Title: Snow Can Wait
Author: Stellaluna
Summary: Here still waiting, withering.

Spoilers: None

Rating: PG-13 for language
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Archive: Please ask.

Snow in New York, the whole city gone still as the flakes fall and gather. Six inches already at 11:00 p.m., and the forecaster on 1010 WINS is saying maybe a foot by morning. By the time noon rolls around, he knows, it'll be gray and slushy and the snowplows will have shoved it to the sides of the avenues in mounds higher than his head, impossible to navigate. Unless they get enough to shut the city down entirely, which is unlikely, everything will be back to normal in less than 24 hours. Everyone's morning commute will be just that much more of a bitch, the Daily News will make some sort of Nanook of the North or penguin joke in their front-page headline, and the beat cops will find a few homeless people frozen to death. That's all that will happen. The city never changes, not really, not where you can see it. On the molecular level, it's maybe a different story: there, it gets worse.

One side benefit to the snow: it's been a quiet night in the lab. He came up here to the roof perhaps an hour ago, expecting to get no more than a few minutes of solitude before the pager on his belt started going off. But it's continued silent as the tomb, silent as the city itself. And he wouldn't like this all the time, but for right now it's nice. He pulls up the collar of his coat and brushes a few flakes of snow off his head. He can't remember when he last wore a hat in the winter, but it had to have been sometime before his age crossed into double digits.

No matter how mixed his feelings are toward the city -- he thinks of them as mixed because, for all he tells himself he despises this place, he still hasn't left -- there's still something about the first hours of a snowfall which calls out to him. It's the silence, and the implication it carries with it of peace (even though he knows it's a lie), but it's more than that. There's something otherworldly about Manhattan in the snow, the streets transformed into alien vistas, as if he could leave this building and find himself someplace else. Third Avenue picked up and transplanted to some other state, or perhaps to some other century, like a story out of an old Twilight Zone episode.

As soon as he starts thinking along these lines, two things happen. First, he realizes how ridiculous he sounds, even to himself, how far removed from his education and professional knowledge. Second, he's inevitably reminded of what New York was like in other centuries: no more peaceful than it is now, no more of a utopia. Never mind Currier & Ives prints: he thinks of the city in the 19th century (for example), and he thinks of things like the Five Points Gangs and child prostitution, of stinking tenements and human waste rotting in the streets. Police corruption, race riots, poor living conditions: none of these are anything new.

Maybe this is too cynical of him; maybe he spends too much time staring at the city's underbelly to ever really look at it in the light. He believes in balance in all things, yet he finds it difficult to stop his thoughts once they start running along in this direction.

So he's not really surprised, this still being the real city, when there's a soft click behind him, the access door opening. He bites his lower lip, then turns, resigning himself to the inevitable.

"Stella," he says. "What's going on?"

She's leaning against the door, pulling on a pair of gloves. "Nothing," she says. "They've just got the radiator cranked up to tropical levels down there. It's like the fucking rainforest. I needed some air."

He can't help checking one more time. "No case? No call on the radio?"

"Not a damn thing. Except that Danny is using one of those rolling chairs to hallway surf, and it was driving me crazy."

He can't suppress a sigh. "I'll kick his ass for that if I catch him."

She smirks. "I told him. He said he'd take his chances." She stands a moment more, pushing her hands into the pockets of her coat in spite of the gloves, and then comes over to join him at the roof's edge. "I might have known you were up here," she adds.

"Why's that?" he asks.

"Oh, come on, Mac," she says, looking out over the streets. "You've always liked the snow. This isn't the first time I've caught you up here, contemplating the universe in the middle of a blizzard."

He glances over at her. "Blizzard?" He shakes his head. "This is no blizzard." As he thinks back over the years, though, he realizes that she's right about the rest of it: he hasn't done this often enough for it to be anything like a habit, but neither is this the first time they've stood here like this.

"Well, you may be right about that. The blizzard of '96, though...you can't argue semantics over that one."

He can't help a startled smile at the unexpected memory. "I haven't thought of that in -- in years."

She laughs, still watching the storm. "Don't tell me, since 1996."

"Maybe not that long. But it's been a while." He adjusts his coat collar again. The city actually did shut down that time, except for essential services. He thinks back to the mayor's press conference, Giuliani telling everyone to stay home and keep warm. That hadn't included his unit, of course.

"I remember the kids on my block making snow angels all up and down the street."

He counters her memory with one of his own: "I remember a bunch of cross-country skiers on Fifth Avenue." He had laughed at the unexpected sight, he recalls now, and stood watching the group until they vanished over the horizon line.

She nods. "I remember that, too, I think. They ended up on the news or something."

"The paper," he says. "Claire -- " He stops himself just a split-second too late, the name leaving his mouth before he's able to do anything about it.

Stella turns to look at him at last. The smile has faded from her lips, but she doesn't say anything. She just hugs herself, pulling her coat tighter, and looks at him. One small favor: her face is impassive. If there were the slightest hint of sympathy in her eyes right now, he knows that he would either turn and walk away without another word, or would say something she'd never forgive him for. Since she's being kind enough to spare him her pity, he does neither. Instead, he goes on after an endless pause, his voice sounding flat and harsh in his own ears.

"Claire didn't believe me about the skiers," he says. "Not until I brought home the paper and showed her." She'd cut out the accompanying photo, and it had been displayed on the refrigerator door for months, until it started to curl around the edges and he'd thrown it out, sometime during the summer.

He turns away from Stella's gaze. The flakes in front of his eyes swirl upward, buffeted by a gust of wind.

"Well, who would believe that?" Stella says finally, her tone studiedly casual. She takes a step closer to him, smiles right into his face. There is a strained look around her eyes and mouth, despite the brightness of her words. "Somebody came to me with a story like that, I'd tell them they needed to start sharing the Jack Daniels instead of keeping it all to themselves."

He says nothing.

Stella pushes up the sleeve of her coat, looks down at her watch. "Okay, that's enough of a break, I think. I'll head back down and see if Danny has managed to break anything yet."

"You can stay up here if you want," he begins. "I should really -- "

"Nah, you stay." She smiles at him again, and this time it looks a little more genuine. "Enjoy your storm. I know where to find you if anything happens."

He thinks that he should make at least a token attempt at another demurral, but she's already walking away from him, back toward the access door.

He considers, then says, "Hey Stella."

She turns back, one hand on the door, eyebrow raised.

"You can kick Danny's ass for me if you want."

She beams at him. "I'll be your best friend."

He manages a smile at that, and even a little wave in response to the mock salute she gives him before disappearing down the stairs.

He turns his face up to the night sky, letting the flakes fall on his eyes and mouth. He doesn't want to think about the reality of the city or Stella's unfortunate visit any more, doesn't want to keep dwelling on the words currently running through his mind. Old-fashioned-sounding words like abattoir and sanguinarium, words with the flair of the Grand Guignol and the copper taint of blood; they may be accurate, but they're also pulling him down to a place he has no desire to be in. He wants to watch the snow.

And so he does. He closes his eyes for just a moment, just long enough to breathe in and breathe out, and when he opens them again, he's okay. The air around him is filled with fat white flakes, glowing under the streetlights, and as he listens, he hears nothing but absolute silence. There's not even any traffic now, maybe one or two taxis the whole time he's been standing here, and he lets the hush envelop him. The whole world has been struck mute, and how he wishes it could last.

It won't, of course. The treacherous black ice at the heart of the city is lurking under the soft drifts even now, and treachery always wins out in the end; New York City couldn't exist without it. It thrives on murder, on the absence of peace. The snow may be a balm, but it's a temporary one.

Yet if the city is damned (as he believes it is), then so is he. No matter how many murderers he brings to justice, how many cases he solves, he can't stop the dying. His brief victories are as much a lie, in the end, as the transient grace of the falling snow. He can't change the fundamental nature of the city, any more than he can change who he himself is, at his heart's core.

The storm swirls around him, and his lips are moving in silent prayer: whether of confession or supplication he doesn't know.