Tuesday
Maura sighed, hands itching to take over. This was her third small town in two days, and the ME's hadn't impressed her so far. The bodies they'd found were very deteriorated, and the measures taken to preserve them for further analysis didn't seem sufficient. The fingerprinting methods were lackluster in New Hampshire, and hadn't yielded any results. Maura worried about the DNA as well, although now Canada was on board the search would go faster as both sides of the border searched their own databases. Going by his pattern of behaviour, most of them were likely to be Canadian.
But worse than that was the nagging intensity of the way she missed Jane. She missed her little asides and jokes, the way she could lighten a somber mood with a smile. She missed Jane's body wrapped around hers, their quiet evening routine, the coffee Jane brought her. She got a text from Jane saying she and Frost would head home on Wednesday, and Maura didn't reply. The things she thought she'd needed were easily replaced - all of them except Jane. It was too soon to put a label on it, and Maura had never really felt like anyone had ever truly liked her. Her needs had been taken care of, and then some, but Jane was an endless well of understanding and affection. And Maura loved her parents the same way they loved her - casually, out of hand, but she was also aware of a debt of gratitude. But Jane - the way she felt about Jane even after days without her - Jane she loved in a way that had no gratitude, no payment plan, no dues. She loved who she was with her. It surprised her that she was capable of love, that she was capable of friendship or whatever this was. She knew she'd let Jane down eventually, that Jane had built her up into someone she wasn't. That Jane thought she was better than she was, that Jane thought Maura was capable of being a friend. And Maura wasn't. Time after time it had been proven that there was nothing about Maura that anyone valued. Her parents were obliged to associate with her, and anyone without an obligation like that usually abandoned her, much as her biological parents had. They got sick of having to translate for her, of having to reach out to someone constantly emotionally unavailable.
There were things that Maura liked about herself, but they never seemed to be things other people appreciated. But Jane lived on the same kind of schedule, did the same kind of work, didn't turn away from dead bodies. She knew Jane respected that, admired her passion and drive for finding the clues a murderer left on a body, for finding retribution for the lives cut short. Jane had the same values and drive, the same passion in life for righting wrongs. And she looked so good doing it, drawing her hair into a ponytail when she was serious. Jane had been so damaged but it didn't let it stop her, and Maura had - what - a little trauma from being adopted? A few personality quirks from never quite feeling wanted? In anyone else Maura would see it as a legitimate case of cause and effect, but for herself it still seemed petty and small. Babies were thrown in dumpsters - less so now that there were safe haven laws. She'd had to dissect them before, not knowing if that had been how she was found, if she'd been abandoned. She'd been born more than twenty years before the laws had come into effect, had she been left somewhere to be found, had her mother died in childbirth without naming a father and the hospital just wanted to get rid of her? Or worse, had her birth parents seen her and decided that she wasn't worth keeping? Had they known somehow that she wasn't good enough? Had they even bothered to name her, or had they not expected her to live through the day?
If Jane was damaged, then so was Maura, and she couldn't see anyone being able to love her the way she was.
But Jane had agreed to room with Maura, Jane was the one reaching for her, Jane had leaned in at the airport and kissed Maura so softly that it couldn't be - it couldn't be a friendly kiss, the type of kiss Jane would reserve for friends and family. It had been inviting and soulful and Maura hadn't had to ask for it, Jane had given it freely. Jane had no obligation, yet she said she enjoyed spending time with Maura. Maura sighed and turned back to the autopsy, giving the small body the respect it deserved, driving Jane from her mind.