Pause
Disclaimer: I don't own CSI: NY or the characters.
Summary: There's only one way to make their relationship as good as what it once was. They will have to start over.
Spoilers for season five episode 'The Box'
She tells him that it isn't the right time: they should wait until their lives are more ordered, instead of rushing. But that isn't the real reason that she won't marry Danny. Lindsay wants to know that she really loves him before she marries him. And she doesn't right now. There was a time when she loved him more than anything else in the world, but their relationship has been slowly but irrevocably crumbling around them for too long. She cannot name one particular event or time that started the damage. Lindsay doesn't know when Danny started to revert to the impulsive and angry attitude that he had all but left behind when they first met, but she knows that as much as he tries to deny it, Danny too has noticed the way he shouts more often, and they can't enjoy each other's company the way they used to.
He isn't trying hard enough to do the right thing to fix it. Lindsay can tell, even if Danny can't, that the marriage proposal is a desperate attempt to salvage what they still have, for the sake of their unborn child. She can also tell that it won't work unless he works on the attitude change that goes with it. She wants to marry the man she fell in love with, not what he has become since. If their relationship is going to work, they will have to start from the beginning. It must be rebuilt not repaired, if it is to last at all, otherwise the covered cracks will grow, hidden, until the relationship gives way.
She wonders how she will keep from breaking down when she visits her family in Montana the week after next, to tell them she is about to become a mother. When they ask how long till she will be married. When they ask why Danny doesn't come up to Montana with her, and why they don't call each other while they're apart.
That's when she realises; she can't be near him any more. It hurts too much to keep trying, to think of what they used to have, to keep repairing. If she is to rebuild this relationship, she must first distance herself from the broken one. She will have to stay in Montana, if she is to have any hope of getting her life with Danny back. Maybe she will be able to return to New York, maybe start a new relationship with Danny, maybe neither.
She can't tell him she's leaving, or he will plead for her to stay, and she won't be able to resist. She simply won't come back at the end of her two week stay in Montana.
Her resignation form is on Mac's desk the next day, along with a request that he keeps it quiet. She calls her parents and tells them she might be staying for longer than expected, and starts to look for a job in Montana. This is the easy part. Keeping busy, getting things done. Many of her things have moved back from Danny's to hers in the same way they moved in the opposite direction: the more time she spends at her house the more of her things she takes from Danny's to use at her own home. So it is easy for her to pack up all her belongings, and Danny doesn't notice her retrieve the few things that are still at his which she has to take with her.
Work is normal for the five days after she makes the decision. She barely thinks about what she's going to do, only to formulate an acceptable explanation for her parents when she first sees them, she will only explain properly if they ask too many questions. And then the answers will be easier, because she can just tell them what the want to know, and nothing else.
She considers writing a letter, to explain why she has to leave to Danny but isn't sure she can put her thoughts onto paper any more than she can into words, and she isn't sure how this new Danny would react, so she settles for leaving a very short letter for all of them. She puts it on the table in the break room two minutes before she leaves to take a taxi home and then to the airport. Leaving no time to take it back.
She distracts herself every time she thinks of what she is doing, afraid she won't have the will power to carry on, so she's nearly in Montana before she allows herself to wonder what everyone in New York will think. The careful detachment from the situation snaps like an elastic band pulled too tight, and hits her so hard she struggles to breathe for a few minutes as she considers life away from what had become her new home, and the old Danny that she had fallen in love with. Tearing herself away from thoughts of the horrible possibility that she might never find that Danny again, Lindsay watches the runway as the plane landed in the place she is once again calling home.
Is it worth me carrying on writing this fanfic? Should I try another chapter?