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A Many Splendored Thing pt.3

"I know it's not fucking easy, I know it hurts. You're sitting there over thinking, a million and one questions running through your head. Unable to sleep, creating different scenarios in your mind, while making a mental list of regrets but you can't keep blaming yourself for someone else's inability to provide the type of love you deserve. Tonight is just like any other night, difficult as hell but you'll do what you've always done. You'll get over it, you'll get through it. You'll be fine."

R.H.Sin

***

Maya woke up in the chair in her office, she stretched out before reaching down and opening the bottom drawer. She pulled out a brush, deodorant, and a fresh, floral blouse. Maya quickly freshened up. There was a knock on the door. Maya stuffed the deodorant and brush back into the drawer, "enter."

Nick strode in, shutting the door behind him, "Did you spend the night here?"

"What gives you that impression?" Maya asks.

"1. You're wearing the extra shirt you keep in your drawer and 2. You got some drool on your face," he says, walking toward her desk.

Maya rubbed at her face and answered in annoyance, "Did you need something?"

"Bishop cracked the code on those commincation chatter we couldn't figure out of Chen's communication platform, binary code," he says, "also, Bishop went rogue again. Went to go take down Chen on her own." Maya said nothing, but she was sort of grateful that someone was doing something. Someone was getting justice. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, why do you ask?" Maya says, playing dumb.

"You lost a friend," Nick says, "that hurts. I know it does, but you should talk about it. Even if it's not with me, you should talk about it."

"Why do people keep telling me what I need?" Maya sighs, "I don't want to talk about it and that's my choice." She raised her voice by the end of her sentence. She was upset and angry, but not at him. She knew she shouldn't be taking it out on him but she couldn't help herself.

"Forget it then, do whatever you want, " he said on a shrug before walking out without another word.

Maya groaned and leaned back in her seat, running a hand through her knotty hair. "Shit." McGee shot her a text about fifteen minutes later that said that Bishop had given Chen a Sophie's Choice and he had taken the out. Maya wasn't sure why she didn't feel relieved that the man responsible for her friend's death was dead. Her mind went to Shanghai during her three years of military service, before she was honorably discharged. She crossed paths with Turner when Maya was on an espionage op and  Turner was stationed there. Maya was was looking for information on a drug dealer that was not only transporting drugs into the U.S. but was taking underage girls from the U.S. and bringing them to Shanghai to be prostituted. Maya wasn't called into the mix to make contact, just to gain information, but she really wanted to do was take them down. However, it didn't turn out that way for her. One night, Maya found herself in the bar attached to the hotel she was staying in. She was one of only a few Americans in the town which she should have known was a red flag. She should have been staying in a more touristy part of the country, but it was the closest place to where she was going to do her surveillance. She remember watching Commander Turner walk into the bar, but she was in casual clothes and the only American in the bar that night.