The first time Maura can remember feeling someone else's pain, she was five. Maura had been sitting quietly in her place during story time, enraptured by her teacher's voice even if Maura had already read this book. Pain flared in her knee and palms as though she had fallen down and skinned her knee. Maura had resisted crying out, staring at her hands.
The light that lived under Maura's skin swirled around her palms and knee. Flaring lightly. Maura had frowned. The light had never done that before. The pain faded nearly as soon as it had arrived, her lights settling peacefully once more. It had scared her.
By seven, Maura has grown accustomed to her person's bumps and bruises. The occasional flare of a stubbed toe or the collision of a shin with a table. It was fleeting and common enough to be boring. Mundane. Then they break their arm. Maura had cried in pain, clutching her left arm close to her body. Her mother had been alarmed enough to call the doctor. After x-rays and a very long discussion, the doctor confirmed what Maura had known all along. Maura had developed a glimmer bond that was manifesting itself through shared pain. Maura would not, could not, actually be wounded through the bond but she would feel their pain. There was no cure, no alternative. The doctor had put her arm in a sling, mostly as a placebo. Maura had spent days protecting her left side, trying not to whimper. But like the rest, in time, the ache faded.
At twelve, Maura knows that her counterpart is an athlete. An athlete with a particular penchant for full contact sports. Maura spends half of her teenage years feeling as though she was colliding with walls. The other half she spends feeling as though those walls were colliding with her. Maura dreads Saturdays with a fierce hatred.
In between icing injuries that Maura does not actually possess but she can feel, Maura wonders what sport they play and if they'll ever stop. She wonders about concussions and broken bones. Maura's fairly certain that feeling someone else's injuries drives her to the medical field. One day, Maura reasons, she will meet this person whose pain she feels and when she would know what to do for them. She'd start with wrapping them in bubble wrap.
If Maura thought high school was bad, college is worse. It takes Maura weeks, weeks to figure out where the pain even is. Her whole body is sore, tight, coiled tightly. Maura thinks it might be training for a marathon. Or an Ironman. Something equally demanding. She thinks that until her person takes up fighting as a personal hobby.
At least, Maura assumes it's a hobby as it happens like clockwork at 10 am every Tuesday and Thursday. Fists collide with her body, pelting her ribs, her arms, and on occasion her face. After one particularly strong punch to the jaw, Maura decides that when she meets her person she would have words for them. Strong, strong words. Maura was going to unleash every bit of wrath she can manage on this poor unsuspecting soul and then she was going to wrap them tightly in bubble wrap, lock them in a padded room and never permit them within arms length of anything sharp, blunt or moving again. Maura's not at all certain she wants to meet the masochistic soul who had spent the better part of the last two decades putting their bodies through hell.
Of course, Maura was assuming that they could feel her pain too and therein lay one of Maura's problems. As she has yet to meet her person, Maura can't actually confirm that this person knew what they were doing to Maura. There's no guarantee that glimmer bonds or their secondary traits formed equally between people. Maura could be alone in her bond. Or at least, she could have an unrequited bond. That, Maura realises, might be her biggest fear. That Maura could have this deep and, ultimately, uncontrollable bond with a person who felt nothing for Maura in return. It's a fear that Maura can neither prove nor dispel so Maura does what she does best. She puts it aside and focuses on her work.
Maura graduates with her medical degree early. She travels the world with Doctors Without Borders. She meets hundreds of people. She even forms glimmers with some of them. Maura convinces herself that Ian was her person. He had to be. Maura had never been so swept up, so in love. She and Ian were good together. He made her laugh, made her happy. He excited her in a way no one else had. And then he had sprained an ankle, kicking a soccer ball with some of the village kids. It isn't bad. It isn't even enough to force Ian to stay off his feet. But Maura sobs. Weeps. Because she hadn't felt a thing. He wasn't her person.
Maura knows, logically, that glimmer bonds could not dictate relationships. Maura knows that she could choose Ian. She and Ian shared a light bond. They were compatible, significant to each other. Even if they did not share Maura's secondary trait. Maura would be lying to say she had not considered it. Maybe she even would have chosen Ian. In the end, Ian chose for them. He chose to leave and it had broken Maura's heart.
Maura had run then. Run to America. Run to Boston. Maura had interned with a medical examiner in medical school. They'd worked the September 11th attack together, flying to New York to help with the crisis. He was retiring and he wanted Maura to take his position. Maura had been surprised. Doubly so when the Governor agreed but she accepted.
Maura is still finishing her state mandated training the night it happens. A young homicide detective is abducted by a serial killer that she and her team have been chasing. The entirety of the Boston Police Department is mobilised in the search. Dogs are called in. The current Chief Medical Examiner is called in to evaluate the scene along with the entire forensics team. Maura is left alone in the lab, not being authorised to be on scene yet.
Maura hates being left behind. Hates feeling useless. She does her best to make herself useful. She neatens, organises and restocks. She's just about to refill a jar of swabs when her glimmer flares.
White hot pain pierces Maura's palm. Maura can feel the blade cutting through her flesh and muscles. Maura screams in agony, dropping the swabs. She's barely caught her breath when she feels the second blade pierce her other palm. Maura drops the jar she's holding, the metal sound clanging through the empty room drowns out her second scream. Maura falls to her knees cradling her hands to her chest.
Maura's vision goes blurry and Maura wonders if she's about to lose consciousness. She wonders if it's even possible for her body to be physiologically affected by what was metaphysical pain. Maura doesn't know how long she lays there before she feels the hot edge of a knife against her left wrist, then her right. Maura whimpers, sinking lower to the ground until she's curled into a fetal position. She tries, fruitlessly, to protect her hands. There's a cut to her left cheek, then to her right. Then the knife presses to Maura's throat, tearing at the thin skin just over her jugular. It's not deep enough, Maura realises. It's a taunting cut. A promise of what was to come.
Maura rolls onto her back, struggles to gasp in breaths. Struggles to calm her heart. For the first time in Maura's life, she wonders if she really will meet the person whose pain she's feeling. Because this? This was what dying felt like. Maura is certain of it. She sobs as she waits for the next press of that knife. Waits to feel it knick that tiny thrumming vein in her neck. Waits to feel the blood drain from not-her-neck. Waits for the pain to disappear because surely glimmer bonds did not transcend death. The pain would end when their brain stopped. When there was nothing left to be transmitted.
But the knife doesn't come. The pain doesn't stop. Her mentor finds her curled in on herself later that night. He's baffled at Maura's state until Maura explains her glimmer. She tells him what she had experienced. The man had looked at her with sympathy and concern on his face before he told her what the detective had experienced. Then he tells Maura the one thing that no one before him had been able to. He gives Maura the name of her light bond. The person whose pain she's been feeling for nearly three decades. Detective Jane Rizzoli.