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In some ways, their relationship is like a homing missile. No use dodging or outrunning it; it will find you and catch you. Once it’s unleashed there is no escape and the flames will engulf you.
Not that being engulfed is a bad thing, necessarily. But it isn’t good either.
Some days, Maura meets a man or a woman and feels a little pang, a twinge, and her heart asks her what might happen with someone else. Sometimes she wonders about what things might be like with Tommy, if she might fit together with him a little better than she does with Jane.
And then there are the other times. When she sees the scars on Jane’s hand and tries in vain not to picture what it was like for her with Hoyt. When Jane gets shot and Maura’s mind is screaming- no! Don’t leave me!- as Jane bleeds out on the floor and she tries some doctor magic that she isn’t all that sure will do any good. When Jane gets out of the hospital and she tries to get her to rest, to take her medicine, to just respect her body. You almost died, Jane! I shouldn’t have to be your nurse, you should realize that your ego isn’t always the most important thing! And when Jane asks why Maura cares and all Maura can say is, Why do I care? Because you almost died! Did it ever occur to you what would happen to me if I lost you?
And on those days, those twinges and pangs vanish, because all there is to Maura’s world is Jane and it would come unraveled without her. She doesn’t want simple or easy, she wants the one person who keeps her whole.
The twinge always returns with time, but it’s quelled every time she goes through one of those days.
And then there are the nights where it all just hurts too much, where she doesn’t know what to do because it’s all pain and fear and tears and there’s no reprieve in sight. When her nightmares are haunted by the visions of that day in the morgue, Bass crawling near her feet as her heart hammered and she wondered if the world was about to lose Jane Rizzoli, because at any moment that gun could go, bang bang bang.
Or when Jane has nightmares she won’t tell Maura about, ones that leave her sobbing in her sleep and barely able to hold it in when she wakes. And Jane always says, it’s nothing, or not now, or I’m fine, even though they’re all lies. It’s not nothing, she’s not fine, and if she says not now, she means not ever.
And Maura watches those tears and feels like her soul is being ripped apart. Because it’s Jane, and she’s hurting, she always is, and that hurts her too, and I hate it when you cry…. Please let me help, or let someone else…
And her voice always wavers and they both gaze at each other, scared and weary and in pain. And they both start to wonder again, about how things could be easier or healthier or cleaner or happier. Maybe Maura could get a nice nine-to-five desk job in Miami, or Jane could become a softball coach. But I love Jane because she’s Jane and being a detective is part of that. And so is the hurt.
Maura can’t help it, really. She’s tired of that homing missile finding her but at the same time, there’s no other place she could be but caught in that explosion. It hurts, she doesn’t want to be there, but she has to be.
She’s never going to escape the blast, really. And so, the next time it’s one of those nights, and Jane’s tears bore holes in her heart, and she once again thinks, I hate when you cry, she doesn’t think about the twinges and pangs. She just bites her lip and tries to help, tries to cope.
The explosion will always find her and she can’t leave Jane alone to deal with it. And maybe things will change for them, someday, so that Maura won’t want to escape it anymore.
For right now, all she knows is that she and Jane are trapped and there isn’t an easy fix.