Disclaimer I own very little, especially not CSI NY. Wish I did though.
Notes This is a oneshot, very short. It's a bit of an experiment, I've never tried writing in the 2nd person before, but after reading a couple of stories that used it I thought I'd like to. And this is not about either of my two favourite characters! So it's partly to prove I can write another character. Hopefully anyway. Please let me know what you think.
Thank you to Marialisa for her thoughts on this before I posted it
Sometime After
You stand, never still, amongst those who are forever out of the dance of life. You care for them, and for some you are the only one who ever has and ever will. Silent story tellers, tale-bearers, died dreams to anyone who will listen. You listen and keep their company.
Deep below in the heat and heart of your city, their city, no one's city. The deeps of the rock and strata and human geology. Surrounded by the heat, cold, burning, you live below with those who cannot live above. Listening.
And all you hear you bear to the others, becoming their voices. You listen always and sometimes your own voice is lost. It rolls amongst the steel chill brushed metal of the room. They hear it sometime after in the muteness of their own thoughts.
Red liquid iron and formaldehyde smell. You carry it with you. It dries to your skin. Reminds you of who you are, and who you will be.
The stories, the knowledge, the life; it comes in a torrent, bursting forth from you, eager to share the bright eyed wonder of knowing. And you know that really you know nothing at all, and that there is never enough time. The paths of your knowledge bend and wind. City grids above the skin, a labyrinth cavity below the flesh. And in the innermost you unlock the Chinese boxes of your company.
You smile as they slide through the doors, the quick and the dead. Always a smile even in the tragedy of lives lost with too little time behind. The smile is for them, not for Death. Pale light gleams behind glass. Animated. And the trust of those you keep hands life to you. Your hands are for death and more. Exploring, unravelling, explaining. But your voice is for life and its love. Never still.
They ask you always. You tell them what you have, even if it is sometimes not received. Always free, no cost to them. They smile and they leave as you talk and your atoms shift and drift like dandelion clocks.
You catch a feather one day, blown into the draughts, breezing through the iodine air. Lands on your outstretched hand where you let it rest on skin. Cold skin with the faintest sheen of oil, rough cells that anchor it. Delight in the twisted sheets, structures and strands of its beauty. The doors swing open and it sails away. But you smile at the man who has come to ask for what you have, and see the feather on his shirt. He brushes it off, doors swing, your goodbye said too late.
And somehow you never leave, not even when you do. Sunk into the stones now a part of the always and ever after. Steel has touched you. Doors closed. But you hear, with a soft breath, the doors open again. You see her enter, stop, falter, stand still. You hear what she says and you smile. Thanks that you never needed. She hesitates, then picks up the glasses you left. Takes them with her, leaves the story of her grief with you. And a goodbye that in the end is not too late.
Please let me know what you think, even if you didn't like it. Thank you. Lily x