Everything and Nothing….

Reese POV

The stream of thinking has enormous momentum that can easily drag you along with it. Every thought pretends that it matters so much. It wants to draw your attention in completely. A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware. – Eckhart Tolle.

Did you ever realize that you knew nothing?

You always imagine big stuff like this occurs somewhere profound and meaningful, but for me this epiphany, this sudden moment when I realized I did not know who I was, where I came from or where I was going...and that I was okay with that - came in of all places an orange grove. Crews and his god damned fruit.

I used to think I knew something, not everything, but some things….at least myself and where my life was going. That was until the day I met Detective Charlie Crews over the body of a murdered child, under an overpass, in the hot LA sun. He stood staring into the sun – still - like there was some cosmic answer there. It was a look I never forgot and one I that would see again.

I had an eventful life: a fractured childhood (from which I barely escaped); an unusual adventure at the LA Police Academy (which I attended for reasons I really can't entirely explain) and then an undercover assignment that reintroduced me to the darkness I thought I escaped when I left my father's house. When I came up for air, there was all the starting over and the recriminations, the glares and stares and dirty back room talk about how I got where I got to and how much it had to do with being Jack Reese's daughter. Like that was some prize, like I'd won sort of contest there and here I was thinking just surviving was enough. I was really beginning again when I met Crews – he was beginning again too.

No big deal I thought, I always danced with darkness and I was friendly with demons, or so I thought. Very little scares me, but Roman Nevikov looked at me like a voracious animal does a fresh piece of meat and it had nothing to do with sex. He scared me and Crews knew it. But more than that when Nevikov burrowed under my skin that first day in the interrogation suite, Crews became enraged and unnerved by it to. He became defensive so fast it surprised us both, though we never spoke of it, slamming his palm onto the table, so hard I felt it jar my bones. He demanded, no…willed Roman focus on him. It wasn't the first time, nor the last, Crews put himself between me and danger, but it was the one I most noticed and was the most grateful for. It was then that I began to appreciate what it would be like to have Crews' full attention.

It would be sometime before I realized that his attention was what I wanted or needed, but that glimpse was enough to make me aware that the man was powerful without having to be cruel or mean and it…no he…made me feel safe for the first time in a long time. Being partnered with Crews gave me the safety to try new things, like a relationship not based on drugs or alcohol with Tidwell and taking the Lieutenant's Exam. But in the end, I never needed to go anywhere else or be with anyone else, I just couldn't see it yet.

Let me explain, if I can…. I think it all started that day under the overpass, or maybe it all started when I was twelve years old and my dad first began taking money from the Bank of LA shootout, or maybe it started the day they locked Charlie Crews up for a crime he didn't commit or the day he got out and came back to work as my partner in LAPD. Time is cyclical – the only real thing we have is the now. Jesus, I sound like Crews… I hate when that happens.

A lot of things happened between then and now, but the day I was kidnapped by Roman Nevikov has to have been the scariest moment of my life. This was a man who Crews and I had arrested twice, first for throwing Lena out a window and secondly for killing Pavel and keeping twenty others in a dungeon under his club. Yet here he was in the flesh grinning in his slinky white gym clothes like some bad dream. Sitting chained in the basement of some warehouse surrounded by Nevikov's cronies, playing cards, drinking and chain smoking for hours, I had a lot of time to think. I knew LAPD wouldn't come to my rescue and Tidwell, he couldn't – he'd want to - but he wasn't capable.

To get away from a monster, someone like Roman Nevikov, you need someone equally driven, fierce, relentless and unbreakable. I knew only one man fitting that description. One man who would willingly place himself between Roman and me. He was my partner, or at least he was until I decided to leave him for a chance at the gold ring with this FBI Task Force. When I stepped out of that Escalade I knew he'd be there, but I couldn't help but be relieved…and still impressed. He stood there dressed in blue suit, with a pale blue shirt matching his eyes, looking like a sliver of the Pacific Ocean right there in that god damned giant orange grove.

I don't like people to touch me and I'm not the kind of person who feels they always have to paw other people. You know the sort, always grabbing your shoulder, slapping you on the back or throwing their arm around you. It always struck me as false or unnecessary, but now I know it was my way of keeping people at arm's length. It did not surprise me that Crews reached out to me. What rocked me to the core - was my powerful need to connect to him, to touch him, to feel that he was really here. I reached out to him in every way I knew with my voice, my hands, and my eyes. I had to. Roman's warning cut off our initial attempt, but I slowed up just enough to reach back to find his hand for only a brief moment and you have no idea how much I needed him. I had no idea how much.

The entire time they were stripping Crews of all the vestiges of the job, tossing away his handcuffs, taking his gun and discarding the shield he'd worked and suffered so long to get, Crews eyes stayed on mine. I could feel his strength and under it something else in that long gaze. I couldn't take my eyes off his.

As they drove away, I was still in shock, as Bodner told me Crews had no plan beyond getting me out of that SUV. I was angry, but I also knew that Crews cared for me in a way no one else ever had …and no one else ever would. I had no real time to appreciate the things Roman would do to him, but I had all the time I needed to fear them. The longest five minutes of my life occurred in the space between Crews climbing into Roman's Escalade and him phoning Bodner to pick him back up.

In the space of that time, I realized something about myself and something about Charlie Crews; I couldn't imagine my life without him in it. A future without him was not something I wanted to contemplate - it left a big hole in my heart – which is not where I expected to find Crews - in my heart.

You'd think learning that you knew nothing would be troubling, but it was actually fairly liberating. Like a great weight was lifted from my future, my fears and hopes and dreams broke away in one look from the most unlikely of people.

This time Crews was again standing in the sunshine staring up at the sun like it held some magical answer. Nothing Crews does ceases to amaze me anymore. I think technically they refer to it as suspended disbelief, but I believe it is just Crews. There is no one anywhere quite like him, he's almost a force of nature.

I also realized what it means to love and be loved in return, to put another before yourself, even if it meant sacrificing your goals, things you'd planned twelve years to find out and even your life. Crews did all that for me. I sat there stunned and in that moment when I realized I knew nothing – it gave me everything in an instant -, everything in a single look from him slaked a thirst I didn't know I had until Crews awoke it in me.

It's been a couple years from there to here, but it seems like longer…and shorter. I suppose when the distance is traveled in your head and your heart distance is really meaningless anyway.

Crews POV

What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes upmost of your attention?

A dash – one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.

To the self, this is a depressing thought. To you, it is liberating. ---Eckhart Tolle

When I was young I thought I knew everything. I was so proud of being a cop, so blissful in my marriage to both Jen and the job. When I went to prison I learned I knew nothing and nothing that I took for granted was real…not the faith of my friends or fellow policemen, not the trust of my wife and no justice for this innocent man.

Prison educated me - painfully, but effectively. When I got out of prison, I had studied and prepared. I studied the Zen way and while I was no master, I was Zen-ish. Again thought I knew everything, but I learned once again how little I knew the day they took Reese - I learned once again that I knew absolutely nothing.

They took her away because of me, to get to me. She was connected to me and that made her a target. "Get her back" Tidwell demanded. My response was that I had "nothing better to do today", but the truth was nothing else mattered. Nothing existed beyond finding her and getting her away from Roman Nevikov. No price, no sacrifice was too great. I needed a bigger gun….and a peaceful soul…but I'd rather have the gun right now.

When Roman's men pulled her from that big white SUV I could see the tiredness behind her eyes and the stiffness in her movements. They had hurt her and for that he would pay. I wanted her to know she was safe, but the way she spoke my name made my heart ache. She whispered it like a prayer "Crews" and all I could think to tell her was "just breathe". It felt woefully inadequate, but she was safe, we could both breathe now. When she reached out to me, I felt the desperation in her and it only made me angrier, focused, determined - to make him pay.

The slight touch of her fingers against mine, reminding me of her tiny, tanned hands griping the steering wheel of our unmarked car or the grips of her service pistol one of the dozens of times she'd backed me up or saved my ass. Unbidden it also evoked images of her I really shouldn't have at all – Reese in that tight white tank top; me tucking a strand of that unruly cinnamon and coffee colored hair behind her ear, the gentle lines of her jaw and the shy smile that I worked so hard for.

I needed to focus on the now, not fantasies about my beautiful, tough, little partner. Focus, Charlie, focus…you got Reese out of this – now how are you going to get yourself out of it? I honestly had no plan whatsoever, not like Rayborne, not like Roman, nothing….just the overwhelming desire, the need to get her out of danger.

The kindest thing Roman Nevikov ever did for me was to punch me so hard I saw stars, well…technically, not stars…oranges or more precisely orange trees, but you get my meaning. In that moment, I no longer had the ability for advanced thought or planning. I was in the quintessential moment. Roman's gift to me. I didn't think, I just reacted.

Years of training, purchased at a high price in Crescent City got me the gift of instantaneous reflex and my reaction was to crush Roman's windpipe with a single blow to his throat. I'd like to say I did it for the pain he'd caused Reese or the worry he'd caused Tidwell or the gut wrenching fear he'd caused me. But it wasn't it was simple beautiful reflex causing a double blessing of shutting him up and wiping the grin off his face for the very last time. I must also admit it felt exquisite, cold, merciless and very un-Zen.

When the rest of the understandably relieved Russians released me and drove away, they gave me a cell phone. My first and only call was to Bodner and I told him to come back and to "bring Reese to me". Only after I hung up did I realize I had no idea what I would say to her?

In the end, Mickey Rayborn, Jack Reese, Tom Seybolt, the Bank of LA, Roman Nevikov, none of them meant anything. Understanding the conspiracy that sent me away to Pelican Bay for twelve long years meant nothing….Dani Reese meant everything. She was my whole world, more than that, she was the sun around which my whole world revolved – and she was all that in a single smile.

Rayborne's POV

I knew that Crews would find me. That kid was always such a good cop. There was a fire in his eyes there at the academy – he had a hunger and a desire to be someone, to do something. We could use a guy like that – a smart, hungry, young cop who wanted to be someone.

So we threw a couple street level grafts at him, but he didn't go for them. He was too smart to get led astray by some punk from the street. So we decided to get his buddy Tom dirtied up a bit. Crews was a good pal and he'd help his friend out. All we needed was a tiny bit of leverage, but Kyle Hollis lost his mind in that house. So much blood…. And then there was that little girl and the big fight with Jack Reese about her and what to do about her.

Reese was crazy mad about it and wanted out even though it was his damned snitch that went berserk. Jack wanted out and only threats to his wife and kid kept him in line. He ended up giving his entire cut to charity, never kept a penny, foolishness if you ask me, but then no one ever does.

Then Crews went to jail, poor kid, but he was the best suspect and we needed to deliver up someone who made sense to hide Jack's snitch and prevent the whole thing from coming unraveled. So Crews went to prison, which must have been hell for a cop, any cop, but for him it must have been doubly difficult. He didn't seem the type to take to a cage, but he survived and I'll be damned if he didn't find a way out emerging from prison tougher and smarter than ever.

Yep, I called that one right. I always knew that Charlie Crews was a good cop. What I didn't count on, what I couldn't see from the fire I saw in his eyes, was that he would end up being such a good man. I also never counted on the department partnering him with Jack's daughter. Boy, growing up she was such a tough little kid and worshiped her father. But Jack was a miserable bastard so caught up in his own drama that he ignored her. Pretty girl with huge Daddy issues, so naturally she fell into all kinds of trouble straight out of the academy….taste testing drugs turned to using, then falling for her dealer boyfriend, damn near washing out of the department. So who should they stick with Crews when the department was forced to take him back, but Jack Reese's junkie daughter. The odds, I tell you….must be astronomical. Them falling in love… shit, that number must be in the gazillions.

I guess I'm lucky that I'm cooling my heels in the LAPD pokey or headed up to County because Crews would have fed me to Roman's dogs or Roman, just to get that girl back. Geez, I mean I could have given him the world, at least a boat, taught him how to live with all that money, but all he wanted was the girl. I guess he figures fifty million is enough, but it's never enough. Truth is he could have been penniless and all he would have wanted was the girl. Like I said, the kid's a good cop, turns out he's also a good man. Good for Dani Reese, good for LAPD, but bad for us.

Bodner's POV

I drove as Crews went to get his partner back, but in truth I could see it was more than that. A cop - working to get his partner back works inside the system - even a system as broken as ours. Crews was something else right now, part avenging angel and part relentless demon. He was hunted by half the cops in LA and had enough money to leave Los Angeles and never look back, but none of that would dissuade Crews from getting his partner back. What drove him was beyond a need for justice or even a desire for revenge.

Even if he couldn't see it, I could, he loved that little spitfire partner of his. I'd seen her with him a couple times and she was a looker. An exotic blend of a petite build and athleticism, with coffee and cinnamon colored hair my wife would envy and the darkest brown eyes I've ever seen. She had the ability to look both innocent and soft, but don't be fooled she could flip a switch and those same soft eyes could kill. She possessed that ability to be as tough as nails and still awaken the need in a man to protect and defend her life with his. Crews was learning this part the hard way.

The problem was the young man had not yet begun to appreciate what propelled him with such force. Heck, it happens to the best of us, it's how I met my wife and we've been married twenty years. There isn't anything I won't do for my family, so I know where he's coming from. Roman used it to turn a good Bureau agent into his watchdog and enforcer, so if I had a chance to get out from under, well, that worked for me too.

When we came driving back, the look Crews gave her through the windshield could have melted ice. She hadn't said a word since I told her he had no plan beyond getting her free, but watching her look at him with awe and wonder made me realize this was a two person party and I'd better vamoose first chance I got. So when I stopped the car, I announced that I was walking to the road and calling a cab – I honestly don't think either of them heard me.

The Part We Won't See – The Reunion

As Bodner plodded off in search of a cab, it occurred to me again that I had no idea what I was going to say to Reese. She'd be pissed, she usually was when I pulled some hair brained stunt like climbing into Nevikov's car with no plan. But she didn't look pissed, in fact she looked kinda happy…which is totally not Reese. I began to wonder if Roman had hit her on the head, but she looked fine to me…I mean unharmed fine, not fine, fine….but actually she looked pretty nice too. And she was walking pretty deliberately toward me – maybe she was pissed after all and just hiding it until she got close enough to clock me.

The door shut and Bodner mumbled something I didn't hear because all I could hear was this crazy rushing noise in my ears and sunshine and Crews goofy smile nearly blinded me. He was unbelievable and alive, unless he was a mirage. Maybe I wanted him to be here so bad I was just imagining him here. He still hadn't spoken and Crews lacks the ability to not say something irritating, so I seriously began to wonder if there at all. I had to know if he was real. I had to touch him, hear him and feel the warmth of his body to know he was okay. I didn't mean to but I began walking toward him until I could stand in his shadow, if there was one, but with the sky high overhead, he cast no shadow. Still he said nothing, only smiled…

Shit…she is going to hit me. It's okay, I'll break off a tree branch and let her beat me over the head with it until she's tired. Just as long as she is okay, safe and mine again.

Why doesn't he say something? Crews is always saying something.