One single thread of Gold

Chapter 18 [Then]

Then, Seattle 2016

"Remember when we couldn't take the heat? I walked out, I said 'I'm setting you free', But the monsters turned out to be just trees, when the sun came up you were looking at me. You were looking at me, oh you were looking at me. I remember, oh I remember"

The blaring klaxon had jolted Maya from her light slumber, but truth be told, she had been awake long before. Maya sighed as she heard the dispatch request the ladder and the engine, knowing neither of those called for her because she was stuck on desk duty at 3 am in the night.

The weight of the past few days had been overwhelming, with a whirlwind of emotions and thoughts swirling through her mind. Officially becoming a firefighter, even though she was still considered a probie, combined with the bittersweet feeling about being assigned to Station 19, Andy's dad's station.

Maya wasn't oblivious; she was well aware that it was her friendship with Andy that had gotten her assigned here, that Captain Herrera had handpicked her because of what she could bring to the team, but more importantly because of what Maya had come to mean to Andy.

It was an odd feeling; in some weird sense, it made Maya feel wanted and not enough at the same time. Don't get her wrong, she was happy to be at 19, to be a part of the family that Captain Herrera was building, but there was an even bigger part of her that doubted if she deserved her place there.

But doubt was for losers.

The annoying voice at the back of her mind was one that was all too familiar to Maya. Lane Bishop. No matter the distance Maya seemed to put between the two of them, it was like her father's words never left her. Ironically, it was his voice that constantly planted seeds of doubt in her mind.

But this was what her father would've called reassurance. He would tell her that there was no space in her life to be weak, that doubt was weakness, and that Maya needed to be stronger, to know she was better than everyone around her. Better because she was free from distractions and had her eyes on the prize, better because she didn't give in to feelings, better because she was heartless, for there was no place for her heart when it came to competing. Her heart would only hold her back.

She'd learned to shut it out, to shut her feelings out, to build up walls so high that she'd forgotten what life had been like without them. Being guarded had become her normal, and trusting people seemed like an alien concept, it seemed like a scam, because Maya had been taught to trample over people to reach her goals, and she had no doubt they would do the same to her.

She was wrong. So so wrong.

Like most things in her life, there was the Maya before, who accepted her father's words without a shadow of a question on her lips, who was heartless, ruthless, and cold. And then there was the Maya after—the Maya after the one person who knew her like the back of her hand. The one person who'd torn down every single wall Maya had ever built and crushed it into ruins, leaving nothing but rubble. Carina.

It had been a while since those three words had sat on the tip of Maya's tongue, begging to be voiced. She'd almost said them a couple of times, her feelings far too great to remain bottled up; she knew that. It wasn't the fear of Carina's rejection that stopped her, she had known that Carina felt the same without the need for those words to ever have been spoken. She could see it in Carina's eyes, in the way she looked at Maya, the way she spoke to her, in her actions.

Instead, Maya's fear stemmed from the belief that she might be too damaged to give Carina the stability she needed. She felt like taking this step in their relationship would make it harder for Carina the next time Maya unintentionally hurt her, and Maya knew she would. No matter how hard she had promised herself never to hurt Carina again, she couldn't deny that she was broken and might inadvertently end up doing it anyway.