Chapter Text
She sobbed in that shower until there were no tears left. ‘How had things gotten this bad,’ she wondered.
Theo was right about everything he said in the barn after their call at the maze. She was incredibly reckless the entire time: climbing the ferris wheel, running in the maze without backup, giving up her protective jacket. He said she had a death wish. That was this thing bothering her the most. The more she replayed that statement over and over again, the more she wonders when things changed. When was that shift in her behavior that she no longer cared what happened to her?
While she’s always known the dangers that being a firefighter could bring, she made sure that she was continuously at her best and taking the necessary precautions she could to be safe. She had promised Carina that she would always do everything in her power to come home after each and every shift. So how can she explain what happened on that last call? She’s lucky Carina didn’t hear Theo chew her out. How would she face her wife and tell her that she didn’t want to do this anymore? That she no longer wanted to live?
That was the conclusion that she came to in the shower. Thinking over her life, with a special focus on the past few months, she decided that this mess is too deep, too complex to find her way out of this time. Just thinking about how she could try to fix things- her job, friendships, marriage- is enough to send her into a panic. She’s never going to get her job back. That’s pretty much set in stone by now. She’s ruined all her friendships. They think she’s ruthless, untrustworthy, unstable. And the worst, and definitely most painful thing in her life right now is her marriage. She’s let down Carina so much. She knows that she’s been neglecting her duties as a wife. She’s just so full of anger and rage all the time that it’s getting harder to keep it in. Yes, some has started to leak out already, as exemplified by her yelling in Carina’s face the other week for even the mere suggestion that she needs a therapist. She knows it’s only going to get worse and then her worst fear will be true: she will have fully become her father. She doesn’t want Carina to be forced to deal with that. She loves her too much to force her to stay in a relationship that she knows is traveling on a thin line towards becoming abusive. And that is something she cannot bring a child into. Something she refuses to bring a child into. And that’s why she has to do something about it. Take herself out of the equation before anyone else gets even more hurt.
She gets out of the shower and moves in an almost robotic fashion as she gets dressed. Before she leaves, Maya takes a minute to pen a goodbye to the love of her life, and leaves it in her locker, along with her cell phone and keys- it’s not like she was going to need them anyways. She then heads down the stairs and leaves the station.
She’s not sure how long she walks for until she ends up at her destination. It’s a small bridge that passes over the highway. She’s been this way probably a thousand times on her runs through the park next to the bridge. Even though it’s near a highway, the road on the bridge itself is always relatively quiet, especially this late at night.
Maya makes her way over to the bridge and starts to climb over the reeling. She doesn’t pay attention to the tears streaming down her face or the shakiness of her hands. Instead the only thing she focuses on is the clouds. How nice it will be when she gets there, how it will be better for everyone in her life, how she’ll be finally from everything that she’s spent her life running from. She takes a deep breathe and centers herself as she prepares herself for what’s next. However before she can take her hands off the reeling and let go, she hears car tires shrieking and a loud crash from behind her.