"You're my daughter, darling. Of course I love you," Constance says, and Maura wishes she could believe her. She lets herself be held anyway, understanding that Constance is trying. That Constance believes she loves Maura.
+++
"I loved you before you were born, and I'll love you long after I'm dead. I only regret that I didn't have as much time with you as I could have." Hope's eyes fill with easy tears, and Maura nods. Knowing how it must have felt for Cailin to live up to a dead baby, because that's what she's trying to do. She lets Hope hold her, rock her like the baby Hope sees when she looks at her. The one she still mourns.
+++
"I'm sorry I'm calling and I'm sorry about the way I was, last time you saw me," Frank Rizzoli says, and Maura knows how hard it must be for him to apologise. "I know I can't make it up to you, and I really do appreciate you taking care of them all the way you did when I..." And he's gone, and Maura stares at her phone.
+++
Maura visits Paddy in jail, now and then. Sometimes with Jane, sometime without. He's never said it, but Maura knows. She remembers the sepia photos of her school days, knows Constance fed him information, even knowing who and what he was. Maura has always wanted to be loved, and Paddy has always loved her. From afar. It's awkward up close, especially since he knows so much about her and she knows so little about him.
"Thanks for coming," he says, his voice low like he doesn't want to scare her. He fiddles with rings that aren't there, and Maura clenches her own fingers, aware she is mirroring him. She reaches out a hand across the table, the guard watching carefully for any transfer, and she covers his hand with hers. Jane's smile is soft and sweet, her hand on Maura's lower back on their way out to show support.
+++
"Maura, you're brilliant and I love you, but you are so wrong." Cailin pulls up an article - one Maura hasn't seen. One that adds ambiguity to a previously straightforward scientific statement. Maura reads it, her brow creased.
"I love you too, but the parameters of this experiment are not holistic enough to give a definitive conclusion," Maura informs Cailin. "The sample size is insufficient, and it hasn't been peer reviewed."
"Yeah, but it's possible," Cailin goads, and Maura concedes with a nod. Jane watches with wide, pleased eyes.
+++
"Would you like to come to a lecture with me?" Arthur asks, and Maura agrees. Knowing that Arthur is a simple yet complex man, and that his love for her, however misguided, is firm and steadfast.
+++
Maura brings LC to the aged care facility, and today Paddy Senior smiles at her, then Jane, before smiling at LC.
+++
"I couldn't love you more if you were my own," Angela says, and Maura is already adopted, a single child with a dead half brother and a living half sister after nearly four decades. She does not need another mother, but sometimes she does need mothering so she lets Angela's embrace enfold her.
+++
Jane wakes from nightmares; she texts. Sometimes Maura goes to her, sometimes she comes to Maura. They huddle together in the same bed like all the sleepovers Maura always wanted and never had.
"Thanks," Jane says quietly. She cradles Maura's head on her chest, and Maura can't imagine being closer to any other single living thing in her life. Jane's heartbeat, so familiar and steady. Jane's breath brushing through her hair. Jane's fingers rubbing at any tension she finds in Maura's shoulders and back.
There are people who say they love Maura, and people that don't. There are people Maura doubts, because sometimes she doesn't feel she deserves to be loved.
But here and now, with Jane, she has no doubts. Nothing but Jane's heartbeat bared to her, the soft Jane that only Maura gets, treasures and hoards.
"I love you," Jane whispers, hours later, assuming Maura is asleep. Maura chuckles, and Jane's heartbeat spikes, beating crazily beneath Maura's ear.
"I know. I love you too," Maura says, nuzzling closer into her favourite pillow of Jane's chest. Jane's heartbeat slows and steadies, and Maura has found the one love she's never doubted, has never had to doubt.
Anything else can wait until morning. Because now she's lying in the arms of the woman she loves, the woman that loves her. And Maura knows she deserves to be loved by Jane, and she never, ever doubts that she is.