Disclaimer: All recognizable places, characters, and events are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.

A/N: This is the first in a five-part series of stories. All five parts are already completed and will be posted weekly. While they are interconnected, they are not linear and can be read and understood independently of each other. These stories contain spoilers for S1 and S2, so read at your own risk.

Danny Messer hunkered in the dark parking lot of Trinity Hospital with his spinning head between his knees and told himself he wasn't going to puke. Puking in public was for drunks and pussies, and he had always prided himself on being neither, though he was no longer sure about the latter. After all, hadn't he just tucked his tail between his legs and run out on his best friend, who was lying in a hospital bed with his guts held in by staples and medical gauze?

That ain't Flack, screamed a childish, panicky voice at the base of his brain. It ain't. I don't care what your eyes are tellin' you, or what the evidence bags with the bits of bloody shrapnel say. It ain't Flack. Flack is a big, lanky horse of a kid, all shoulders and teeth and elbows and bony goddamned hairy Irish knees. He bulls down lippy suspects and wolfs down more pastrami and pickles and slaw than most human bein's can stomach in a week. What he don't do is lie there on the bed, whiter than the hospital bedsheets, and look like a doll that some nasty little bastard kid tore apart and then tried to put back together again with hope and fuckin' duct tape.

The voice was dangerous, and experience had taught him several painful lessons on why it was best ignored. It was the voice that had persuaded him to go to IAB behind Mac's back after the Minhas shooting, and convinced him to ignore Louie's repeated phone calls while he was trapped in that rich nut's panic room. He knew he should dismiss it, stop his ears against it, but it was easier to believe that the voice was right this time, that that really wasn't Donnie Flack in that room that looked so much like Louie's.

You thought it was tellin' the truth about Mac not havin' your back in the Minhas shootin', too, and look where that got you, Louie pointed out with grim pragmatism. You almost landed your ass in the clink, the one place I spent the last fifteen fuckin' years tryin' to keep you out of.

Yeah, well, what was he supposed to do? Mac didn't exactly have a stellar track record of looking out for his crew, and especially not Danny Messer, son of a mob thug. Sure, Mac had taken a big risk hiring him, but he'd never let him forget it, either, and frankly, he was tired of bowing and scraping and walking an invisible tightrope just to keep in Mac's mercurial good graces. It was too much work for too little loyalty in return. Mac's only loyalty was to the lab and to his precious reputation, and so when the bullets had started flying, he had decided to look out for himself since he had known that Mac wasn't going to do it, not at the risk of his golden child of steel and glass.

And a bang-up job you done there, Messer, sneered Sonny Sassone. The more you try to look out for number one, the more spectacularly you fuck things up. People have been cleanin' up your messes for you your whole life. First, it was your ma, wipin' the shit off your ass, and then it was Louie, who spent his life keepin' your nose clean. His encounter with my Louisville slugger ain't the first time he's gone to bat for you, is it?

"Naw, it ain't," he admitted to the rough asphalt between his knees and under his feet.

Course it ain't, Sonny went on as if there had been no interruption. He put up with your sorry ass until he was seventeen and left that shithole in his rearview mirror. You followed him around the house and the neighborhood in your droopin' diapers, and he never kicked your ass for it like he should'a. He let you tag along like some retarded puppy 'cause he was too soft and didn't have the heart to tell you you were a fuckin' waste of space. Maybe if he had, he wouldn't be up at that rehab hospital now, dinin' on Jell-O and fingerpaintin' with his own shit.

Don't you fuckin' dare lay that on me, Sassone, you fuckin' son of a bitch, he thought savagely. You swung that bat, not me.

Yeah, but you made it possible. I only swung it 'cause of you, and his head was only under it because'a you. That makes you culpable, don't it? After all, you put him in that position in the first place by tryin' to tag along with us to Atlantic City that day. If you'd'a kept your nose outta Tanglewood business and played in your sandbox like a good little boy, you never woulda dropped that butt, and Louie never woulda needed to turn yellow like he did. Everything that happened to him was because you were too much of a pussy to walk the walk. In my book, that makes you a facilitator.

'Course, as I said, this ain't the first time you've put him in that position. You were always a snot-nosed little punk, thinkin' you were bigger and badder than you were. You remember that time when you were eight? In case you've gotten a little foggy in your declinin' years, lemme refresh your memory.

You thought you were hot shit even back then. You thought that bein' the son of a low-level mob grunt made you somethin' special, meant you were untouchable. You swaggered around the neighborhood like the name Messer meant more than boot-lickin' snitch, and you lorded your imaginary connections and status over the other kids in the neighborhood. Every time things got heated on the playground, you threatened 'em with mob men in fedoras and shady trenchcoats like life was some kind'a TV movie put on for your entertainment.

Most'a the time, the grandstandin' worked, but one day, you lipped off to the wrong kids, kids who either didn't know about Louie Messer, Sr., or didn't give a shit. They were bigger and meaner, and it didn't matter how big you thought your balls were. They hit harder. They left you on that playground a cryin', bleedin', snot-caked mess, lyin' on the hot cement and tryin' to clutch all the parts that hurt. You were bleedin' from the nose and mouth, and your ribs and balls felt like they'd been caved in. It was twenty minutes before you could get up, and the whole time, the hookers across the street were pointin' and laughin', like it was some kind'a joke that an eight-year-old was lyin' in a heap on the playground. You hated them for laughin', and you thought of their painted, clown faces all the way home, but you hated yourself more for givin' 'em somethin' to laugh at.

You limped home, suckin' wind and spittin' bloody snot onto the pavement like breadcrumbs, and it was Louie who found you when you hobbled into the kitchen. He was standin' in front of the refrigerator lookin' for somethin' to eat when you staggered in with your arm over your ribs and tears drippin' off your chin.

What the fuck happened to you? he demanded when he looked over the top of the refrigerator door and saw you swayin' in the middle of the kitchen like the world's youngest wino, with blood drippin' onto the warped linoleum in tiny spatters. He put the chicken leg he'd lifted from the fridge onto the counter and ambled over for a closer inspection.

So you told him the whole story, wipin' your snotty nose on the sleeve of your shirt and cryin' all over again like a pussy baby. You expected fraternal sympathy or maybe some righteous indignation on your behalf, but what you got was a roundhouse slap upside your already throbbin' head and told to clean up and hide the mess before Pop came home and administered another beatin' for bein' such a dumbass and drawin' attention to the family business. You thought it was so unfair, but later, Louie was the one who brought you a puddin' pop and washed your bloody clothes.

You thought that was the end of it, but a couple'a days later, Louie takes off on his bike after dinner with his hockey stick across the handlebars. You just figured he was goin' to play with the neighborhood kids, but when he came back that night, his stick was busted in half, his knuckles were bruised and swollen, and there was blood all over his clothes. He told your ma that he'd fallen off his bike, and she let it drop, because she'd learned a long time ago not to ask questions. Your Pop looked at Louie for a long time, and you could see the cogs grindin' in his head as he studied him.

An accident, huh? he grunted shrewdly, and shifted the toothpick in his mouth from one side to the other.

Louie shuffled his feet and swiped his nose with a grimy forearm, but he stood his ground. Yes, sir, Pop. An accident.

A noncommittal grunt from your old man. Well, make sure you clean up after the accident real good, ya hear me?

Yes, sir, Pop.

Your old man's face disappeared behind his newspaper again, and Louie went into his bedroom to clean up. Like you always did, you followed him, and when you got there, he was sittin' on the rumpled edge of his bed, examinin' the splintered edges of his busted hockey stick.

You okay, Lou? You stepped over a pile of dirty clothes and came to stand at the foot of his bed. His room smelled like sweat and cigarettes and patchouli, and you thought it was such an exotic, grown-up smell.

Louie jumped. Yeah, yeah, shortpants, I'm good, he said, and tossed the bits of broken stick to the floor. Don't worry about it.

But you did worry about it. Louie loved that stick, had gotten it for Christmas as a present from your skinflint old man. Now that he'd busted it, there wouldn't be another stick until his birthday or next Christmas, or maybe not even then 'cause boys who couldn't show a little gratitude for gifts and take care of 'em didn't deserve more. He had taken good care'a that stick, had cleaned it after every game and made sure it was never underfoot, and now it was in three pieces of useless garbage.

'M sorry about your stick, Lou. How'dja break it?

His shoulders tensed. Don' worry 'bout it, I said. Dangerous, now. A slap was comin' if you kept pushin'.

'Kay, Lou, you muttered, stung, and turned to go.

Hey, shortpants? Quiet.

You turned in the doorway, tuggin' the threadbare hem of you t-shirt. It was a nervous habit you later dropped in favor of the ever-more popular and trendy takin'-off-your-glasses-and-pinchin'-the-bridge-of-your-nose. Yeah, Lou?

Those punk kids ain't gonna screw with you no more, all right? But you gotta learn to keep your mouth shut. I ain't always gonna be around.

But he was around eight years later, when your old man tried to bring you into the family business as a runner for his bookie. Louie was already one of us, then, but he fought hard to keep your stupid, eager-beaver nose clean. He thought you were destined for bigger and better things than buckin' stolen cigarettes onto a truck or mulin' sweet china white across the border with a kilo up your ass. He and your worthless old man went to blows over where you'd end up, and Louie won, but not before he'd lost a tooth.

He was standin' on the back stoop afterwards, spittin' blood and wipin' his mouth on the sleeve of his t-shirt. It reminded you of the time you limped home with your battered ego in your bruised stomach, spittin' blood like breadcrumbs. You opened your mouth to say somethin', but he spoke first.

Don't say I never didn't nothin' for ya, neither, shortpants, he mumbled thickly, and smiled at you, exposin' the bloody hole where he used to have a tooth.

But you did forget. That's how it is with you, Messer. You have a bad habit of forgettin' where you came from. It don't matter how good somebody does for you in the past, the minute they do somethin' you don't like, forget about it. Boom. Done. They're excommunicated from the Church of Messer with no explanation, and it's damn near impossible to receive absolution.

That's bullshit, Sonny, his indignant mind shrieked.

The fuck it is. Louie busted his ass for you, and what did you do the minute you got your ambitious foot in the academy door? You dropped him like a bad habit. It was all fine and good to take the fifty he sent you every now and then when you were in college and starvin' so bad that the scraps on the plates you washed at the local greasy spoon made your mouth water. But the minute you figured out you had a shot at the brass ring, your loser brother became a liability. A gangster brother don't look good on the old professional resume, so you cut him loose. Stopped takin' his phone calls and pretended he didn't exist. Hey, that shouldn't be too hard now that he can't walk or wipe his own ass. Good old Louie did you one last favor by becomin' a retard. How about that?

He growled behind locked and gritted teeth, and Lindsay, who had been keeping a discreet distance ever since he went down on his haunches, stepped tentatively forward.

"Danny?" She rested her hand on his shoulder. "You okay?"

God, what a stupid fucking question from somebody who should know better. No, he was not okay. His brother was a vegetable, one of his best friends was a pile of ash and teeth in a silk-lined casket, and his best friend was lying in the hospital he'd just left, doing a flawless imitation of that twisted Operation game he'd played with Louie as a little kid. He shook her off with an irritated jerk of shoulder and scuttled a few paces away from her. She did not follow. She merely bit her lower lip and rocked on her heels.

What's the matter there, Messer? Sonny said slyly. Don't wanna talk about Louie? All right, then. No problem. Let's talk about Mac, then. Your boss, the big hero, the one who sewed your pal's guts back in with a dirty shoelace. Mr. Straight-Ass Marine Mac Taylor. Why not? He's another one on the list of people you turn on when it suits you. When things are good, Mac is God and Mr. Rogers all rolled into one. He can do no wrong.

Oh, but when things go bad-and they always seem to with you; have you noticed that?-there is no Hell hot enough for him. Every good thing he's ever done for you goes out the window, and all you can do is stew over your injustices like a whiny pussy bitch. And make no mistake, Messer, he's done more for you than your sorry ass ever deserved.

Oh, yeah? he countered petulantly. Name one thing he's ever done for me. It was the stupidest thing in the world to be squatting in the fucking hospital parking lot, having an argument with an imaginary Sonny Sassone while Flack was pissing into a bag under the watchful eyes of Mac and Stella. It was ridiculous and selfish and utter assholery on his part. And he couldn't help it. At least he was doing something, even if it was as useless as jousting with invisible giants in the parking lot. If he'd had to hold another endless bedside vigil so soon after Louie, he'd've eaten his gun.

Asshole, Flack's voice said inside his head, wounded and accusatory, and he flinched. Fuckin' asshole, Messer.

One thing? Oh, how soon we forget. Who hired you, huh? You think you were so good that any head of this lab would be willin' to overlook the fact that for most of your growin' up, there was a surveillance van parked across the street from your house? Mr. Marine there took a big chance on you, and a lotta heat from the big brass upstairs. Not only were you an untested, hot-headed punk, but you were an untested, hot-headed punk with an unsavory history. He took you on in spite of the gossip and the risk, and you bet your ass they rode him hard for it.

Or what about when it was your petard in the sling for that body in Giants Stadium? He had your back all the way. He coulda washed his hands of you and booted you outta his lab to protect his own ass, but he didn't. He went so far as to taint his lungs with a cigarette to prove your innocence.

You mean, like he booted Aiden, he thought before he could stop himself, and ran his fingers through his hair.

Oh, how that still burned. Four months on, and all he could still think about was how Mac could have saved her if he hadn't fired her. It wasn't like he had to; Aiden hadn't actually tampered with the evidence. She'd stopped herself before it went that far because she was a good cop. And if she had been tempted, he could hardly blame her. Pratt was a dirtbag, pure and simple, and everybody knew he was good for it.

Besides, it ain't like she's the first CSI to be tempted, Louie muttered. God knows you have. You work these cases and see these scenes where teenage girls have been raped and murdered and thrown away like garbage, and then these assholes saunter into the precinct with their high-powered lawyers in tailored suits, smilin' like choir boys and hidin' the stink of their guilt behind high-priced cologne. It burns in your gut to watch Flack have to uncuff those sons of bitches and let them walk away while the family of the victim looks to you for answers you can't give. So, yeah, you've been tempted, and you'd bet your apartment that the others have been, too. You see it in Flack's eyes sometimes when he's bringin' in a wife-beater or a child molester, the urge to haul the perp into the forgotten back rooms of the precinct and administer justice at the end of a fist instead of a gavel. There's no cop worth his badge that ain't thought about it.

Except for Mac, of course, Danny retorted sullenly. Mac Taylor is fuckin' perfect, without fuckin' sin, and that gives him the right to cast stones at everybody else. It came with bein' a Marine, I guess. Jesus' blood ain't the only thing that cleanses the soul; a uniform'll do it, too. And it gives you the power to work miracles. Like sewin' a guy's guts back in with a dirty shoelace.

So why couldn't he raise Aiden from the dead? Why didn't he protect her? Flack's alive because he was there when he needed him. So why wasn't he there for her? Didn't she fuckin' matter, too? I carried her down the church steps and slid her into the back of a hearse. I watched her father wither and die under the weight of his grief. Oh, he's still alive, but not really. He just exists. Mac turned up in his immaculate suit and offered his condolences, but he didn't stay long. He turned tail and retreated to his precious lab. All the Marine bravado in the world don't count for much when you have to look into the eyes of a man who's lost his only child. He just left. Abandoned her when things got too uncomfortable. Just like he did when she was alive.

Oh, yeah? Where were you? Sonny demanded. Yeah, you'd exchanged a few calls, and you'd planned to have dinner at her place the week she died, but it ain't like you were a regular visitor. You know why? Because it's outta sight, outta mind with you. Always has been. She wasn't around to remind you of her existence every day, so you forgot about her. You live up your own ass, Messer, and nothin' matters except what's happenin' to you. Her death is just as much your fault as it is Mr. Marine's. Maybe more. He never called himself her friend. All you had to do was stop by, just once. Maybe then you woulda seen how obsessed she was and stopped her before she wound up Pratt's crispy-fried fucktoy.

Hey, wonder how long it'll be before you start forgettin' what Flack looks like?

"Fuck!" he shouted, and slammed his palm into the asphalt. He balled his hand into a fist and pounded the rough surface of the parking lot. "Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!" He was dimly aware that he was hyperventilating.

This wasn't fair. None of this should be happening. Not Aiden, who was too young to be under the ground and not walking over it. Not Louie, who was drooling into his Jell-O on behalf of a brother who'd spent the last fifteen years being ashamed of him. Not Stella, who'd finally let somebody past her tough exterior, only to have to shoot the son of a bitch in her own bedroom. And not Flack. Especially not Flack.

Bad news comes in threes. Ain't that how the sayin' goes? he thought hysterically. It always comes in threes. So, Flack shouldn'ta happened. He can't happen. It's against the fuckin' rules. Stella shoulda been the end of it, the last sacrifice before the gods went to pick on somebody else. There can't be four. Somebody upstairs made a mistake.

"Danny!" Lindsay's voice, sharp and urgent and utterly worthless. "Danny, stop!"

Then someone was grabbing his wrists, and he looked up, befuddled. Lindsay was crouching next to him, both hands wrapped around his wrist. "Danny, stop," she said. "It's okay."

He snorted and pulled away from her. "The fuck it is," he snapped, and she grimaced.

He rose from his crouch with the creak of tendon and hobbled gingerly until sensation returned to his feet. His hand ached and stung where knuckles had struck asphalt, and he could feel the thick wetness of blood on his overheated skin.

"We should take you back inside, get that looked at," she ventured after a moment.

He shook his head. "Naw, I'm good. I'm fine." He flexed and closed his hand a few times to show her just how fine he was and determinedly ignored the bright flares of pain sent from his torn flesh. "See? No big deal."

"Still, I think we should-,"

He cut her off. "I said no, all right? I'm not goin' back in there. It's not happenin'."

Of course it ain't, said an ugly, scabrous voice in the back of his head. Between Louie and tonight, you've spent so much time in there that you're beginnin' to wonder if you'll ever get the smell outta your skin, plastic tubin' and piss and medical astringent. Besides, if you go back in there, you might pass his room again and see him lyin' there with the only signs of life comin' from the cardiac monitor above his bed, and if that happened, you might lose it, because then you'd have to admit that this was real.

Lindsay took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "Fine," she conceded. "Then let me drive you home."

"I'm supposed to be drivin' you home, remember?"

"Yeah, well, plans have changed. You're in no shape to drive." She held out her hand for his car keys.

"Why?" he said defensively. "I'm not drunk."

"Danny," she repeated stubbornly, and advanced on him.

Suddenly, he was too tired to fight what he knew was a losing battle. He fumbled inside his pockets for the car keys and dropped them into her upturned palm. "There. Happy now?" he asked.

"No," she answered dully, and trudged to the driver's side of the car. "I'm not."

There wasn't much to say after that. She climbed into the driver's seat, and he slumped in the passenger seat, and as he pulled the door closed, the Flack inside his head spoke again.

Fuckin' asshole, Messer, he said mournfully.

Mercifully, Lindsay kept her mouth shut, a minor miracle for which he was pathetically grateful. She wanted to badger. She could feel her need to badger and busybody on the air like the promise of a lover's kiss and see it in the way her fingers gripped the wheel until her knuckles whitened. But something-self-preservation, maybe-kept her mouth shut.

He curled in on himself in the passenger seat, arms folded across his belly and forehead resting against the cool, smooth glass of the window. With no blind rage to distract him, the pain in his knuckles was a slow, simmering throb, and he suspected he'd broken a few.

"It's not Flack, you know," he said conversationally. "It's not. Can't be." Maybe if he said it enough, it would be real, and Flack would saunter out onto the lab backlot for a game of one-on-one in the morning just like they'd planned before everything got blown to hell. Maybe if he believed hard enough, it would happen. God and George Michael said you had to have faith, and right now, he was offering it up in spades.

"Danny," Lindsay said carefully, and he knew what she was going to say.

"Don't, Montana. Just don't. It ain't Flack back there."

She wisely said nothing.

Flack was his first real friend on the job, the first guy not to give a shit about his shady family connections. Flack had judged him for who he was, and he must have measured up, because soon he was inviting him for beers or games of pool after shift at Sullivan's. They'd broken balls-eight balls and each other's-and shot the shit and scoped the girls on Friday nights. Flack rarely went home with anyone, but he never seemed to mind when he-Danny-did. He just smirked and raised his glass in salute and went back to the ballgame on the big-screen TV over the bar.

They took in at least two ballgames a year together, and Flack always loaned him the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, always with the admonition not to leave anything sticky on the pages, dammit. He was a real wiseass, but if he said he had your back, he had your fucking back, even if that meant taking a bullet for you.

So what the fuck are you doin'? Louie demanded. Turn this car around, pull up a chair, and watch his back.

I can't, Lou, he thought miserably. I just-God help me, but I can't. I can't sit in there and look at him like that. It's too fuckin' soon, too, too fuck, fuckin-,

It's all about him, Lou, is what it is, Sassone interjected. Same as ever. It ain't about what somebody else needs; it's about what Danny Boy here can handle. Which is apparently not much. Hey, but don't worry; maybe you and Flack will be roomies on the same ward, and Messer here can pay his yearly duty visits to you both at the same time. Anything to make his life easier, you know?

Sudden tears blurred his vision. "Shit," he blurted, and sat forward abruptly in his seat. "Oh, oh, shit." He scrubbed his face with his hands.

"Danny?" Lindsay was braking.

"Don't stop," he barked. "Just fuckin' drive, Monroe." The car accelerated again. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. "'M so, so sorry."

"You don't have to apologize to me, Danny," she said. "We're all on edge."

He smothered a bark of laughter with the heel of his hand. Of course she thought he was talking about her. In Montana's world, it was a population of one. He closed his eyes and turned his head so that he couldn't see her. If he did, he might start laughing in earnest and never stop, just laugh until he shook himself to pieces.

She didn't say another word until they were standing on the sidewalk in front of his building. "You want me to come up with you for a few minutes?" she offered, and rocked anxiously on the balls of her feet.

He rubbed his nape and shook his head. "Naw, I'm good. But thank you." He looked at her with a shifty, sidelong glance. He was fissured glass beneath overstretched skin, and one touch would shatter him.

"Are you-,"

"I'm sure. Really. What about you? You want me to walk you to the subway?" His earlier contempt for her had passed, and he was acutely aware of how small she was, how obviously not a New Yorker.

She shook her head. "I'll be fine."

"Sure?"

"Yeah.

"All right, then. G'night." He offered her a stiff wave and escaped into his building on legs that felt like stilts.

He made it to his apartment without knowing how he got there and stumbled into the kitchen without bothering to close the front door behind him. He opened his refrigerator and rummaged blindly inside it for a beer, and it wasn't until he'd drained half the bottle that his eyes focused on his surroundings.

The place was a mess. Old takeout cartons and newspapers littered the small kitchen table, and the garbage can bulged with used paper plates that served as his tableware. The air was stale with the scent of old pasta sauce.

Flack'd be fuckin' horrified, he thought glumly, and took another sip of beer.

'Course he would, Louie agreed. Guy's a fuckin' neat freak. Even cleans his toilet on a regular basis.

Yeah, well, Sonny sneered, he ain't gonna be comin' around for a while. Maybe not ever.

The beer came up in a bitter rush, and he skidded to the sink with his mouth full of bile. He retched once, twice, and then his Heineken was splattering the stainless steel basin.

What am I doin' here? he thought numbly as he watched his vomit trickle sluggishly down the drain.

What you always do, Messer, Sonny said simply. Runnin' away.

Fuckin' asshole, Messer, Flack said sadly.

For the first time in his life, Danny Messer could not deny the accusation. He rested his burning face against the cool steel of the sink and waited for the nausea to pass.