Thoughts of a Dying Star
Reese blinked awake to a weird sensation or rather the lack of one. She was face up, flat on her back, but she couldn't remember how she got there. She knew she was awake, but it was as if someone hooked up her cable wrong, the picture was there, but the sound strangely absent. The absence of sound made it very easy to focus on the visuals.
Above her Crews moved his mouth, saying her name, she could tell from the formation of his cracked lips. She thought absently that man really should wear Chap Stick as she subconsciously licked her own dry lips. Crews ran his hand through his short hair mussing it and knelt beside her. His hand hovered over her as he fought an internal struggle; he wanted to touch her but restrained himself.
He looked like an angel with his ginger colored hair ringed in a sunny halo. He spoke again softly; she could tell it was gentler although she still couldn't hear because his eyes changed. His gaze became a caress, one he wouldn't permit himself to feel physically, as his hand continued to hover over her like a magician attempting to levitate her. The thought made her smile slightly at his dilemma.
Sound returned to her like someone turning up the volume on the radio, gradually and with it she appreciated first his heavy, frustrated sigh then clamor around her. Crews was calm in the midst of chaos; his eyes holding hers and keeping her present "in the moment" he liked to call it – keeping her with him.
She was still unable to summon speech, but she was able to connect to him. Her choice, her connection was physical - a bond of touch. She reached out to grasp one of his pale hands. He seemed mesmerized by her movement, stilled by her touch. She wove her small tanned hand into his; intertwining her lithe digits with his long freckled fingers noticing the slight whisper of the blonde hair from his knuckles as the pads of her fingers brushed over them. His hand flexed in rejection for just a moment, before he succumbed to the inevitable and closed his hand over hers and capturing it in his warmth.
"Reese," he spoke again and this time she heard the silken tenor of his voice become the same one he extended to those he cared for. She'd heard the same tone when Constance Griffiths first visited him in the station, when he was nervous as a schoolboy about the two women meeting. She heard it again when he spoke to Rachel Seybolt after Crews shot his father in his massive home. Men's voices change when they speak to their mates and their children. It was something female police officers learn to listen for. It was noticeable in that they become who they are outside the job, beyond the badge. He was that now with her and it felt oddly comfortable.
She had yet to appreciate why she was flat on her back and was rendered incapable of hearing for several moments after she regained consciousness. She instead wondered idly if Crews was the sort of man who allowed affections and nonsense to tumble from his mouth in unguarded moments of worry or in the throes of passion. He seemed to bite his tongue in an effort not to say much of anything and a tenseness edged at his features – it was worry, she realized - worry for her.
She called him back to her and reassured him with a simple but powerful word – his given name "Charlie," she slurred. He squeezed their linked hands and smiled softly.
"Don't be scared," he offered. Strangely she was not. She wondered briefly how she'd been hurt, but couldn't remember anything beyond their morning together. It was coffee for her and fruit for him consumed on a park bench with the sun shining on them in the long light of dawn. They'd been up all night.
They'd been on stakeout all night that much she recalled. They'd talked through the wee hours when nothing stirred and even when there was nothing to say, the silence was not uncomfortable. She remembered him telling her to rest; that he'd watch for them and how her slumping against the window morphed into her curled against his strong shoulder over time.
His arm rested warmly along her back and occasionally stroking her hair absently. She woke several times to find him still, quiet and patiently observing the house they were watching diligently. His eternal vigilance interspersed with brief respites; constructed of dropping his face into her hair to inhale her scent before returning to his solemn watch.
She remembered wondering how this man who she was certain was going to drive her certifiably insane during their first year together had become so necessary, so essential to her life. Her hand gravitated to his chest first, then to his waist as she hugged him in her sleep. She felt him smile against her forehead and the soft sigh of contentment that said they could stay in this car all night just like this and he'd be happy about it.
Dani reflected wryly that she wouldn't have so much as rested her eyes on surveillance with anyone else and here she was practically in her partner's lap. Oh how a few years and man killing for you changes things…
She knew immediately when she saw him standing in that orange grove that Roman Nevikov was dead; she also knew without a doubt that Charlie Crews had killed him.
The same man who made her feel safe and at peace was able to snuff out life without compunction. It did not follow him like other deaths obviously had. He'd killed Roman without a backwards glance. But he'd been just as cavalier about surrendering his own life in trade, seemingly without conscious thought, merely to see her safe and that was the part that bothered her.
The second more unsettling part of their citrus infused epiphany began as a deep trembling in the earth beneath her previously solid and sure feet and the crescendo was an overwhelming sound that could herald the end of the world – or simply the end of life as she knew it. Her solitary term on the planet, at war with the world was supplanted by something more essential to her than air - Crews.
For awhile after that fateful day, she could not see, smell or taste orange without the scented flavor summoning hot tears – "anybody ever love you that much?" ringing in her ears and the blue of his eyes staring into her soul.
Crews would later tell her that he was simply in the "moment" and that he knew what needed to be done, but she'd never bought his Zen shield entirely. Something in his eyes always told her when he lied even when it was to protect her.
Roman needed killing she reasoned and for a fleeting moment she wished she'd been the one to do it. But then she realized that for all her bluster and show, she did not have Crews icy blue water running through her veins. That it did not bother Charlie had to be a function of the fact he accepted Roman was evil and deserved it, but Crews was not the type of person to pass judgment on anyone – not even Roman.
"An evil man feels his death just as profoundly as a good man," he pronounced and then never spoke of it again.
She returned from mental wandering as his rough palm smoothed back her hair and lay gently against her forehead. She swore she could feel the every friction ridge of his fingerprints imprinting on her heart. His hand felt like fire as he struggled for words his eyes became wild. It was from that look and the fact that she now registered cold all over that she knew she was dying. From there it was an elementary deduction that she'd been shot and her blood and life were slowly ebbing from her and seeping into the earth beneath, returning her to the void from whence she came.
There were so many things she wanted to say to him, many more she envisioned doing to him (and with him) and it was going to be too late now. Figures she thought just when I figure out who I'm supposed to love and how I'm supposed to do it that I'd get killed. But in the end she wanted to give him peace that was stolen from them both and the knowledge he mattered to her deeply. That required very little – in fact only three simple words she'd not said in years.
With flagging strength and damned annoying diminishing vision, she pulled on their link and he came willingly to her. Face to face, close enough to mix breath, she told him what he needed to know, what she wanted him to hear, the truth that they both knew in their hearts she gave voice to. His hot tears fell on her face, as he begged her not to go.
In the end she simply she'd promised him that she'd wait - secure in the knowledge that he would always come for her. As the world dimmed Charlie's smile and his tear filled brilliant blue eyes were the last things she saw before the darkness claimed her. In the end there was no pain, except in her heart.