5Maura had gotten used to the grim crown.
The personalization of Death was, after all, one of the naturally oldest tendencies of humanity.
But she would be lying if she said that it didn't bother her every now and then. Not that she begrudged any society its psychological coping mechanisms.
No, she had seen far too much utter heart shattering grief in the shell-shocked glazed eyes of strangers standing so forlorn over her stainless steel tables as they struggled to understand how the vibrant beloved one they had just been talking to or laughing with was now the unmoving cold thing before them with its own numbered tag.
It would be cruel to deny them whatever they needed to try and make some sense out of something so intrinsically senseless.
She understood it herself, honestly.
Loneliness was bitter enough in life. The thought of going into the void alone was . . . too much.
Maura shifted uncomfortably in her office chair.
There were usually two generalized personalization breakdowns of Death. There was the one whose duty was to take life: the harvester, the reaper, the destroyer. And then there was the one whose duty was to be a keeper and to provide care or guardianship of some form for the newly dead: the psychopomp.
The first, depending of course on the culture, could be anything from a main divine being to a wandering supernatural creature, benevolent and beautiful to monstrous and ugly. The second was less emotionally imbued, and its role usually always fell into the realm of the lesser deities or their servants.
Either could be male or female, beloved or feared.
But all held dominion in some manner over the dead until they passed into other more permanent holdings and into the final possession of other more powerful beings.
Maura smiled wryly.
If anyone asked, she could even give the names and characterizations typically employed in their defining archetypes or in their subsequent renditions throughout time for every society on the planet. Given her chosen profession, it had made perfect sense to explore the varying concepts in minute detail and, truthfully, it had completely fascinated her how each civilization, culture, society and religion had viewed Death's personification. She found it gave her an interesting look into the psychology of the people who created them.
Until that is, of course, the day she realized she had become one of those personifications herself.
She supposed she should be flattered in a way.
How often does one become a modern developing mythos, complete with accompanying urban legends and social superstitions?
It wasn't as if rationality had ever truly played a part in the subject of death. It couldn't really. Death was simply far too immense, too frighteningly intimate and emotionally triggering to be anything less than responded to. And the heart always overruled even the best trained mind when death touched your own small world.
There had been a time when she hadn't believed that.
Then she had stared down at her own infancy grave stone.
And looked into Frost's empty eyes that night.
Maura still remembered the first time she'd seen her name beside her new societal transfiguration in a press article. To her embarrassment, she still couldn't remember what the piece had actually been covering because all she had focused on was the sudden stilling chill that had stolen over her as she realized someone had begun a creation myth of Death for her.
That she had suddenly stopped being merely a woman who had an unpleasant but highly necessary job to something more primal and visceral.
All her research into death's mythologies hadn't prepared her for it happening to her and as it spread throughout the media, society circles, government, law enforcement and the general public of Massachusetts, she found she wondered intellectually what it said about them psychologically that they chose an elegantly dressed hazel eyed woman in Jimmy Choo heels with French perfume as their personification of Death.
It had upset her deeply, at first she thought it was because it reminded her all too well of the nasty mocking names she'd been given throughout the years by cruel classmates or jealous colleagues. But then she realized that it had actually done far more than that, gone farther into her psyche than taunts and vicious social hierarchy games could. That it had pierced into her core self construct and did something far worse.
It had triggered one of her greatest fears.
Because it didn't matter how civilized a society became or how advanced their scientific understanding of the universe was, at their very core they were still the primal superstitious beings they had always been.
And being 'Queen of the Dead' brought with her to every function, every meeting, every press conference, and every recognized look on the street an undertone of disquiet primal unease. Like the ever present scent of human decay that followed her even with all of her carefully chosen and frequently reapplied fine perfumes. She saw it in the sudden passage of a shadow in their eyes, that momentary hesitation before slightly stiff smiles, the rushed handshakes, and the subtle shift of body postures away from her.
Even in the modern age, death was something no one wanted to be reminded of and no amount of rationalization or intellectual understanding could completely take away their souls' instinctive animal flinch when the 'Queen of the Dead' walked in. Or turned her cool naturally assessing gaze their way.
It had seemed all too horrifyingly clear to her that it was creating the final separation between her and the living. A cultural stigma of some sort or another far beyond just her normal social relational incompatibilities or failed communication skills, one that would now isolate her perhaps entirely, even when surrounded by people.
To find herself permanently alone had always been her greatest dread and terror.
Born from a lifetime of hated neglect and forced loneliness.
And as she became more and more her mythos in the minds of others, there had been nothing she could do to change it. She had a brilliant mind that could do almost everything she asked of it. Except interact successfully with the living.
Maura's lips turned rueful.
Fortunately, there had been someone who could.
Jane.
Apparently, the woman really was irrepressible. Even in the face of the 'Queen of the Dead'.
She still remembered that day.
Maura's experience with teasing had always been negative before Jane. And it had taken a while for her to let herself accept the truth that the other woman genuinely liked to fondly play with her, rather than mock her like so many did. So when one day Jane had suddenly winked impishly at her and swept a melodramatic bow at 'her majesty' as she asked her in the most atrocious British accent 'to tea' with her at The Dirty Robber, the bit of outrageous pure silliness had actually caught her off-kilter and Maura at last hesitantly and almost shyly blushingly laughed a 'yes'.
Which was apparently the exact innocent response to promptly endear her to the precinct.
Jane had in that moment managed to make her human again, at least to some eyes.
Including her own.
And her entire social world had changed. Just like that. Because of a certain Rizzoli's perchance to run merrily where the proverbial angels feared to tread.
Maura found that the fear soon settled itself quietly back down in her heart and slept.
Because she had realized then that day that even if her changed status had indeed isolated her more in some ways, it still hadn't managed to leave her alone. There were others about her as steeped in death, too, as she. Her rotating doctors, her morgue's lab techs, the delivering EMTs, the police force.
And they didn't see her now as anything but Maura.
For some reason the change made her Boston personification of Death seem . . . more honored now.
Even made her a little dryly . . . proud of it sometimes.
True, Maura knew she'd be lying if she said it didn't bother her still sometimes, though. The epidermal layer only actually thickened with physical friction, genetic malfunction or disease.
But she had to admit; she had grown used to her grim crown and those times of psychological or social interaction . . . unpleasantness because it was hers to bear were coming fewer and farther between now.
And never were around Jane.
Not that it was surprising really.
Because how could even a Death mythos remain completely dark when spoken of in teasing raspy tones?