Summary: Lindsay in Montana. Danny in New York. What else is new? Based on selected lyrics from Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes.
AN: This angsty bit came to me as I watched Meredith Grey come back from death. I like Chapter 2 - Danny's POV - better. Breeze through this one and read Danny's. I think I understand him better.
Disclaimer: Do we really have to do this? Ok. CSI NY Characters not mine. Peter Gabriel's song not mine. I'm just a poor student.
Lost
Love, I get so lost, sometimes
days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
I was lost. Confused. Scared. I was devastated. When I got the call, I stood him up. Those next few days, I know I withdrew into myself. Stella was worried. Hawkes was worried. He was worried. But my friends were supportive. I even got a hug from Mac before I left.
But the phone call… it changed everything. It wiped away any trace of who I was in New York. It brought back the person I was in Bozemon. The empty shell of a person who only went through the motions of living, and who had eventually run. Run away from Montana to a new place. To a new life. To all kinds of things that were not possible in Montana. But possible in New York.
New York. Where I remembered how to laugh again. He had made me laugh. I'd almost started over. I was almost whole again.
when I want to run away
I drive off in my car
Then the call. All my emotions, all my memories, had come rushing back. Flooding through me so forcefully that I couldn't even stand. My shaking legs dropped me to the floor. I was in physical pain as I remembered. And it wasn't just the old war wounds. This pain radiated throughout my entire body. All my senses heightened, reacting and retching, as I relived it.
The sound of the key in the lock, the smell of the pizza being reheated. Seeing the house completely dark. The cold, sinking sensation – the realization that something was incredibly wrong. An arm jutting out from behind the couch, smears of blood along three fingers. The sound of the keys hitting the wood floor. The bitter taste of adrenaline. A sudden shift in the patch of moon light dancing on the floor, a muffled noise to my left. And then the searing pain…
Oh my God, the pain.
And then darkness. A darkness that enveloped me, held me, comforted me. A darkness I welcomed. A darkness that I knew I didn't want to wake from. The darkness offered solace. An escape. Away from the devastation that I didn't want to know. But I did, I knew. Even as the darkness faded into light, the incessant beeping of the heart monitor brought me to the numbing realization that I was no longer me. That I was now someone else entirely. And this someone had pain that wouldn't ever go away. No matter how much I tried to forget it.
The call. It all came back. I had spent the night on the floor, crying for my friends. For myself. My warm, tear-stained face pressed against the cold of the linoleum. And when dawn brought the new day, I was again, an empty shell of a person. There was no more to feel. There were no more tears to be shed.
It had made me feel so empty. So empty. Even my voice was hollow. I could hear it. Once more, I forgot me. I lost the me that had just started living again. So much so, that I had been unable to say goodbye to the person who single-handedly brought me back from the brink. I couldn't say goodbye to him. Instead, I had run. Again. And I know, this time, while I was running toward something, I was running away from something too. I know that now.
But then? No. Then, I didn't even know how to say goodbye.
All this introspective bullshit came later.