Crews POV

Ride your horse along the edge of a sword - hide yourself in the middle of flames.... --Zen saying

Charlie was reading Zen and thinking anything but…

He was thinking about the horse he bought Jen on what would have been – should have been – their fifteenth wedding anniversary – if were they still married.

And he was thinking about how very different her reaction to the horse was - than he had hoped.

When they were young, before he hid himself in the middle of flames, Jen had wanted the horse - and she had wanted him. She wanted those things with the exuberance of an innocent, young woman – almost still a girl. Now despite her current (and former) husband's wealth and the trappings of a good life, Jen was a jaded as he – as damaged from his experience as Charlie - even though she didn't go to prison.

Losing Charlie, giving up on him, was like losing her faith and her innocence and it was something she might never regain. Sure her life continued, but not the same way - with the same belief or the same innocence. Jen's view of the world, life and her part in it - became fractured, discolored, dingy and bent. In ways, it made her as damaged as him, but Jen hid her damage behind the veneer of social acceptability. She had all the trappings of a happy life, a rich husband, two perfect kids, a nice home and it was hollow and empty, not real at all - in some ways.

It was a perverted version of the fairytale she believed in before - before Charlie went to prison - before she put those divorce papers in the mail - before she deserted the first and perhaps only man she ever truly loved.

At first he wanted to hate Jen. She deserted him when he needed her. She didn't believe in him when he needed her most. He should hate her – but Charlie found that he couldn't.

He found that hating Jen took away all that he clung to that was good and decent and worth living for. And then for awhile when he got out, he tried so hard to go back.

Back to Jen, back to their real - but fragile, love affair - back to what they used to be – when they used to be "them". But you can't go back – you can only go forward.

Now there was no "them" - only Charlie and Jen - but not together - not anymore. There is no past, no future, only now.

But his now did not include Jen – nor the horse and still he hid in the flames.

Holding onto his past was like unto holding a fist full of water – impossible and you could watch yourself fail at it.

"Knowledge is learning something new everyday. Wisdom is letting go of something everyday." ---Zen saying

Charlie examined his now and what (or more precisely) - who - was in it. An endless string of beautiful women traipsed in and out of the mansion. Ted his good friend and confidant frequently pointed the benefits of this lifestyle, but Charlie was at heart, and that had never changed - a one woman man. Jen was not his anymore, Connie wasn't either – she was married and he simply wouldn't cross that line. If he did, she would be neither his nor her husband's - his brain simply didn't work that way. When he tried to go back with Jen, it was because he still believed she was his. And Charlie for all the evil that had befallen him - was at his simple, most basic, a man who believed that one man and one woman could be the whole world to each other.

The only other woman in his life was Dani Reese and she was … complex, angry, beautiful, exotic, intoxicating and underneath he suspected very frightened, but put on a tough act and put up one helluva good fight. Charlie saw the act for what it was, a complicated defense mechanism, a highly evolved way of holding the world at bay. He recognized it because he employed one too – Charlie's was cool, blue Zen and Dani's red hot anger. Maybe together they could arrive at a place where neither of their worlds were artificially colored in an unnatural hue.

Charlie quite unexpectedly found he wanted to earn her trust, to get under that layer of armor, to be close to Dani Reese in a way that frightened him. This young woman was forbidden fruit to him, Jack Reese's daughter, but not her father – not at all. She was so very different and he found that it was Reese he wanted to connect with. She was his now and maybe she was his series of connected "nows", the future he didn't believe in, his forever - even if not happily ever after.

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Reese POV

"No matter how fast a man is - he can not outrun his shadow." -- East African saying

Dani tried to remember the last time she was truly happy; when she last had faith - in the goodness of people and held a belief that her life was full of promise.

She wondered about people who harkened back to the halcyon days of childhood. Childhood no special promise or goodness for her; Dani was the only daughter of a misogynistic father, one for whom she could never be good enough, because she wasn't the son he wanted and she spent the better portion of her life trying to measure up to an unattainable standard.

Let's face it she thought. Kids have all the same trials and tribulations adults do. You have a problem with a ham fisted boss who seems incapable of not putting his paws on you in the workplace and a ten year old gets bullied on the playground by some punk whose soul attribute is size. It really didn't change; bullies were every where and every when.

Christ, when did she get so freakin' introspective? Crews…this was his fault. She was completely content in hating the world at large – anger was a coping mechanism – until Crews showed up with his god damned Zen.

Dani Reese was a pedigreed LAPD police officer. The daughter of cop royalty, Jack Reese, Captain of the Department SWAT Team and it got her what? Hateful looks, sneers and locker room talk. She guessed she was lucky; most women in the department were rumored to have gained rank because they'd slept their way to the top. Most of the men in the department were incapable of admitting a woman could hold their own with male officers or (god forbid) be better cops than they were. She knew she was a good cop, it was in her blood. She grew up in police gyms, around police men and their unique blend of sarcasm and cynicism coupled with a need to help those less fortunate permeated her soul.

The rumors about her were mild by comparison…until she'd gone undercover. The draw of the drugs to help her forget was powerful and once she found out they could take away the pain for awhile, well…that was just too good to pass up. But coming back after, well...that had been its own special season in hell.

When she got sober enough to realize what she'd lost, she had even more reason to escape, but no where to escape to and no way to get there.

So anger became her tool, to keep the world at large at an arm's length. Until Charlie Crews came right up and literally wrapped his arms around her.

She remembered him doing it, the very first day they met; suddenly being there – inside her space, towering over her and draping his long, lean body around hers. The faint scent of Crews expensive cologne, the feel of his shirt against her cheek and the warmth of his body too close to her; she pushed him away before she fell into a much needed protective circle and got lost in the strength and warmth of his embrace.

Crews reached out to her, when everyone else let her push them away. What the hell was that? Why would he do that? He was so hopeful, so positive, despite all he'd been through. Why try to connect with her– the one person who was so very rigidly determined not to connect to him?

Crews was impossible to reason with and most days to understand. She found however, he was also simply impossible to resist and his mood was infectious. And allthough she never let the influence he had on her, cross her carefully schooled features; his mood buoyed hers, despite her studied indifference and carefully rehearsed scowl. Crews, for his part, simply refused to acknowledge her anger, to buy into it and after awhile she stopped feigning "it" with him.

"You can not be other than what you are – but what you are – be that completely".

Damn him… she could still hear those stupid Zen sayings even when he wasn't there.

Those god damned Zen tapes of Crews; the ones he snuck into the car when she was distracted. She even tried to trading their unmarked for one without a tape deck just to spite him, but knowing Crews - he'd have found a way to play them anyway, perhaps even recite them to her, while she gritted her teeth and tried to resist the impulse to strangle him.

Crews awakened in her a desire to understand – many things: what motivated her, what motivated him and other more nebulous matters. She found that primarily by contrasting what happened to him with what happened to her, she still could not understand...grasp or appreciate how he could be so….so god damned Crews.

Both experienced something that rocked them to their foundations, something that eroded not only their faith in others but also – more elementally - their faith in themselves. She had begun to realize she could not restore her faith in others - that only her faith in herself could be restored – and the power to do that rested entirely within Dani. Crews taught her this and his ability and desire to trust her, made her begin to trust herself.

Life is like an hourglass – consciousness is the sand."

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"Reese" he began exactly ninety seconds into their trip. She was quite frankly amazed he'd lasted that long without launching into some probing but inane non-sequitur, which only hours after their conversation would make any sense to her at all. But then Crews said nothing and Reese peered over her sunglasses to inquire with her eyebrows. Their non-verbal conversation had by now developed to the point where actual speech became redundant at times.

His eyes smiled back at her, blue like a haze less autumn sky. When his eyes were this color, trouble was brewing, because it meant Crews was in an exceptionally ebullient mood. She sighed knowing he was about to do something that would try her patience and tried very hard to look stern. When he grinned, she couldn't contain a small smile and a questioning "what?" in response.

"Do you ever think about us?" he asked suddenly.

Thrown into a spin by the implication of his question, she stammered another "what?" and stared pointedly at him, her face locked in a quizzical – did he really just say that? -expression.

As it dawned on Charlie, what he'd said and what it implied, he tried to place it in context and back away from the personal implication it held. "Oh, not like us in a "you and me" kind of way….but you and me - in a how did you and me end up together – and when I say together – I don't mean "together" together…. just here at the same time….partnered together…. Do you think that …."us" …."we" were incidental, accidental or intentional… you know placed….together? "

Then he continued his tone lower almost as an aside "Or maybe we were just meant to be together? Not that "we" are "together" together, but here we are now, here, together…." Crews sputtered to a stop after exhausting his internal dialogue, ending looking as if he'd just confused himself and talked himself in a circle, ending where began - with the very personal implication.