Title: City
Genre: Television
Series: CSI: NY
Characters: Lindsay Monroe
Spoilers: 4x19-Personal Foul
Rating: PG
Summary: Lindsay's thoughts as she walked in the rain before Danny's call.
Author's Note: Title and lyrics are from the Sara Bareilles song "City" from her album Little Voice.
In these deep city lights
Girl could get lost tonight
I'm finding every reason to be gone
There's nothing here to hold on to
Could I hold you?
Lindsay Monroe wasn't the type of woman to stay with a man who didn't want her. While grieving for Ruben, Danny clearly hadn't wanted her. It'd hurt, cutting through her breasts and deep into her heart but she didn't blame him. During her own personal tragedy she'd pushed away everyone and their efforts to get through to her. Years later she'd faced up to it but it'd taken Danny in her sight to keep her from breaking apart doing it.
His choice of solace, another woman's arms, wasn't something that was easy to accept. She didn't know who she was, his comfort, but Lindsay found herself relieved in a small, very small, part of her that he had someone. To face that kind of guilt and pain alone was a terrible ordeal, she knew.
Being relieved that he hadn't been alone and accepting that he'd turned to someone else were too different matters, however. Lindsay didn't know if she had it in her to forgive him for choosing someone else. Danny had been pretty much her whole life after they'd gotten together. Every day off, every free hour, had been with him. After a rough start of friendship, the relationship had slowly consumed them. No flesh untouched, no thought unspoken, no secrets. The sudden cessation of connectivity between them had been a hard meal to swallow, but Lindsay had done it.
She'd tried. Lord knew she'd tried so hard to be the quiet comfort he'd seemed to need. He hadn't wanted to touch her, hadn't wanted to speak to her, hadn't wanted her at all. Even her looking at him, concern and love in her gaze, had been enough to set him off into a sullen cold attitude. With nothing else to do, she'd stopped looking.
Without her watching him, Danny had done as his nature demanded. He'd strayed.
It was an old fear, one Lindsay had worked to repress in the beginning of their relationship. Danny was a notorious playboy with a number of notches on his bed post. Lindsay had never intended to be just another notch but she found herself pushed into that category anyways. It was that, more than anything else, which was grating her nerve endings.
She'd never admit it, not to Stella or Mac or even to Danny, but she'd looked at Danny as her forever. They'd been so in sync, liking the same movies, the same food, the same slightly twisted sense of humor. Their sexual chemistry had been instant and white hot. For months, every touch and word had seemed to pull them closer together. She knew what he was thinking without him speaking, and he knew her the same. They'd sped past the rush of new love and settled into the content of stability with an ease she'd never had in a relationship.
Maybe that had been the problem. Maybe it had all been too easy and the two of them had been just waiting for something to push them apart, some conflict to ruin the perfection they'd seemed to create. Subconsciously Lindsay recognized that she'd been waiting for that other shoe to drop.
Maybe, just maybe, the entire situation was as much her fault as his. Perhaps she'd stopped trying too soon? Maybe she should have forced him to turn to her, made him listen to her when she'd told him it wasn't his fault. Maybe she should've simply stood at his side, and held back the words.
Maybe she hated the fact that Danny had the power to make her doubt herself.
It all came down to a question of sacrifice.
It was the only way she'd survive this situation.
She had to either give up Danny or give up her pride. She had to decide if she loved Danny enough to betray what she'd always considered a fundamental part of her. Lindsay had to decide if love was enough.
Her phone rang in her pocket and she pulled it out, staring at the goofy picture shining up at her in the dim city lights. It'd been taken months before, long before their relationship had fallen in around their heads.
Her finger trembled over the button that would open the line.
It was a question of sacrifice.
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