many but just enough to set her on the path, and from there it would all come together, until 'not many' turned into a whole. She had never set out to be a songwriter, it had just sort of happened, hadn't it? Back when TXNY had first come together, Isadora had been the one to conjure up those little jewels of songs they had then gone and sung and played together. At no time had Maya gone 'wait, I should do that, too.'

And then she'd done one. She'd written a song… written lyrics anyway, which Isadora had set music to. Even so, it was the first time she had expressed her art in this way, with words more than images. They had come to her in something like a haze, her brain overstimulated from having been on stage earlier that night. It had been enough though. She'd wedged her foot in that door, and afterward she just couldn't take it back out again, or more to the point, even if she had taken her foot out the door would not have been able to close again. It would draw her in, and she would find her way into this world of melodies, and lyrics, and… she was a songwriter.

Now her songs were known by people near and far across the world and it was just… She couldn't even quantify it, couldn't even try without feeling like she was so very small and unable to even wrap her arms around even a fraction of it all. It was overwhelming, and so far it was okay that it was that way. The day might come when it wouldn't feel that way anymore, but… No, she wasn't going to even think about it that way.

She still had her band, still had TXNY, with Riley and Rosa and Nadine and Kayla, and they would be hitting the stage in a few days, a club gig, and Maya wanted them to have something new to play up there. She'd been so caught up with writing for Audra and the people who'd signed her, and with Stage Ready's expansion, and the camp, and the festival… Their big tour plans had just never panned out, and that had not been her fault in particular, or anyone else's, really, but now here they were. They were all itching to get back up there, not just this one time but really on a more regular basis, the way they used to be back in Houston. The club was the first step for that return, and this new song would be her offering to the effort.

Maya hated starting from nothing. If she had just the smallest bit of something to build up on she could create magic, but faced with a blank page, with a lack of notes to start, she felt like she was digging at the ground and finding nothing but empty shells.

Now here she was, in the basement, laid out on the couch with her guitar, just messing around and trying to come up with… something… anything…

"Maya?"

"Yeah?" she turned her head up to find Ramona standing halfway down the stairs with a plate in her hand. "Oh, hey," Maya set her guitar aside and sat up.

"I made cookies, wanted to know if you'd like some," Ramona explained, looking to the plate and back again.

"Definitely, yeah," Maya nodded. Lucas' classmate came down the rest of the way and sat next to her, offering the plate.

"I kept thinking about these, used to make them with my sister when we were little and our abuelo would look after us. They always made me feel better, especially after that summer… Anyway, I guess right now I really needed these."

"I get it," Maya told her, hand drifting to the guitar pick on the chain around her neck. Ramona smiled, holding out the plate. "These look amazing, thank you," she took one and bit into it.

Ramona had been bunking on the couch upstairs for nearly three weeks now. The day after she'd arrived, Sam had offered her his room, his bed, so she wouldn't have to sleep on the couch, but she didn't want to impose that far. To a degree, maybe she just didn't want to take any steps that would put any kind of frame on exactly how long she'd be here. If there was any part of her that believed there was a chance for her and Robbie, it would not want her to treat this as anything more than a temporary situation. Lucas and Maya had both told her she could stay as long as she needed, and they meant it. She could stay for a couple of days like she could stay a couple of months and then some. They would not turn her out while she was out here figuring out what her next step would be.

They would not push either of their friends to talk, to address whether or not there was any progress one way or another as far as reconciliation was concerned, but everything they had seen by now suggested the answer would have been no. By now, it felt as though they had passed through the event, and they were on to the next chapter. Ramona had been staying with them all this time, the car had been returned to Robbie, the day after the festival, at which point Ramona had packed up the rest of her things and returned to the house with Maya and the minivan. A lot of those things were now in the basement with the rest of the boxes and containers for storage. Maya and Lucas, after all this time, were seriously looking into setting her up in the bedroom across from theirs. She maintained her stance on taking the couch, and she picked up after herself every morning, but it still just felt like she deserved more than this.

From everything Lucas had relayed to her at night, not out of any need to gossip but really just a need to let out, to share, Robbie wasn't doing much better. When they'd show up at school, he'd do his best to look as though he was alright, but then once they'd actually be sitting in class, and people would be meant to pay attention to the professor and not one another… Lucas would look at his friend and just see despair. Whatever had happened between him and Ramona, whatever had gone and splintered the crack in their relationship rather than mend it, he couldn't help but sympathize to some degree, because it was just in him to stop and think about how he'd feel if this were him and Maya.

If it wasn't bad enough that his marriage was falling apart, he was also dealing with the mess brought on by his father's secret family and his sick little half-brother. And because Ramona was who she was, it would still be in her to worry for him, to want to know that he would be alright. She didn't hate him, but she didn't know if she loved him anymore. That part she had confessed on the ride home from school about a week ago. For all that though, she didn't feel like it was right for her to try and be there for him, didn't want to send mixed signals. So she would feed Lucas whatever information she could, so he could then go and try and to be there for Robbie in her place, in some way.

"My mother wants me to move back home," Ramona told Maya, as they sat and ate their way through the cookie plate. "Going on all about how she never liked Robbie… After my sister died, she became so much more protective of me, and I get it, I do. But I can't go back there."

"No," Maya agreed.

"I can't afford an apartment on my own though, and neither could Robbie. He came to talk to me today, said he'd have to give up our old place. He's moving in with Simon, up in Houston, but he wanted me to have the place, if I could find a roommate or something."

"Would you stay there? If you could afford it?" Maya asked her.

"I… Maybe. Without Robbie there though, I don't know. It was just… It was a good neighborhood, we had all our places, and the people, too."

"If it matters that much to you…"

"Who's going to want to be roommates with the sad girl about to… about to get divorced," she struggled to get the word out, and once she'd said it she had to bite into that last cookie or just break down. Maya scooted over, put her arm around Ramona's shoulders.

"Might not be a bad thing to have some alone time then," she pointed out, and she could practically hear the issue come up again. She couldn't afford the rent and the bills on her own. The solution presented itself with relative ease, and realizing it actually was a possibility left Maya even more determined to make it so. "What if I cover the other half?" Ramona sat up.

"What do you mean?"

"I'll be your roommate, not physically but financially, until you're in a place where you're okay to bring someone else in to live with you and take up that other half."

"You…" Ramona blinked, but immediately got to shaking her head. "No, I can't ask you to do that, I…"

"You're not asking, I'm offering," Maya pointed out. "Look, I've got the means to spare it, thanks to the songs I've done for the label. I would never have gotten to this point in my life if not for someone else taking a chance on us, helping to pay for our house out here. I would not have this ability, now, to help a friend, and the fact that I do… Please, let me pay it forward?" Ramona looked at her for a moment, and then she nodded, reaching out again to hug her non-roomie roomie. As they pulled back, Ramona had tears on her face, but she was also smiling.

"I'm, uh… I'll go and see what I can do, for dinner."

"Are there more cookies?" Maya had to know, and Ramona laughed, wiping at her face.

"There are. I can make more."

Maya watched her make her way back up the stairs, a new warmth blooming in her heart. When she'd gotten that first cheque, she could have decided to splurge and treat herself to something sort of extravagant, but she couldn't make herself do it. That had not been an impulse in her, never really. If anything, she was much more aware of the need to be wise in her expenses… to make it count… Helping Ramona felt like she was doing exactly that.

Picking her guitar back up, Maya settled back into the couch once more. She was overtaken with the mixed feelings of sadness for her friends, and new joy for this move forward… All of this, mixed with the comfort of Ramona's treats, courtesy of her grandfather, felt like an image in her mind's eye. The more she brought that image into focus, it got to feel like it was translating, reshaping itself, into words, into music… She took a deep breath, resettled again, as she let her fingers play over the strings. The melody felt like everything that was in her heart and her mind in that moment, and she let it go where it needed to go, let it grow into something that felt more and more like a song, one that would only ever fit her own voice, and the voices of TXNY.

TO BE CONTINUED


See you tomorrow! - mooners