May 25th is my second fanfic anniversary, so here's a one-parter for you. I'd hoped to have Swan Song posting started today, but it's still in line. Stay tuned, it will come. Many, many thanks to friends in time of computer need for help in writing this down and getting it posted.
Title: A Reason to Live
Rating: T for strong suicide theme. This gets quite dark in spots; be warned. My writing creed still applies, however, as always.
Disclaimer: Anybody you recognize isn't mine. Anybody you don't is. Marvel Cave is exactly as described, and the Cathedral Room is breathtaking; I would recommend the tour to anybody unless you're afraid of heights. If you are afraid of heights, the sinkhole entrance would get to you. The informational tidbits on the cave in this story are quoted directly from tour guides.
Spoilers: This story occurs shortly after Killer Date and contains references to episodes throughout the show all the way up to Killer Date. At that point, the world of this fic takes a hard turn away from the series, and the last episodes of season three never happened. Also, even though the "Ray is alive" theme was introduced at the end of Killer Date, for this story, it wasn't.
A/N: Any similarity to Buffy's recent wonderful story, Concert in a Minor Key, is pure coincidence. This story was developed and worded before hers was posted. A few of you might notice some similarity to another story of mine, non CSIM, and that is not coincidence. I confess to borrowing a bit from myself, although I spun it off in a different direction. Not that this story can hold a candle to that one, but I had a lot of fun developing and writing it.
(H/C)
The steep steps dropped into the earth, doubling back on themselves at landings regularly, sinking between ruggedly-scarred walls of rock. The stairs were manmade. The scars on the rock walls encasing them were not.
'This is like hell's fire escape.' A thin, humorless smile quirked Horatio's lips as his mind immediately filled in the rest of the thought – 'and I'm going the wrong direction.'
The guide stopped at a door ahead, and the uneven line of people bumped to a restless halt behind him. One child tried to plunge on ahead and was expertly lassoed by her mother's arm. The guide waited an few seconds for the shuffling crowd to still, then launched into his spiel for the second time that day, with more repetitions to come. "The sinkhole we have just climbed down is 94 feet deep. You are about to step into the largest cave entrance room in America." He pulled out the keys with a flourish and unlocked the door, swinging it wide, letting them in, and his ears were tuned to catch the gasps and reactions of the crowd. As often as he did this, the cave entrance never lost its impact on him.
Horatio paused at the door as an impatient child pushed on past him, then stepped through the opening onto a steel platform about twenty feet square. Like everyone else, he was drawn magnetically to the other side, where mesh fencing and rails guarded the view. Immediately in front of him was the continuation of the sinkhole, a gaping, jagged gash in the rock, with water dripping through it and a few mosses and plants dangling in delicate, graceful trails over the abyss, oblivious to their danger. Far, far below, the floor of the room was visible, and everything else was dizzying space.
The guide secured the door behind his group and oozed politely through the watchers to a point by the rails. "This is the Cathedral Room. It's over a city block long and could easily hold a 20-story building. To give you a better idea, if the Statue of Liberty were set up in this room, the tip of her torch would be right in front of us." He waited for the predictable effect on the crowd, always amused at it. The children would push closer to that inconvenient fence, and the adults would either tighten their grips automatically on the rail as they mentally inserted Lady Liberty or would step back slightly in reflex before they caught themselves at it and anxiously glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed. The guide's reaction survey abruptly jolted to a stop at the tall redhead. The man had glanced around the room, but his gaze then returned to those gravity-defying plants that actually trailed through the sinkhole in the ceiling, and his expression was not wonder but emptiness. He wasn't even holding the rail, but the guide was suddenly glad it was there. He had only seen that expression a few times, but it was unforgettable. He studied him more closely. Tall and thin – almost too thin – with shoulders that spoke of strength and authority and a face that bore the wreckage of too many storms. Perfectly steady, though, almost calm in despair. This one would not do anything, even jump, on impulse.
Not that you could jump, of course. The mesh fencing made sure of that. The guide vividly remembered a day six years earlier when a man on one of his tours had tried to jump in spite of the fence and had slammed in helpless fury into the wire, cursing it, himself, and the men who pulled him back. That one had been a time-bomb, suddenly exploding in the face of that inviting abyss below. This one would be different. This one would not snap but would be slowly buried beneath the landslide of his life, the disaster almost unnoticeable to passers-by, possibly unnoticeable or underestimated even by himself until the last choking, futile effort to breathe. Just like the guide's father. A steel door slammed in his mind, locking that memory vault with an echoing thud, and he became aware once again of the cool breath of the cave and the steady drip of water through the sinkhole.
The room had continued speaking through the guide's silence, but he forced himself to find his voice again, conscious of the minutes lost. These tours were timed, after all, and he was supposed to be at the bottom and clear of the room before the next tour entered. He cleared his throat and continued. "Hot air balloons have even been flown in this room. Don Piccard set the world's underground altitude record here in 1963." He took a few steps toward the stairs. "You will notice, as you look down, that the floor looks flat. That's an optical illusion due to height. It's quite uneven in places, and we also have a 125-foot hill of debris we'll be descending, so please, hang onto the rails. Let's go."
The guide started down the stairs that wound around the steel entrance tower, and the crowd trailed him, still hesitating each time the stairs returned to the side facing most of the room to look down and – increasingly – up. The guide stepped off the bottom level of the tower and started down the series of ramps that descended the debris hill. Halfway down, he pushed a well-concealed button, and the music of Beethoven burst into life all around them, showcasing nature's incomparable acoustics.
Horatio barely noticed the music. He looked back up at the sinkhole, almost directly overhead now, far above them. This was a debris hill, the guide had said. A 125-foot debris hill. All of this, either at the original collapse or in the centuries since, had fallen from there. He wondered how much more would fall. So much emptiness left, room for many more hills this size. The process could probably continue forever.
The tour reached a flat platform, manmade, at the lowest point of the room, and the guide pointed to a white dome next to them. "This is the Liberty Bell." The resemblance was obvious, even down to the crack. "It's a calcite formation that is 55 feet high and still growing." The crowd looked at it, then back at the expanse of the room. The view was as impressive from the bottom as it had been from the top. "The Cathedral Room is one of the largest known unsupported natural domes in the world. Marvel Cave was discovered around 1500 by the Osage Indians when one of their braves on a bear hunt fell through the sinkhole."
A child's voice rose above the group. "Was he hurt?"
Horatio tuned out the guide's carefully-framed answer as he measured the distance visually. The cave hadn't been lit then, either. There would have only been darkness, hundreds of feet of darkness, with the brave not knowing what lay below. Undoubtedly, during that several-second fall, he would have had time to hear Death approaching, feel the skeletal fingers reaching for him. Had he fallen silently or with one final, futile protest? It hadn't made any difference. An innocent victim, like so many Horatio had seen over the years, his only crime being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The guide was still speaking, answering another question. "Another entrance? If there is another natural entrance to this cave, it's never been discovered. The exit we'll leave thorough in 40 minutes was blasted. Anybody else?"
A woman's voice, slightly nervous, asked the question that had already hovered unspoken over several of them. "The ceiling of this room has partially collapsed once, obviously. How do you know it's safe to be down here?"
"The room has been structurally analyzed, and it is rechecked regularly. As well as science can determine, it's stable. It was only the very tip of the dome that caved in, and domes actually are very strong by design. That's why you see a dome used so often over history in large buildings." He switched from professional reassurance to jest, producing one of the tour jokes created just for that question. "But the park also does carry complete insurance. I assure you, if this room caved in, we'd all be covered." The ripple of laughter across the group dissolved the tension, as it was meant to. "We need to be moving on. This passageway behind me leads to our next room, the Egyptian Room. Notice the temperature shift as we take this passage. The Cathedral Room is 54 degrees year-round, which is the yearly average temperature in this part of the state. An entrance room to a cave will maintain the average temperature of the environment above it. The Egyptian Room is 60 degrees. The temperature of earth's crust warms about a degree for every 50 feet you descend, and this is one of the few public caves deep enough to really notice the temperature change. So follow me, watch your head for overhanging rocks, and watch out for bats. There are bats in the cave. They are harmless, and they are also a protected species, so do not disturb any you find. In fact, they're quite useful. The bats fly out of the sinkhole and eat half their own weight in insects every night, so unless you especially like mosquitoes, think of bats as your friend. They'll be resting during the day, but if you do see a bat flying at you, simply duck and let the person behind you worry about it." The guide started down the passage, and the tourists trailed him obediently – all but one.
Horatio stood alone on the platform next to the Liberty Bell, studying the room. The circular lines around the walls wrote the history clearly – some swirling, raging water had carved out this room, eating ever so slowly away at the rock, leaving the hollow, the echoing emptiness that no one would have guessed at. From the outside, Roark Mountain looked like any other. From the inside, though, it was a monument to the destructive power of time.
Like his life. Staring at those chiseled water lines, at the void of this room, he suddenly identified with it. Too many losses, too much destruction, too many storms, too many storms faced alone. They had eaten away his soul from the inside out, and even if the loss wasn't visible on the outside, he heard the echo with every step lately, it seemed. The Cathedral Room. To what deity was his life a temple, he wondered, and the answer came swift and certain: The god of failure.
His eyes went back up to the sinkhole in the ceiling, thinking of that Osage brave, falling into eternal nothingness. An innocent, trapped by his unfortunate proximity to what seemed solid but was vastly hollow. Horatio had always tried to protect others, but suddenly, feeling the impending collapse of his life, he wondered how many around him lately had been an unwitting casualty of his despair.
Eric. What was he thinking of, setting up anonymous sex, being careless enough to lose his badge? Didn't he know the risks, the diseases out there? Of course he knew, but he didn't care. Someone should have talked to him after Speed's death about his feelings over the loss of his friend. Someone should have been there for him, should have been a friend to him. But had Horatio done anything? No. It had to be Stetler to even bring up the tie between Speed's death and Eric's actions. Horatio had done nothing for his team member.
Yelina. He couldn't blame her for the hurt over Madison, even though she was the one originally who had refused him the opportunity to explain. But she was still shutting him out, over Rick, over life, over everything. If she couldn't have him as Ray's replacement, she didn't want him at all, it seemed, or not one foot beyond the workplace. She only kept him close enough to blame with the eloquent silence of her flashing eyes. But in the end, it was his fault. He had lied to her about Madison, by implication if not words. Maybe he had even misled her about their relationship by avoiding words. Years ago, he should have talked to her more clearly about how he wanted her as family in his life, just not that kind of family. He could have done better, surely, and then the hurt wouldn't still simmer in her. He should have done more, somehow, after Ray's death, maybe even could have prevented it. He should have protected her and Ray Jr. more from Rick. He had failed her over and over, and he couldn't blame her for shutting him out. She never had retracted or apologized for her statement that she didn't trust him, and for excellent reasons. She was right not to trust him. He had let her down.
Speed. He should have checked up on the condition of Speed's gun. He knew Speed, he knew he wouldn't change his habits, or at least wouldn't for long. But Horatio hadn't wanted to offend him by harping on the subject after dispo day. He would never forget the accusing expression in Speed's eyes as he died, as Horatio lied to him once again with reassuring murmurs that help would be right there, would arrive soon enough, that everything would be all right. Speed had known better. "I can't," he started, and then it trailed off in the bubbling blood, but Horatio finished it regularly in his nightmares, the accusation from both Speed and Yelina in chorus. "I can't trust you." And there was no reason he should have. Horatio had let him down, irreversibly, fatally.
Calleigh. Leaving her to deal with her father alone. Leaving her to deal with Hagen alone. Leaving her to deal with everything alone while he withdrew further from the team. He should have been a better friend to her, even if he wouldn't allow himself to dream of more. She deserved so much better than him. He should have been a better friend to all of them. He could have done more for them, and lately, he hadn't, not even as a supervisor, much less a person. All of them had become casualties of his failure.
How many more people would fall through the ceiling of his life and get hurt just because they happened to be close to him? How many more would be injured, even killed, when the ceiling totally caved in? Of course the ceiling would collapse again. Nothing was there to hold it up. Nothing.
He stared at the incredible emptiness. The light from the sinkhole barely spilled into the room; without electricity, it would be quite dark in here. How many people had died here, adding to the hill of debris? How many more would?
A sound split the silence, magnified by the immense dome. Hundreds of feet away, on top of the steel tower, the door opened, and the next tour began to spill through. Horatio pulled his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket, stared at them, then folded them precisely and put them back. He whirled and entered the passage behind him alone, and nobody noticed.
(H/C)
Horatio lay on the bed in his hotel room, stretched out on top of the covers, still fully clothed. His eyes traced the pattern of the ceiling automatically as his mind traced the pattern of his life.
At first, he had resented this enforced vacation. The doctor on his annual department physical had frowned over subtle signs of strain and questioned him thoroughly, but Horatio had brushed the concern off, blaming anything on the IAB investigation started by Stetler. He never expected the man to research department records and discover that his last vacation day taken had been for Speedle's funeral, that he had not actually had an extended vacation for several years. He had fit rare days and half days around his schedule, forfeiting much of his vacation time, unwilling to be away from the job. It was all he had left, all he defined himself by. If he had no real friends, no real family, at least he had a job, one that he still tried to tell himself he was good at, although it became harder every time he attended another funeral. How many had he attended in his life? He had lost count years ago. It was the names he remembered, not the statistic.
When the doctor had gone over Horatio's head and made a formal recommendation to the captain that Horatio be forced to take a two-week vacation and spend it somewhere far from Miami, it was Tripp who had recommended Branson. Tripp and his wife had been there last summer on a patching-up-the-marriage retreat that had actually accomplished a few things, and the gruff detective had hoped that what worked once would work again. Horatio had no better suggestion. Branson it was, then, and he half smiled remembering how nervous and concerned the team had been. They were worried about the work, of course, that changing the team dynamic would affect the cases. Calleigh had seemed especially nervous. After Alexx had given him a quick kiss on the cheek goodbye and told him to take care of himself, Calleigh had copied her, the kiss so quick that it almost never landed, and her eyes were filled with unspoken thoughts as he left for the airport. Relax, he had wanted to reassure her. I'll be back in two weeks. You all will work fine without me; you don't need me anyway.
Yes, the resentment had been there. At first. It faded on the first day here in the stunning realization that it didn't really matter. In a hotel room in a strange city, he felt just as numb and useless as he had felt lately in Miami. Nothing had changed. Perhaps the vacation he really needed was from himself, but being forced to take himself along, it didn't make any difference where he was. He didn't even miss the job much. The thing that he had told himself for years was his reason to live had been proven not to matter after all. That was his ultimate lie, perhaps.
No. The ultimate lie of his life could never be to himself. He had hurt too many others. Any regret should be spent in tribute to them.
For years, he had held them at a distance, trying not to hurt them further, trying to keep going on alone. But it wasn't until that day, staring up at the sinkhole, that he realized just how much they had been hurt anyway, simply by his presence, realized how much more potential for hurt there was. The ghosts of the living had joined accusations with the ghosts of the dead. He wasn't even a good CSI and supervisor anymore. They deserved better.
The phone rang distantly in his consciousness, and he answered it automatically. It was Calleigh, of course. She had called him every night, carefully asking what he had done that day. It was only to have answers for her that he was doing anything at all except lying here. He had wondered on other nights if she had a secret ambition to visit Branson and was collecting another tourist's perspective. Tonight, though, he was barely aware of what he said, or what she said in return. His soul was numb. He probably told her about visiting the cave, but he didn't realize until the phone began its strident objection that the conversation had ended, they must have said goodbye, and he was still holding the receiver. He replaced it carefully on the hook and turned back to his analysis of the ceiling.
He could retire. The job was not only meaningless anymore, like his life, but it was dangerous to those around him. Speed and Eric were proof of that. If he resigned, though, there would be the obligatory banquet, plaque, and ceremony. After over twenty years on the force, he couldn't escape it. No one could. They would feel that they had to give it to him, as they did to just about anyone who left after that long, and their real opinions, their relief, would be hidden behind speeches and toasts. He couldn't face it. To sit through a celebration of his life and career would be a travesty. The entire night for him would be a roll call of the people who were fatally unable to attend.
He could quit without ceremony and vanish, but the CSIs wouldn't leave it there. They would track him, just because they were professional mystery solvers and couldn't stand an unanswered question. Calleigh especially. She'd have to find out where he was, just so she'd know. The detective in her would be too challenged.
Besides, what would he do in another location? He could never be a CSI elsewhere, starting a new list of team members and victims he had let down. He couldn't spend his life in a hotel room staring at the ceiling, and suddenly, he had no ambition for anything else. Even the job didn't matter anymore; that was the moral of this vacation. The swirling waters in his life had eaten that away, too, like they had eaten everything else that mattered. Only the echoing hollow remained.
Once he had planned for his eventual retirement. He had a piece of property down in the Keys, and he intended to build a beach house there someday and spend his old age watching the ocean. He had always been soothed by the ocean, the restless sameness of its patterns. Only now the property was gone, his future sold to purchase Madison's. A more than fair exchange. Her life was just beginning, and he had known even then that his future contained only emptiness. Madison. He smiled slightly. That was the one part of life the last few years where he felt he had truly made a difference.
The smile faded. To have only made a difference in one thing, in one life, for several years spent living. What a condemnation of his existence. He should have done more.
Horatio sat up on the bed and reached across to the sack from Silver Dollar City. He had bought the knife that day at one of the shops, attracted to its deadly beauty without quite knowing why. It was a fishing knife, the blade razor sharp, the handle etched intricately with an image of a fish leaping above the water, fighting the hook for its life. Ironic. The knife had no use until after that battle was lost.
He felt tired, numb, useless, and hopelessly alone. As if watching the scene from a distance, he unsheathed the knife and ran one finger along the tantalizing blade, then paused as an image flashed through his mind: The housekeeper on his floor of the hotel. He had been leaving early that morning to go do things so he'd have something to report to Calleigh that night, and she had been just arriving. Her husband had driven up to the hotel door, and she had leaned over to kiss him, then opened the back door after getting out just so she could kiss the little girl in the back seat. A mother, working to help support her family. She would find him, would be just going about her job when she became part of an investigation. He couldn't do that to her, couldn't bring a piece of yet another life down with him. He remembered the scores of people he had interviewed who had found bodies over the years, and all had been shaken by it, at least all the innocent ones. She would take the memory home with her, to her husband and to her young daughter. Years later, it would still be there.
He had always been infuriated by the suicides who chose to inflict their exit upon others, to jump in front of the train, to step in front of the car, making the final action of their lives a bequest of years of nightmares to a total stranger. He remembered something he had said to a body once, a man who had been a witness in one of their cases, while paramedics attended to the shocked train engineer who had been forced to kill him. Horatio had stared at the body in icy fury through his sunglasses. "If you want to punch your ticket out, why can't you go off somewhere alone and at least have the courage to do it yourself?" Alexx had looked up at him, startled at the vehemence in his voice – and then, considering the words, had nodded, although her sympathy was still large enough to cover both of the victims at that scene, living and dead.
No, he couldn't make an innocent bystander find him. Make it a professional, a sheriff, someone who dealt with death regularly, at least. Not a poor housekeeper. There were woods all around here, beckoning him with their undisturbed solitude. Tomorrow, he would make use of them.
Horatio sheathed the knife and lay back down on the bed, still on top of the covers, still dressed. His fingers traced the battle again, the fish fighting for its life.
He was tired of fighting.
(H/C)
He left the rental car in a public lot the next morning and slipped into the closest woods. He left a note on the front floorboard, not visible to a casual glance but easily found once the locked doors were opened, once they were searching for him. It was addressed to the local law enforcement, and it gave his direction from the car and an approximate distance. He didn't want to be an unsolved case tying up their workload any longer than necessary; they had more valuable things to do with their time, people they really could help. He was beyond help. His case had already been solved, and the solution was that there was no answer.
Branson had grown up in country too rugged to hold it, with the result that the buildings and roads all huddled together in lines, clinging precariously to the hills wherever they afforded a toehold. All around were the Ozarks, the wooded, steep slopes, seeming to laugh at civilization's failure to completely tame them. They were friendly, rolling mountains, not nearly as stark or as high as the Rockies, but building would be prohibitively expensive on so much of this land.
It did at least leave the paradox of thick, isolated woods, total privacy, abundantly available within a short distance of a booming tourist town. Just a hundred yards off the road, Horatio had his invisibility, only the swish of the cars giving indication of their presence. He walked on, pushing ever farther into the trees, often walking on nearly a 40-degree slope and using the closely-growing trunks as handholds. Finally, the hiss of the traffic died to nothingness behind him. His mind precisely measured off the distance he had given the police, and he found a small clearing and sat down, his back against a large tree, vaguely admiring the strength of it. Amazing what the trees could grow in, succeeding where construction techniques could not. With all the obstacles here, they still stood straight, the roots secure.
He took out the knife and unsheathed it. With the traffic gone, the sounds of the woods pushed in, birds of all sorts, rustling footfalls of some animal, intruding on his silence. He tried to tune them out, but they demanded attention. He raised the knife, studied his wrist, and selected the spot where the artery carried the river of life just below the surface. One well-placed cut would end everything. He held the knife ready for several seconds, then, with a vicious stroke, flung it off down the hillside.
He couldn't do it. He had nothing left to live for, yet still, faced with the actual moment, he couldn't make that cut. In this too, apparently, he was a failure. A little more dust sifted onto the hill of debris in his life, but the ceiling apparently could not be caved in on command. Not for him, at least. No quick, merciful exit, only the slow suffocation of hopeless existence, and he truly was powerless against it.
One sob was wrenched out of him, startling the birds into momentary silence, but there were no tears. Tears were sacred, and the wreck of his life did not deserve them. Instead, there was only a desperate prayer flung out into the void, directed to any power at all that might be listening. "Help me." Even that came out as a whisper, uncertain that he merited any deity's attention.
After a time, he realized that he was sitting on a slightly-jagged rock. Slightly surprised that he could still, in fact, feel pain, he shifted, then pulled himself slowly to his feet, borrowing the tree for support. Methodically, he started to search the slope below him for the knife. It seemed unlikely that a child could find it here, but an animal might, and the unguarded edge was razor sharp. That much hurt at least could be prevented. He finally found it, sheathed it, and clipped it back onto his belt. He stood still, listening to the sounds around him and the debate within. Apparently, he had no choice after all. He would complete this vacation, and he would return to Miami, and the entire tragedy of his life would roll on to its inevitable conclusion, wringing full value out of each act. He pitied those who would be unknowingly forced to share the stage with him, not realizing the script that was already written.
Minutes or hours later, his foot finally lifted to take the first step back toward the road, then froze in midair. The sound was faint, tantalizing, drifting through the woods to him. The scientist in him kicked in immediately, trying to identify it and unable to. Curiosity stirred faintly for the first time since he had started this vacation. He turned away from the road, and his movements, always graceful even in despair, became more so as he silently glided at an angle across the slope toward the unknown, keeping a hand on the trees for support.
The sound embodied itself a short distance away in a man. He was sitting in his own clearing, his back against his own sturdy tree, and he was crying, deep sobs that wracked his entire frame. Horatio hesitated, becoming one with his current tree. He wanted to help, but the sheer level of grief demanded respect. Should he approach the wreck of someone else's life or grant this man the privacy he obviously needed? No one would come down this steep valley just for a walk.
The quivering shoulders finally stilled, long after the sound had. The man straightened up, unburying his face from his arms, and the sunlight ran in cold, deadly reflection along the barrel of his gun as he raised it to his temple.
Horatio stepped forward gently, not wanting to startle him into squeezing the trigger on reflex. His voice was perfectly calm, as if this were a routine situation. "I don't think you really want to do that."
The man jumped slightly, but he caught his finger before it tightened too far. He looked at Horatio with empty, reddened eyes, the gun still firmly against his temple. "Go away."
"I think I'll just stay here for a bit, and we can talk. What's your name?" Horatio advanced another step into the clearing.
The authority in that low voice was irresistible, and the man answered before he could stop himself. "Henry."
Horatio stopped his advance at the slight tightening of the hand on the gun. His voice was still rock-steady. "Okay, Henry. Why don't you put that gun down? It might go off accidentally right now. I'm not going to take it. Let's just talk a little while, okay?"
The gun wavered for a second, then steadied. "You just want to talk me out of it. It won't work."
"Well, Henry, if talking to me won't change things, there's no reason why you should mind talking for a little bit. Death isn't going anywhere." Horatio was totally focused now, everything of the past few days temporarily forgotten. The life that he held in his hands at the moment was not his own, and that made all the difference.
Henry considered the logic of that for a minute, then lowered the gun, still keeping a tight grip on it. "You try to get it away from me, and I'll shoot you."
"No, you won't," Horatio said soothingly. He sat down against his own tree, several feet between them, although the distance was smaller than it looked, and Horatio's iron-band muscles were already gauging the leap, if necessary. To Henry, he looked perfectly relaxed. "You don't want to hurt anybody else, do you, Henry?" The man shook his head after a moment. "You know how I knew that? When I startled you just then, you didn't even start to aim that gun at me. You wouldn't shoot me, Henry. You only want to hurt yourself. Or at least, you think you want to hurt yourself right now."
The eyes met Horatio's in direct, cynical challenge. "Give me one reason to live."
Horatio took ample time to consider it. The longer he could spin this out, the more likely he could defuse the situation. "People," he offered finally.
Henry gave a hollow laugh. "They don't care about me. I'm not worth caring about."
"What about your family? Friends?"
"Haven't got any."
"Which haven't you got?"
"Either one. Family's all dead, or good as, and I buried my last real friend six months ago." His hand tightened on the gun again, lifting it off his lap, and Horatio's voice stepped smoothly into the silence.
"There have to still be people around you. Friends, coworkers, people who care."
Henry laughed again, with no humor in it at all this time. "Anybody who wastes time caring about me needs to have his head examined." His face caught slightly at the suggestion, as if hearing the echo of words spoken to him, and Horatio noticed and filed it for later use, if he could get beyond the imminent crisis. Psychiatric help would be useless until Henry put down that gun.
"What about people you care about? Is there one person in your life who's brought you sunlight? Who you've tried to bring sunlight, even once?" The thought of Madison flashed quickly through his mind, followed, oddly, by the thought of Calleigh.
Henry hesitated, torn between pain and fond memories. "Once," he conceded. The hand tightened again on the gun. "She's gone, though, long since. She doesn't need me in her life." Horatio correctly deduced that that last part referred to two different people, but the thought was lost in concern as Henry raised the gun again.
"Come on, Henry. You don't want to do this." Even in the growing urgency, his voice was smooth and low.
The challenge was flung at him again. "Why not? Don't talk to me about people. The ones who cared are dead, and the ones left don't care. I'd just hurt them anyway. I always do." The hand tightened on the gun, and Horatio steeled his muscles. The eyes always hardened right before a shot was taken, whether self-directed or against others; he'd seen it dozens of times on the streets of Miami. If he saw that expression here, he would move. Henry was watching him closely. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't pull this trigger right now."
Horatio grasped for the last straw he could think of. "Because I'm asking you not to."
The unexpectedness of the answer startled Henry into relaxing his grip slightly. "Why should you care?"
"I understand what you're going through, Henry. Believe me."
Henry shook his head. "I've heard that one before. What gives you the right to say you know what I'm going through?"
It was Horatio's turn to hesitate as his own life flooded back into the void. Finally, he drew the fishing knife from his belt, and sunlight through the trees danced on the silver blade in complex patterns as he laid it on the ground between them. Henry's eyes widened, traveling from the knife to Horatio and back. Slowly, he lowered the gun and placed it on the ground at his side.
Horatio slid over two trees, closing the distance, and they sat side by side in fragile silence, looking together down the slope. Horatio knew the battle wasn't won yet. It was surprise, not resolution, that had made Henry put the gun down, and surprise would only last so long. Henry, though, would never be the first one to speak. Horatio weighed the moment. All his life, he had been able to live fully both halves of a decision in the moment of considering it, the emotional impact and the perspective of logic at the same time, although logic was slipping of late. Faced with someone else's crisis, he had recaptured it enough to know what was needed now, even while his own battered soul cringed at the prospect. What Henry needed was for someone to build a solid bridge across the gulf of his aloneness. Suicide is the ultimate statement of isolation, and if he no longer felt alone, he could not take that shot. For Horatio, though, it would require stripping his soul naked in front of a stranger. A humorless smile twisted his lower lip. He had already lost everything but that last scrap of dignity anyway.
His voice took the plunge and started while his mind was still shying at the obstacles ahead. "When I was five years old, I remember standing out in front of our house waiting for my father to come home. My dog was with me. He heard Dad's car, and ran out to greet him. Dad swerved to miss him and hit another car head on. Both of the drivers were killed." He hesitated for a moment, gathering himself, and Henry's head came up slightly, the focus shifting just a fraction to someone else's pain.
"The dog, too?"
Horatio shook his head. "The dog was fine. Stood there barking his head off while the ambulance came." He looked down at the hands that had lost their grip on the leash, and they tightened convulsively, too late. "I tried to look after my little brother, but he always resented me. He never remembered Dad, but he knew I was a poor substitute." His voice traveled on down the winding, treacherous road of his life, his body still flinching at every curve. The murder of his mother. His own failed marriage. Ray's death. Al's death. Yelina. The team. Speed's death. Calleigh, the beautiful and unattainable. Madison, sweetness and undeserved suffering. He held nothing back except their names, not sacrificing their privacy along with his, and when he finally reached this week, the vacation, his voice was hoarse from talking but not from tears. He had no tears left in him, he felt. There was just the hollow emptiness. "So that's it." He gave a short laugh. "I can't even manage to kill myself, and I don't know why. That's probably why I couldn't give you a better reason to live. I feel like my entire life has been useless. Worse than useless. I've spent it hurting people, no matter what I did. But I can't just end it, Henry. There has to be some reason to go on, if only that I have no choice."
Henry had been increasingly captured by this recitation of loss, stunned that someone else might have an equal pain, similar feelings to his. "What's your name?" he asked.
A crooked smile half lit Horatio's face. How absurd, to have given this stranger everything he possessed except that. "Horatio," he replied, and he saw the answering faint humor in Henry's eyes.
"Thank you, Horatio." Horatio nodded, and Henry stared at his hands, then at the gun and the knife which lay side by side between them. "My father was an alcoholic," Henry started, his voice so low that Horatio had to lean over to hear. "My mother and my oldest sister died when I was 12. He beat them to death." He shuddered, the voice breaking down, and Horatio slid one hand lightly onto his shoulder, giving him the warmth of physical contact. "He would come home drunk and get violent with anyone who crossed his path. That night, I heard him come in, and I hid. I hid in the closet and hoped he wouldn't find me. I heard them, but I didn't know. It didn't sound that different. I never knew until two hours later. That's when I came out." A lonely tear trailed down his face, and Horatio did not tell him that he couldn't have prevented it, would have just added to the body count if he had come out. Henry had undoubtedly heard it many times before, and it hadn't been enough to balance the guilt. "So it was just me and my younger sister. She was 7. We went to foster care. There was another child in the home who tried to get her to play games, as he put it, one night. The foster parents found out. They sent him away. But I didn't know. I should have protected her. I never even noticed." He swallowed once. "After college, I went to work at Child Protective Services."
Horatio nodded. "Penance. It was still helping victims, though. I'm sure you've helped a lot of them."
Henry looked at him. "Like you, I guess." Horatio was startled into silence, and Henry went on after a minute. "I had a case three years ago. I removed a boy from his parents' home, and he died in foster care a few months later. I put him there." His hands clenched. "There was an investigation. The whole department, not just that case. It took months. They concluded that CPS did nothing wrong." The hands tightened until a line of blood appeared where the nails bit his palm, and Henry opened his fingers to study the thin, red line of life. "Nothing wrong. That's actually what they said, Horatio. A boy died, and they said there was nothing wrong. I tried to never miss anything again. I've given everything to that job the last three years. Nothing else mattered." He hesitated again, and Horatio pressed the hand into his shoulder more firmly, the contact speaking where no words were adequate. "Six months ago, my best friend from college died in a car accident. His wife died with him. We placed their little girl in a foster home. I checked up on her so often they filed a complaint, Horatio. Said I was living on their doorstep. I was determined not to lose that one."
Horatio caught his breath. "Did something happen to her?"
Henry shook his head. "Two of my other cases. One where we were considering removing the child. His father beat him and his mother to death in a drunken rage. My dad all over again. Another case, I had the paperwork to remove the child. He was in a car accident while I was on the way over there. If I'd gotten there a half hour earlier, he would have been safe." The tears spilled over, flooding his face now, and his voice broke. "Within one week, Horatio. Two of them, within one week, and if I'd moved faster, they would have both lived. What if I was spending too much time on my friend's daughter? The others needed help, too. I can't even trust myself at my job anymore. How much have I overlooked that I don't even know about?" The last sentence was more of a sob, and his face fell again into his hands as the shoulders shook. Horatio carefully moved the gun and the knife to the other side and completely closed the distance, holding the other man, saying nothing. He was never sure at what point he started crying too.
Even the most intense storms eventually pass. Tears slowed, and shared sobs died to silence. The two men sat looking down the slope at the beautiful, steep valley below them, the silver gleam of the lake in the distance. Finally, Henry broke the silence. "They finally made me take a medical vacation. Like you, I guess. But what do I do, Horatio? I can't go back there. I hold their lives in my hands, and I'm not worthy of it."
Horatio stared at his own hands. "I don't know, Henry. If I had the answer, I'd share it." One unfinished piece of the tale suddenly sprang out at him. "What ever happened to your younger sister?"
Henry smiled, but it quickly vanished. "She's fine. She's beautiful and successful and happy. Married to a good man. She has a daughter."
Horatio caught the change of expression. "You haven't forgiven yourself yet, have you? You hold her at a distance."
The other man picked up a stone from beside them and tossed it down the slope. "I should have protected her. She'd like to see more of me, calls me all the time. I already let so many people down, though, from my mother on. I just don't want her to get hurt again. She doesn't need me in her life."
"Shouldn't that be her decision? She's an adult," Horatio suggested.
Henry twisted to face him. "You do the same. What about that ballistics expert you told me about? Hell, what about almost everybody you told me about?"
"Touché." It was Horatio's turn to stare down the slope.
"Horatio, did anybody ever suggest that you needed to see a psychiatrist?"
He nodded. "One man, but it was just for department regulations. He didn't care as a friend. I finally went to one appointment to save the job, but I didn't really admit to much. A nightmare or two, getting better. I did try to talk to one woman once." He remembered the bitter wound when Rebecca, the one person he had really tried to open up to in the last few years, simply because she was the only one he thought was available, turned out to have totally different professional values. It had been another reinforcement of his life's lesson: Go it alone. Too much hurt, for yourself and others, otherwise.
"That bullet girl?"
"Why would she want to talk to me?" His voice trailed off, startled. "Actually, I've talked to her every night this week. She's called to find out what I did every day. Wonder what I'll tell her tonight."
Henry shook his head. "Every night while you've been gone?" Horatio nodded. "For a smart guy, Horatio, you're pretty dense. She's worried about you. Even more, she feels the same way you do."
"No. She couldn't." Horatio neatly changed the subject. "Is your sister the one who suggested you see a psychiatrist?"
"How did you know . . . "
"Something you said at first about people needing their head examined. That suggestion wasn't original, although I doubt she put it like that."
Henry smiled. "She didn't. Yes, she's asked me to, several times. But what's the point? Talking won't bring anybody back to life." He sighed, and his voice was a hollow echo as he repeated it. "What's the point?"
Horatio jumped into the silence, not wanting Henry to slip back over the ground they had gained. "I don't know, Henry. But maybe getting professional help isn't such a bad idea. Going on like this is impossible; we have to do something. Maybe we could at least try it a few times. We could always come back to the woods if it doesn't work, I guess."
Henry looked up, startled at the word. "We?"
"I'll go if you will. And believe me, I'm looking forward to it just as little."
The other man considered the pact, offered from someone like him. There actually was someone like him. He held out his hand, and Horatio shook it solemnly. "Deal, Horatio. We have to report to each other, though. So we know the other one is actually doing it."
Horatio looked at his watch. "Let's see, this is Friday. This time of day, though, we might both be out in the field. I'll call you at 6:30 a.m. every Friday. Will that work?"
"Fine. I'm on eastern time, too; I'm from North Carolina." Henry searched his pockets for a piece of paper, and Horatio found one, tore it neatly in half, and wrote his name and number on one slip, offering both pieces to Henry along with his pen. Henry wrote down his information and handed them back. The men stood up, stiff both from the slope and from the emotional storm. "Horatio," Henry said as they started back toward the road.
Horatio paused and looked down at his shorter friend. "Yes, Henry."
"You said you'd only really touched one life lately, the little girl's. You doubled your score today. You made a difference to me." Horatio was startled at the thought, but even he couldn't dispute it. "Thank you."
He touched Henry again on the shoulder. "We're even, Henry. Thank you."
Together, they walked back toward the road that would lead them once again into life.
(H/C)
He heard her voice, the southern accent deeper as it always was when she was disturbed, even before he saw her. "You don't understand. I have to find him, and I don't care what the rules for a time limit on missing persons are, or what your policy on opening that room is. I'm going to stand right here in this lobby until someone takes action, and every customer here is going to have to wait."
The clerk sighed. "Ma'am, I'll have to call the police."
Her eyes took dead aim on him. "That's exactly what I've been suggesting. Maybe they'd pay more attention to me then than they did an hour ago when I called. Now get to it."
"Calleigh," Horatio said, coming up behind her.
She whirled, crashing from frantic concern to relief in an instant and then back to concern as her eyes took inventory of him. He looked like he had slept in his clothes – or would have, if he'd looked like he had slept at all – and he had lost at least ten pounds in the week since leaving Miami. The façade had collapsed. He looked far more haggard than when he had started this enforced vacation, and the expression in his eyes was one she hadn't seen before. "Horatio, where have you been?"
The same question she had asked him every night lately. Why had she come to ask it in person, though? "I, um, took a walk."
"Since 7:30 this morning?" It was almost 5:00 p.m.
How did she know when he had left the hotel? Good detective work, as always. "A long walk. Calleigh, what on earth are you doing here?"
The clerk gave a courteous rumble behind her. "Um, ma'am, since you've found Mr. Caine, could you please let other customers through to the desk?"
Calleigh firmly captured Horatio's arm and dragged him toward the elevator. "We'll talk in your room. We'll order room service, too. Have you been eating at all, Horatio?"
He honestly didn't remember. "I guess so."
She rolled her eyes but said nothing at the moment. He followed her meekly out of the elevator and down the hall to his room, handing her the key when she pointedly held out her hand for it. While she called room service, Horatio crossed to the closet, kicked the shoes off feet that were burning from the strenuous slope work they had had that day, and removed the knife from his belt. He turned back, placing the knife neatly on the nightstand, and Calleigh's voice froze halfway through thanking the staff. She hung up the phone and came toward him, picking up the knife, unsheathing it enough to test the blade. "Horatio, what were you going to do with this?" She already knew, he saw it in her eyes, but she was too horrified to put it into words.
"I didn't use it," he assured her.
"You thought about it, though." His eyes fell before her perception, and he nodded. Calleigh put the knife down and closed the remaining distance to him with tight steps. "Horatio, why would you . . . how could you . . . why didn't you tell me?"
He looked away, unable to face her. Even after the conversation with Henry, he was afraid to read her expression, to see the pity. She turned him back with one deft hand on his chin, forcing him to see her. "Horatio, don't you know how much I care? How much we all care? Why would you even think about . . ."
"I'm not going to," he promised, trying to wipe some of the concern out of her. He was hurting her again. "I think. . . I think I need to talk to somebody, though. Professionally, I mean." The admission had been made for the first time to someone who knew him. Part of his mind at a distance wondered how Henry was doing tonight.
Calleigh studied him in concerned relief. "I can give you the name of a great psychiatrist. She's really helped me a lot lately."
Horatio's jaw dropped. "You see a psychiatrist?"
She nodded. "I have for months, since just after Speed's death. When we all had to go for counseling, I asked the department shrink for a referral to a private one." She hesitated, almost like she was gathering her courage, Horatio thought, but when had Calleigh Duquesne ever needed to bolster her courage? "Come on, Horatio. Let's sit down."
They sat down on the small couch in the room, and she turned halfway to face him. "I have all kinds of issues. You know about my father. I spent years enabling him, excusing him. I can't get in good relationships with men, because I think I only deserve losers. I hold people at a distance, because I'm afraid to appear weak. And even then, I've hurt so many people." Horatio's eyes widened at this flood of admissions. "What really seemed like the last straw, though, was Speed."
A stab of jealousy, quickly denied and suppressed, raced through him. "I didn't realize you two were seeing each other."
It was Calleigh's turn to be startled. "No, not like that. He was a friend and a coworker. Nothing romantic at all. He wasn't my type, and besides, I already had my eye on somebody else." Horatio's spirits rose and fell on the roller coaster of that statement. "But I should have checked up on his gun. I talked to him after dispo day, begged him to take care of it. I never followed up, though. I was even jumping on him for running down my crime light the day he died. That was the last thing he heard me say." She swallowed, and Horatio's hands came out automatically to cover hers. He couldn't stand to see her in pain.
"You couldn't have known, Calleigh. It wasn't your fault."
She nodded. "I realize that now. But then, it just seemed like the final failure of my life. I was wondering what use I was to anybody. It was three words from you that pulled me back from the edge, that made me think."
Horatio was puzzled. "Three words?"
"I came to you in the locker room, to give you the final report, and when you heard me behind you, you said, 'You saved me.'"
"I couldn't stand the thought of cleaning out that locker, but I couldn't leave it for someone else. You held it off a little longer. But what did I ever do for you?"
Calleigh shook her head. "You don't understand. You saved me, Horatio. I was at the point where I had even thought about going home and . . ." Her eyes flickered to the knife, then back to his. "I had told myself I never did anything but hurt people. But I had it straight from you, the best man I have ever known, that I made a difference. Those words kept me going that night, Horatio. They gave me a reason to look for help, to get with the psychiatrist."
Horatio was still attempting to process all of that statement when room service, with impeccable timing, knocked on the door. Calleigh muttered something quite unladylike under her breath and stood to let the waiter in. She tipped him, securely locked the door behind him, and carried the plates over from the wheeled cart. Horatio was still sitting stunned on the couch. "I saved you?" he repeated in wonder.
She planted a plate on his lap. "Yes. Now eat. I'll talk." He took a bite absentmindedly, his eyes riveted to her face. "I've been seeing Sheila since then, working through a lot of things. We're making progress, too. All this year, Horatio, there were little victories. Taking the keys away from my father, letting him know there were consequences instead of just being his Lambchop who would always be there to save him. Facing Hagen that day at the elevator and telling him to get lost. I know you saw that, Horatio."
"And didn't do anything," he condemned himself. "It was over before I could get there."
Calleigh smiled at him. "You know you could have gotten there faster, would have if you'd needed to. You let me deal with it, and it meant a lot to me, Horatio. Knowing you were there, too, in the lab just past the doors meant a lot to me. You did notice, Horatio. Eat." He picked the fork back up. "On that case with my father, you kept tabs on things, even though I was mad at you for Ryan at first. You were right. You checked up on me that night, too, to ask how I was before I left. Don't you see, Horatio, how much you've done for us? Eric still talks about how you stood up for him with Stetler after the accident in the lab. You're there, Horatio. You've saved all of us. You certainly saved me. Last night, when I talked to you, you sounded so lost, so hopeless. It scared me, Horatio. It reminded me of myself that night. So I thought since you saved me, I was long overdue to return the favor. I was frantic, though, afraid I couldn't get here in time. Spent the night at the airport last night waiting for the first plane I could catch." She leaned over to take the empty plate from him and set it on the floor, then firmly grasped both of his arms. "But Horatio, why did you let it get that bad? Why wouldn't you let us in? You have been a friend to us, but you won't let us be a friend to you."
He was still stuck on the first part of that thought. "I have been a friend to you? I've felt so useless, Cal."
"You have lived the most worthwhile life I've ever known." Startled, he looked at her, gauging her sincerity. "You've touched so many people for good, Horatio, so many more than have been hurt. You have no idea. And you certainly have been a friend to me. You saved me."
The idea was still numbing, but the reiteration was at least starting to sink it. "I think I'd like the name of your psychiatrist, Calleigh." He gave her a weak smile. "What did you tell the captain, by the way, when you went galloping off to Branson like the cavalry?"
"I said I had a family emergency." Her defiant chin rose slightly at his expression. "That was not a lie, Horatio. You are family."
His thoughts about Yelina from the day before abruptly came back to him. Family but not that kind of family. It would be too much to hope for, after all. But she still insisted that he had saved her, and that, at least, was something good he had done. "Calleigh, you said you already had your eye on somebody. Are you seeing him? Is it Elliott?"
She shook her head. "Elliott was nothing. Actually, it's been one of the hardest areas Sheila and I have worked on, but we're making progress. I'd even decided about a week ago that I would actually talk to him when I got a chance, see if he felt the same way."
"How did that go?" He looked away. It was only polite to ask, but he didn't really want to hear the answer.
"I'm not sure; it hasn't quite gone to script. Ask me again in 30 minutes."
His head came up, his eyes meeting hers, looking for confirmation. He found it. "You? Me?"
Calleigh took the plunge. "I love you, Horatio. I have for years, and I've even admitted it to myself since the day of the sniper case. But even if you don't feel the same way, don't ever think you haven't been a friend. You've been the best friend of my life."
His velvet voice fell on her ears like a benediction. "I love you, too." Her muscles, tight with anticipation and fear, relaxed. "But I still don't think I'm good enough for you."
She put a finger across his lips, silencing him. "Then we're even, Handsome. I'll help you get in to see Sheila, see if she can work in an extra appointment soon. You aren't supposed to go back yet, though. Doctor's orders. Think you could share the last half of your vacation?" She was afraid to leave him just yet, even if she had wanted to.
He smiled at her, a full smile this time. "It hasn't been much of a vacation so far. Having you here, though, would make up for the first half."
Their lips met on the promise.
(H/C)
"You are now entering the largest cave entrance room in America." The guide stepped back, letting the group through the door. Horatio and Calleigh were among the first in, and while they were still caught in wonder at nature's spectacle below them, a hand tapped Horatio's shoulder in the dim light. He turned.
"Henry. How's it going?"
Henry's eyes met his directly. "Going okay. I'd like you to meet my sister, Horatio. Melinda Sanders, Horatio Caine."
Horatio pulled Calleigh up fully beside him. She had stepped back slightly out of the reunion when Horatio first spoke. "This is Calleigh Duquesne. We work together." His arm around Calleigh's shoulders made it clear that work was not the total of the relationship, either.
The tour guide oozed politely through the crowd. "This is the Cathedral Room," he started, and all attention returned to the cave as he rattled off the impressive dimensions.
Horatio's breath tickled Calleigh's ear as he spoke softly. "Just think, all of this, and no support anywhere. Amazing, isn't it?"
Calleigh's arm tightened around his waist. "It has lots of support, Horatio. Everything around it is holding it up. It just hasn't noticed yet."
He studied the soaring space, then bent to give her a quick kiss. "I'll bet someday soon, it will."