Disclaimers: All characters from CSI: Miami are property of CBS. I own nothing connected with CBS or with CSI: Miami, I don't know anyone connected with CBS or with the show. I gain nothing from posting these stories save self satisfaction.

Title: Mutual Valor

Pairing: Horatio Caine/OC

Rating: NC 17 I know, 'M' is an accepted rating, but this is just in case you don't know, this is what 'M' means. This is not only for sexual content, but also for violence and references to sexual child abuse well.

Spoilers: There are references to previous episodes through fourth season.

Challenge: For you true experts on all CSI: Miami, the J's I use for story breaks, and the Sorority House, are references to one episode in particular. It will be up to you to figure out which episode and why I used the lines of J's.

Comments: Both negative and positive comments are always appreciated. I learn from the negative and enjoy the positive.

Thank you: Many thanks to my betas, Elena and Tonie. If not for you, this would have been a mess! I am truly grateful for your efforts.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Summary: Story: Sometimes the rescuer becomes the rescued.

Chapter 1: Horatio Caine has had a very bad day. His neighbor comes to help.

Chapter 1:

Horatio Caine stumbled through his front door and slammed it behind him. He walked blindly ahead, heedlessly tossing his keys in the general direction of the kitchen counter, and continued through the sparsely decorated living room to the sliding glass patio door. As if resentful of the barrier, he shoved the door open with a force that threatened to remove it from its track, and blundered obliviously onto the large balcony and, if not for the low wall at the end, he might well have walked straight off the fourth floor. Unable to continue his preoccupied journey, he stood, mindlessly, rhythmically bludgeoning the palm of one hand against the six-inch metal guardrail at his chest, while the other gripped at the metal tightly enough to peel off the coat of white paint, as he fought and failed, against unseen forces. His unseeing eyes, directed somewhere above the late afternoon horizon, flickered back and forth, as if at passing landscapes. Each breath he took was a deep, gulping gasp, and each exhale was complete, as if to expel some horrifying murk dwelling deep within.

At first, he hadn't even heard her inquiries—not because of the quiet shushurring of the ocean waves on the beach below—but rather because of the thundering in his brain. He barely felt the touch of her hand, still on his shoulder. Her tone of voice, when he finally heard it, indicated she had already repeated his name several times. "Horatio? What is it? Horatio? Talk to me, please!"

His mind's flight unhindered, he turned and, looked down to his neighbor's pale, oval face, full of alarmed concern. Manuela de la Rojas, Mannie to most of her friends, had apparently come through the gate that separated their patios. 'What,' he wondered briefly, 'was she doing here? Why was she here?' He could hardly even see her through the haze of the visions that were overwhelming him.

Oh! How he would have liked to pull himself out of this ghastly state of mind, to switch gears, to be able to lightly say, "Oh, just a little distracted, I guess," but there was just no way to do that, not right now. Though able to stop pounding the rail, he was now gripping it as tightly as with his other hand. Looking back to the ocean, he felt compelled to just let it out, to spew it just as it had happened, hoping, by doing so, to get rid of it.

"Bad day, Manuela, I've had," his voice shook breathlessly, "a really bad day."

Since they'd met, just four months ago, she had never seen him like this. Horatio's voice, commonly a captivating sixty cycle hum, a calm purr that was always warm and smooth, was now erratic, almost quavering, with a nervous patter that reminded her of the sound of a machine gun. She recognized the sight of a man at the breaking point.

Her head barely came to the top of his shoulder, so she had to lean into the rail to look up into his face. "Yes?" she inquired, hoping to learn more.

"I lost a kid this morning. That kidnap victim." Once he started, he couldn't stop. "We got a lead on the kidnapper and when we got there…" The vision of what he had witnessed played out again across his memory. "He had the boy on the bed and he was strangling him while he was…" He again saw that vermin, pants down to his knees, sprawled over the boy, holding a bunched-up rag over his face.

"He went for a gun and I had a clear shot." The thunder from the gun was bright and world filling, stopping time, but not for long enough. The mind numbing explosion from the muzzle, useful only in that it propelled a missile bent on traveling as far as possible, no matter what the obstacle, did its job, but too late.

"He went down and I went to help the boy…" He remembered the macabre sound of the boy's struggles to pull air into his lungs through a crushed larynx, the look of the child in his arms, the terrified expression, the contortion of his eleven-year-old features, the spasms of the small body in his arms. The brain, too long deprived of oxygen, was already shutting down. "It was too late. We—I was too late!" Horatio's face was a portrait of the shock, grief, and anger he couldn't seem to fully express.

No words were strong enough to express Manuela's dismay at what she was hearing. Weakly she answered, "Oh, no! Oh, Horatio, how awful for you!"

Agony, which had laid its cold cloak on his face, drawing his, lips back into a grimace, entered his voice, and tore at his words. "No, Manuela, awful for the child. His last seconds on earth were looking into the face of the man who failed him."

Seizing the boy's head, he had tried to force air into the bleeding mouth, heedless of the awkward position. He had called out to the child, begged him to not give up, pleaded with him to try to take just one more breath, told him he'd make it all better, that no one would ever hurt him again. He'd held the naked child on his lap and had put one hand under his back, the other on his chest, had pumped, and squeezed, knowing it was all wrong, knowing the young brain was fading, knowing it was hopeless, unable to stop himself. "He died! A child died! I couldn't stop him from dying because I didn't get there in time! He died looking at me, knowing the truth! I tried to save him!" Horatio sounded as if he were pleading for it not to be true.

Those last few minutes of that disastrous rescue effort were running through his head over and over in an endlessly looped replay—crashing through the door, sighting the man over his gun, seeing him freeze an instant before reaching for a pistol on the night stand, shouting, "No! No!" firing, everyone shouting and running around him while he went to check for a pulse he had known wouldn't exist, turning immediately to see the quivering boy on the bed, the look on the child's face, the look! –and then it would start again.

Horatio's eyes hunted the corners of the patio as if seeking aid. "We drove there as fast as we could. There were two flights of stairs. If only we had been able to arrive five minutes earlier, just five minutes… I tried so hard… I killed a man to save an innocent child, who still suffered and died! I tried… I tried…" His voice faded while his eyes flicked about, reading the images only he could see. The feeling of hopelessness overtaking him, he turned and leaned again into the railing to use the horizon as a backdrop for his nightmares.

He couldn't remember much of those next few hours, knew the paramedics and a police officer must have scuffled with him to take the child out of his grasp, had held him back while they had done everything in their power to revive him. Then, when he'd followed them all downstairs, hoping yet to help, one of the EMT's had lost patience and told him roughly to 'Get out of here, go sit!' and pointed to a radio car.

He didn't really remember going upstairs again, partly in an effort to do his job as a criminalist, mostly to make sure the animal he'd dispatched wasn't getting up, was dead. He did not recall that, when he'd entered the room, how the recent events hit him with such power that he'd been backed against the wall, pinned like an insect on display, unable to move.

Of course, the brass had been informed immediately—primarily about his behavior—and they'd sent someone from the Internal Affairs Bureau, as protocol demanded. He had been relieved of his weapon, duly informed of the usual temporary suspension of duty, and told to go home and 'rest.' He didn't remember walking down the stairs, didn't remember getting into the Hummer, nor remember how he had gotten home.

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Manuela, off work unusually early that day, had heard the peculiar noise coming from outside, an odd, flat sort of thrumming, nothing like the usual clamor from the beach below. Her curiosity piqued, she first paused at the patio door trying to identify the sound and its direction, even looking to the sky. Finally, she'd gone outside to the edge of her small balcony, peering over, then between the thick pipes that served as guardrails supported by the balusters of concrete, but saw nothing unusual. Only when she looked to the right had she realized the noise was coming from her neighbor, who was slapping at the pipes so hard it was causing them to reverberate.

She'd called out to him, thinking maybe she'd tease him about the odd music he was making but, getting no reaction, she had figured the usual din of the outside world was drowning her lightweight voice. Only when she had moved closer did she catch the haunted expression on his face.

Part of the reason her life had taken its course was that Manuela was innately programmed to respond to distress. She'd been like that as a child and, in spite of everything, had not changed. Though she still had some qualms about even visiting this handsome neighbor of hers, she didn't think twice this time about opening the gate between the two patios.

In the five months since moving here, Manuela had never seen this man out on his patio other than in casual dress, usually leaning against the rail, gazing out at the ocean, or relaxing in one of the matched pair of chaise lounges. Now, he was still in the dress shirt and black suit he always wore for work, and most noticeably, he was standing as electrically erect, agonizingly stiff as a robot. Those were her first clues that something was terribly wrong here.

Now, having listened to the pain in his broken voice, she knew that he was in serious, desperate trouble, and needed help out of this downward spiral, or he, perhaps, might never recover. She also knew that she could help, but the problem was she would only be able to do it one way, and first, she would have to put aside her long resolve that she would never do such a thing again.

From leaning forward, looking into his face, she stood back, trying to come to a decision. She reminded herself it would be okay, that, this time, she was doing this of her own volition; that he was in desperate need, so she took a deep breath and whispered, "Horatio," and as she'd expected, received no reaction. He continued to stare, without seeing, out to the horizon. She leaned forward and put her lips to the back of his left hand, pulling gently at his wrist to release his fierce grip. The act of kissing so surprised him, she easily pulled his hand away from the bar, and slipped under his arm to stand in front of him. "Horatio, my friend," she whispered as she looked up into his grief-stricken face, "I'm here. I am here for you and I am going to help you."

The CSI Lieutenant looked down, and was so helplessly caught up into the hazel brown depths of Manuela's eyes, that he barely felt her small hands reach up to the back of his head to pull him down to her lips. Oddly, the kiss was not sexually inviting, but was wonderfully reassuring, comforting. He pulled back to look again into those eyes, finding the same reassurance. Where before, the visions of the day had been horror movies on replay, now Manuela was standing in the forefront of the whole mess, obscuring it all. He had no idea what was going on, didn't care, was just glad she was there.

Having only an inkling of the process in Horatio's mind, but not releasing his gaze, Manuela casually reached over to release his right hand from the rail, using it as a lever to pull him around, and then drawing it across her shoulder. "Come, my friend, come with me, okay?" Speaking quietly, unconsciously using the old formal terms she'd been taught so long ago, she put her arm around his waist and, as if supporting him, led him inside to the bedroom.

He could never quite recall how it happened—he thought he remembered that she kept murmuring little reassuring phrases, words of gentle encouragement such as, "Just put this here, like so," and "now we'll remove this," and, "ah, good, see, you will be more comfortable this way,"—and then he was in bed, naked, and so was she.

Nor did he recall how she had held him gently, his head resting on her shoulder, patting him, kissing his hair and quietly whispering, "Now rest, my dear friend. Maybe tomorrow won't be so hard. I believe in you. You are a good man. Today was so awful for you. Rest, now." Nor did the recesses of his mind ever contain how, in the lowering darkness, in the quiet peace of his bed, Manuela's voice soothing him, one of his large hands laying gently on the softness of her hip, his mind began to shut down and finally, slept.

Years ago, in those disturbing days, Manuela had been forced to do this many times, but unfortunately, those sessions hadn't been quite as easy; much more had been demanded of her. Still, they had all ended in the same way, the man falling asleep so deeply, so completely, that she knew without a doubt, he would not wake until morning.

Thus, when she heard that first, deep sigh, felt his head go heavier on her shoulder, indicating Horatio was asleep, she didn't hesitate to twist herself gently from under the weight, something she would not have dared to do back then. Just to be sure, she watched him carefully as she quickly dressed, turned out the light and left, leaving the bedroom door slightly ajar.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, she stood a moment in the living room, very aware she was trembling. She'd done it and was glad, but now her ghosts were awakened, and were stirring up some very cold memories. Why, she berated herself, had she undressed, too? Why had she taken that risk? She'd had to do it before, but certainly did not have to this time! Perhaps, she reasoned with herself, it had been because she was unsure of how far she'd have to go before she could stop the deterioration of Horatio's mind. She'd relied on her experience and her understanding of what was going on with him and had only prepared for the extreme, just in case, and, fortunately, she hadn't had to take it that far. Well, no use second-guessing herself, now that it was over.

She considered staying by her 'charge,' and sleeping on the couch, which glimmered in the light of the third quarter moon from the open patio door, then chided herself for wanting to take care of an adult male who was very much asleep. She shook herself and strode out to the gate to her own place. She wasn't going to get much sleep anywhere, so she might as well be comfortable in familiar, safe, territory.

A few hours later she was back, sitting on his couch, watching the sunrise, planning her next steps in helping her neighbor. Looking in on him and being reassured by the heavy snoring, she sat down in the corner of the couch to think. She had created that break he'd needed between those awful visions and him and had gotten him to sleep, and that was step one. Next, avoiding his innate responses to last night would be a hurdle, but she could handle that, she hoped. After that, well, the next steps would, she hoped, be easier.

Waiting for him to wake, she began to consider what might have precipitated this near disaster for him: from previous conversations, she'd sensed that, for some time now, he'd been on the edge of some sort of an emotional break. He'd worriedly referred to the constant pressure from superiors at the Lab to take on more cases, to find the solutions faster or to suffer reprimands, which, apparently for him, was as unforgivable as personal failure.

On top of that, she learned that he was driven hard by severe internal mandates; one seemed to command he help wherever there was need, to give of himself beyond reason; another, that he track down all criminals at any cost to himself, unquestionably prove their guilt, and be satisfied only when they were locked away. To meet these dictums he apparently worked every hour of every day, seldom taking even one day off.

Though she had admired him for his strength, she wondered how it was possible to give and give without a toll, and even remarked about it on one occasion, but had gotten silence and a distant look in return. She had finally concluded that these revelations were very unusual for the man who seemed so private, so self-contained, so strong, but were signs of cracks in his usually protective covering. Finally, those burdens, and now this gruesome tragedy, had combined into an emotional ax, hacking at his core, threatening to shred his sanity.

Then she went on to wonder how and where she had found the strength to do what she had just done. Years ago, one of her therapists had recommended taking psychology courses so that she could give names to what she had been forced to do, so long ago. "You'll gain new perspective about that part of your life, for sure, and besides, if you can identify a monster, it becomes more familiar and less fearsome." And the advice had proven to be sound; the classes she'd taken had made her past seem almost interesting, had made some of the ugliness she'd been through seem more like some sort of an accomplishment, and, while still not okay, at least easier to live with. She'd put names to the evils, made peace with them and put them, more or less, to rest.

Now, of course, she was going to have to deal with those evil spirits, find some way to bury them again. Taking a deep breath, accepting her actions as her own, she started to work.