She nods, grabs the pass, and says "Okay."

She argued with her wife a lot about this when they were still married. Maddie called her a martyrdom enthusiast. She didn't really have the words to explain at the time, but that never sat right. She wasn't out to get hurt. A decade and change in jail gets you to run into one or two people who are actually chasing that moral high of absolute self-destruction, though, and she went and refined exactly what she thought about this real quick. Not that it'd saved things with Maddie at all, that was long gone, but she was the sort of person that hated to leave something half done.

And that's part of this, sure. There's a story that won't be done properly if she doesn't take the job. She can do it. So she will. But there's an arrogance there, that she'd try to cut down if it didn't have years of honing, refinement, and reinforcement with lived experience: she can take more than most. It used to be a lot more flowery, the way she thought of it, something about grit and determination, but no, it's just that she can take whatever's dished out.

So combine that with wanting to finish what's left undone, and the genuine observation that nine times out of ten, if she doesn't do the thing that she's good at, it won't get done? And she's doing stuff like this.

A careful hand on the shoulder, meant to be earnest and reassuring, maybe coming off a bit awkward. "Good luck. Hope Sarah turns out okay." And she heads out. Didn't even cross her mind to talk about the actual pay. Maddie'd argued about that too, and to be frank, on that one she had a point. No head for money here, too many morals.