Tired as she was, it took quite a long time for the movement beneath her arm and against her body to interrupt Maura's dream, and still longer for her to fight her way back to the surface of consciousness and understand why she felt chilled and alone. More than alone, in fact. She had often been solitary, the happy and contented version of aloneness, but just now she felt its opposite, lonely.
She was not at home, and knew it even before she opened her eyes.
However, her surroundings were almost as familiar as those for which Maura actually did pay a portion of her income. She inhaled; the scent of whiskey almost entirely obscured the once-familiar smell of lavender in the sheets, but the sounds of Jane's neighborhood were the same. She could identify the time of day by those sounds, the day of the week.
She lay on her side, one hand still stretched out as if she could catch hold of the hem of Jane's shirt and tug her back to bed. It was too late; her lanky bed warmer, whom she had come here to guard and help, was already gone. Sleepy eyes opened with quick fluttering. She stood and headed for the bathroom, hoping to use it for one of its intended purposes, but was stopped at the doorway by the sound of the shower.
There were limits to even the strongest friendships, and theirs had been a little shaky lately. Then again, there were also limits to what the human bladder could accomplish, and hers was nearly at the end. She won't even notice, thought Maura desperately, and stole inside. She was right: thanks to an opaque curtain and an already open door, Jane was never even aware of her presence, not even when she'd flushed and washed her hands. She left, breathing a sigh of relief, unsure as to which of them would have been more embarrassed if that had gone differently.
Just then the water shut off, and Maura froze, leaning against the linen cabinet door. She couldn't return to the bedroom without Jane seeing her, nor even to the living room. She was stuck. Thinking quickly, however, she quickly opened the linen cabinet and perused the towel selection as her breathing calmed. Once she heard Jane's towel rustling stop, she reasoned, she could take the chance that her friend would be covered at least minimally.
Instead, she heard Jane pause, rustle more, then pause again. She would be reading the mirror now. Maura leaned just enough to let her see Jane's reaction to those big, black letters which left no uncertainty at all: LOVED.
The caramel-haired woman watched as her darker friend stared at the words, dumbfounded, and then tried to argue with them.
"No," Jane whispered as she backed into the wall behind her, one hand holding onto her towel, the other running across her face. "No, she's wrong. She's so wrong," she mumbled to herself as she slid down the wall, pulling her knees against her chest and pulling her reflection from the word on the mirror.
She watched as her friend began to sob. It was clear there was no stopping the tears this time, and there was no bottle close enough by for Jane to drown her sorrow and self-pity in. She looked so tired, so scared and lost.
As if Jane could hear Maura's own thoughts about her, she mumbled aloud into the quiet, "Alone and unloved," letting her forehead fall against her knees.
"No, you're not."
Maura hurried to the shivering woman's side, rapidly and gracefully sinking to kneel on the floor beside her friend to enfold her in strong arms. She kissed the side of Jane's mussed, damp head as her nightgown fluttered to stillness around her. "I know you feel that way, though. Sweetheart, I'm so sorry. I tried, we all tried, to be okay for you. We thought you'd need to see us being normal, being happy, so you'd know that you wouldn't have to be sorry for hurting us. But we were wrong, weren't we?"
One arm remained around the lanky woman's hunched body, but the other delicate hand drew back her hair, combed it away from flushed face and sweat-dampened neck. "We should have let you know we were hurt, so you didn't feel like you were alone in it. I'm sorry, Jane. You're not alone, and you're not unloved. You have no idea—" She broke off, with the excuse of giving one more good full-body squeeze. "You're just not."
Jane sobbed into Maura's chest, cried directly to the heart of her, laid all her guilt and self-loathing out for Maura to see. Tommy's past drinking and legal problems, Frankie's life as a cop and subsequent injury, her parents' divorce – she seemed to feel personally responsible for every decision made, whether by one of them or by others, that had hurt any of them. Maura held onto her, stroked her hair, hummed tunelessly, and tried to make her see that she was not omnipotent, not in control of other people, and wouldn't want to be. Jane seemed to hear none of it. She just went on confessing to a litany of sins, most of them imagined, and declaring herself unworthy of absolution.
When she wound to a close, her dark eyes looked sunken, as if hiding from judgment even while demanding the harshest penance possible. "It's not fair to you," she said, fingers clinging to Maura's nightgown. "You deserve so much better, and I'm holding you back, which is crazy, because we're not… I mean…" Her curly head shook. "You deserve a better friend than me. God," her head hit the wall with a thud, "I'm such a fucking failure. That's what was up there," she pointed at the mirror. "You should have left it, and you should have gone back last night. You should have left the truth up there, and you should have just left me. I'm toxic."
Maura shook her head no as she listened to the self-loathing coming from the other woman, finally understanding, soul-deep, what it meant to be heartbroken. Jane must be feeling it right now; she knew she herself was. "No, Sweetheart, that's not you." There was more she said, a lot of things, but it all boiled down to the fact that she wanted Jane to stop blaming herself for other people's actions. She sat back on her heels, scooting around to get in Jane's direct line of sight.
Then she, too, began her apologies. Softly, tenderly, she admitted that she had been hurt, and had hidden her pain from her dearest, closest friend. "Are you listening, so far? You don't have to agree, but are you at least listening? Be here with me right now, Jane. I need you to be present." Jane answered with a slow, small nod.
Maura leaned closer, pulling Jane's damp head in for a kiss to the temple, then sat back and offered both hands. "You've hurt me. Do you know how you hurt me? You did it by hurting yourself. You didn't have many other viable options, but you did shoot through yourself in order to let the EMTs get to your brother, and the fact that your life was endangered hurt me. I've tried to be okay, at least when you're around, so you wouldn't see that. It was wrong of me. I should have been honest with you. My therapist will be glad to know that I see that, now." The surprise at finding that medical examiner was also in counseling showed briefly on Jane's face before it once again filled with guilt at forcing her best friend to have to seek such a thing.
She could see the other woman slipping from her, withdrawing. "Jane? Stay with me. I need you to be here with me. Please." Maura caught the scarred hands of her friend and pulled them gently out of their knot and towards herself. "You're hurting me now, too. I'm not going to hide it from you anymore when you do that. Hiding it has only been contributing to your state of numbness, and I'm not going to help you be numb anymore. I'm not going to stock your beer in my fridge, and I'm not going to ask you out for drinks. I'm your friend and I love you, so I'm not going to contribute to your ability to hurt yourself anymore because when you hurt yourself, that's what hurts me the most. I'm through sitting back and analyzing. I'm through just watching you batter yourself over things that were never in your control. From now on, I'm going to take an active role in your life – and you're going to let me, Jane. Do you know why?"
Wide eyed, Jane silently shook her head no.
"Because you didn't mention my name once in your journal, outside of one particular context." Maura licked her lips, took a deep breath, and plunged forward. "And that context was the fear of losing me. It's in almost everything you wrote in your journal, either fresh dreams or memories of previous ones when discussing almost any other subject. You dreamed I was dying, and you couldn't keep me alive. So I know, Jane, I know you love me, and I know you're afraid of losingme. Letting me be here with you, letting me help you, is how you're going to keep that from happening."
Silence filled the tiny room as Jane processed. During the time it took for her to calm down, Maura waited with baited breath to see if Jane would let her in, let her help. "I don't know if I can, Maura."
Maura got to her feet, not letting go of Jane's hands, and tugged. "You can," she murmured in absolute trust. "Now, come sit with me in the kitchen while I make you some breakfast, and we can talk somewhere besides this bathroom floor. Need a hand up?"