Title: Claire
Chapter 1 - Ghosts
Summary: It'a just another day on the job until Mac meets with the unexpected and discovers the unbelievable at a crime scene: Claire is alive.
A/N: Okay, I confess, I'm a serious Smacked fan - but this was just begging to be played with. After hearing about the sad news regarding Melina Kanakaredes's contract (and just about choking on the awful Mac pairings in the later half of S6), I started thinking about the only other person I could possibly ever bear to see with Mac. Try to give it a chance and let me know what you think - good or bad, I'd love to know. (This is my first time posting a CSI:NY fic here, so be gentle, 'kay? :)
Content Warning: I'm not accustomed to posting for triggers, BUT since the upcoming chapters will, at least in part, be dealing with scenes from the aftermath of September 11th, I figured I should give fair warning. In short, if you are sensitive to the events surrounding that day (which is understandable) and find it traumatic, I suggest you don't continue reading - or at least skip over certain parts. (I promise, it's not all that graphic.) Also: the T rating applies for sexualized situations in later chapters and some entertaining cursing laced throughout. ;)
Disclaimer: I don't own, I don't make money, and I am poor-but if you'd like to take my student loan interest payments off my hands, I'd be more than happy to give them to you. :) CSI: NY and and its characters belong to CBS and Jerry Bruckheimer.
The Avalanche pulled up to Iggy's Pop & Pie; the yellow police tape surrounding the sea-foam tiled diner glowed eerily under the street lights and lightly falling snow. Detective Mac Taylor followed the taped crime scene perimeter with his eyes, realizing that the first responders had cordoned off an entire city block in the ever-busy theater district.
"Big crime scene." Mac noted to his partner, Stella Bonasera, with an amused smile tugging on his lips as he pulled the keys from the ignition and opened his door. The air was crisp and new with the snow fall, overcoming the usual, slightly humid and metallic smell of the city. Mac took a deep breath of the not-quite frigid air and glanced up at the small, white flakes floating down from the dark sky. It would be Christmas soon.
"Big crime?" Stella quickly smiled back before opening her own door and making her way to the back of the truck to grab her kit. In front of them, Mac saw Detective Donald Flack wave while walking at a quick pace towards them from the front of the diner.
"'Bout time the two of you showed up!" Don called out as he bent down under the police tape and exited the crime scene. Mac gave him a quick nod of acknowledgment. "What happened? Get stuck on 41st again?"
"Nope." Stella shook her head. Mac quietly accepted the kit she handed to him, watching with amusement as his partner flashed the younger detective an impish smile. "42nd."
"Geez." Don rolled his eyes. "Well, Hawkes already beat you to it."
Mac nodded again and took a closer look at their surroundings, noticing the third Avalanche at the far end of the perimeter.
"Isn't that Danny's truck?"
"Yeah. He and Lindsay are in there." Flack gestured with his head towards the diner and then pointed up the street. "You know, they live a couple of blocks up that way—they showed up after I called it in. Apparently, they know the owner."
"Iggy, I presume?" Stella quipped as she led the way under the police tape and through the perimeter.
"Yep, that's the one." Don laughed. "He makes a killer pie, you know? Remember that pecan pie Linds brought around for Thanksgiving? Well, this is—"
"Don." Mac interrupted the young man, eye brows slightly raised. "The crime scene?"
"Right, crime scene." It was hard to tell in the cold air under the yellow streetlights, but Mac thought he could discern a slight coloring of the young detective's cheeks. "Well, all I can say is it's a good thing Danny and Lindsay did show up, 'cause this one covers a lot of ground." Don looked at them and gestured widely at the diner.
Mac looked again at the scene, committing every detail to memory. He noticed several officers posted at the entrance of the diner, and he could just make out the profile of Danny Messer through the window; it looked as though the young CSI was talking with someone, but Mac couldn't see who. Looking back at the outside, he followed a path of footprints in the snow from the door to the street curb. There was a gold Honda Civic impaled on the corner of the diner to his right, surrounded by paramedics and a medical response unit. To the left, a dark blue utility van had run up onto the curb and slammed into a post office box.
Mac leaned down and picked up a letter from beneath his shoe. It was an old air mail envelope with blue and red stripes bordering the edges. In the careful, hesitant writing of a young child, the mailing address read: "Mr. Santa Clause, The North Pole, The Arctic." Looking up again, Mac realized that the entire street was covered in letters that had exploded from the mail box on impact.
"Don, someone's going to have to collect these." He handed the letter to him with a smile. "We need to make sure they don't get lost."
"On it." Don winked at him and turned around, waving at one of the uniformed police men guarding the perimeter. "Yo, Ramirez! Grab a bag—you're gonna play mail man tonight. We wanna make sure these letters make it to the North Pole, or there are going to be some very unhappy kiddies on Christmas morning."
Turning back to Mac and Stella, Don flashed them both a smile before pulling out his notes.
"So, you two wanna know what happened, or you just here for a slice of pie?"
Mac smirked at the young detective's enthusiasm and bent down to get a closer look at a collection of skid marks in the snow.
"I thought it was our job to tell you what happened?" Stella teased the tall man.
"Indulge me."
"Okay, Detective." Mac stood up and looked at Don with a faint smile. "What happened here?"
"Thought you'd never asked." Flipping open the notebook, Mac watched Don quickly school his features. Now it was down to business. "So, according to the one and only Iggy—known better to his dearly departed mother as Isaiah Compton—these two punks come rushing in waving guns just as the after-theater crowd is settling in for an evening cuppa joe and slice. They were wearing ski masks but one of the other witnesses, the owner's daughter, says that she saw a bulldog tattoo on one of the guy's arms."
Mac raised his eyebrows. "Bulldog?"
"Yeah, like I said, punks." Flack shook his head. "So they come in looking for the usual: cash, jewelry, mp3 players, cell phones… you know. But Mr. Bulldog gets jumpy and then one of the customers sneezes, so he shoots the poor guy in the chest. Punk Number Two freaks out, yelling and firing his gun at the ceiling. Together they make a B-line for the van and the geniuses pull out into oncoming traffic. According to witnesses on the street, they almost ran into one car, which ended up slamming into the side of the diner; then they lost control and plowed into that mailbox over there."
The three detectives had reached the entrance to the diner. Inside, Mac could see Danny standing over a small booth with his wife, Lindsay, sitting in a chair next to him—both were talking to an older man sitting in the booth. He could be no younger than sixty and he had wispy white hair and a round potbelly; he reminded Mac of Archie Bunker.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mac noticed a flash of red. Looking at the far end of the diner, Mac caught a glimpse of a woman with short brown hair wearing a long-sleeved burgundy shirt and cut-off shorts disappear into the back room. For the briefest of moments, Mac felt his heart skip in recognition, knowing that what he saw couldn't be and certainly wouldn't be true.
It was nine years after her death and yet Claire still haunted him; a face in the crowd crossing a busy street or a snatch of conversation overheard as he passed by the entrance to the subway. Mac always looked for her, knowing he wouldn't find her. Scientifically, he knew it was a momentary misfiring of chemicals in his brain, neurons and receptors tripping up for the briefest of seconds, that led him to these moments of déjà-vu. Tonight was just another ghost moment.
"Mac?" Stella's voice cut through his distraction and he refocused on his partner.
"Sorry," he nodded in slight apology. "So, what happened to the robbers?"
Don huffed, shaking his head yet again.
"Would you believe the idiots got away? Witnesses report seeing two men in dark clothes and ski masks exiting the van and running east, away from the scene. We've tried to track them down but with the snow…" Flack's voice trailed off in frustration.
Mac nodded and smiled at his friend's obvious disappointment. "We'll find them. How's the vic?"
"You mean the guy in the diner? He's stable." The detective nodded. "It was a sloppy shot but the EMFs patched him up. Hawkes got a good look at him and said he thinks he'll be fine. The guy driving the other car should be okay, too, though I know I'd be pissed if that were my car wrapped around the side of a diner like a horseshoe."
"Well, that's good news at least. That they'll be okay, I mean." Stella smiled, looking on the bright side of things. Mac nodded but looked at Don curiously; surely the detective hadn't called the head of the crime lab and his team for a simple robbery, though he would admit that it was refreshing to not find himself craning over a dead body with blood pooling at his feet.
"And you called us because..." He waited for Don to finish the statement.
"Oh, sorry!" Don flashed him a quick smile. "I thought you people worked with crime scenes, my mistake."
"Don." Mac reproached the young man and shook his head, grinning despite himself. "This isn't a homicide or a high profile case—why are we here?"
"Yeah, yeah." Don sheepishly looked at the both of them. "Just don't kill me, okay?"
"I don't like the sound of this." Stella rubbed her hands together, giving a brief glance back up at the sky. "And hurry it up, the snow's coming down harder."
"Fine." Don huffed and looked apologetically at Mac. "You know the vic who was shot, the one who sneezed and got a chest full of lead instead of a 'god bless you'? Turns out he's Sinclair's godson."
Mac ground his teeth at the mention of the Chief of Police's name. When he got back to the office he was going to put a call into the man and make it clear that his team and his lab did not simply serve at the Chief's convenience, but in the pursuit of the greater good and fair justice in the great city of New York. And it was a big city; crime never stopped. Surely he should be somewhere else, solving a more important crime. No, he reminded himself as he tried to control his rising anger, crime is crime. This is the Job.
"So here we are." His voice was tight but resigned. There was nothing left for him but to process and solve the case as quickly as possible, for his own sanity as much as for Sinclair's benefit. Mac offered Don a small smile that wasn't much more than a grimace, trying to reassure the man that he understood the situation.
"Exactly." Stella huffed in frustration and looked around again. "So, partner, inside or out?"
Mac considered her question and realized his toes were freezing. Not waiting for her to reconsidering her question, Mac opened the door to the diner.
"In."
"And they said chivalry was dead." Stella winked at him and walked off towards the blue utility van. "But you owe me a slice!"
Mac walked into the diner and was immediately overwhelmed by the smell of sweets; it reminded him of his grandmother's kitchen. Strong currents of cinnamon, vanilla and even cardamom seemed to permeate the place. However, just to the left of where he stood he noticed a small, red puddle on the floor: blood.
"I'm guessing that's not cherry filling."
"Boss!" Danny turned around and offered a smile. From behind him Lindsay peeked out and smiled, too, her hands resting flat on the table next to the folded hands of the older man. "Mac, this is Iggy, he owns the diner."
"Sir." Mac nodded, setting his kit down on a near by table. "I take it you all know each other?"
Danny scratched his head nervously and looked at his wife.
"Yeah, sorry for showing up like this. It's just, we were in the neighborhood and all."
Standing up, Lindsay patted her husband's arm and looked at Mac hopefully.
"We bring Lucy here all the time, Jay always gives her an extra cookie and Luce just loves it, so when we heard…"
"They were just putting this old man's heart at ease." The white-haired owner interjected. "Danny-boy here was telling me and Jay—that's my daughter, she's out back turning off the ovens—how you and your team'll track down these idiots in no time, with your computers and DNA machines and whatever else it is that you use."
"It's fine." Mac looked back at Lindsay. "Where's Lucy?"
"Home, sleeping. I got Mrs. Figs next door to watch her but I probably shouldn't stick around too long. I don't want Luce to wake up and..."
There was a framed charcoal drawing on the wall behind the booth, Mac noticed distractedly. It was eerily familiar. Stepping closer, he nodded at his two CSIs as they moved out of his way, clearly picking up on his now divided attention. It was a cityscape; one of Manhattan, to be precise. Only, it must have been an old one, Mac grimly realized, as the World Trade Center Towers were still anchoring the far end of the sketch, tethering the island to the sky. The strokes of the charcoal were strong around the building outlines but then they feathered out in radiating lines, affecting an iridescence of the city sky at night. It was haunting and ethereal, as the whole sketch seemed to glow in traces of black and white.
Mac's heart tightened in his chest and realized why it seemed so familiar. Claire had sometimes drawn such cityscapes, sitting at the kitchen window in their apartment on the rare night she didn't come home utterly exhausted from work. It's the light, she would say to him as she ran her finger across the paper, smudging a cloud across the carbon sky. He had thrown all of her sketches out after she died.
"Not bad, huh?" Mac started as Iggy's voice interrupted his reverie. Looking at the older man he noted a glint of pride in his brown eyes.
"It's very good." Mac smiled at him, observing the proprietary hand Iggy tapped the sketch's frame with. "Did you do it?"
Iggy laughed. It was a percussive bark that rattled his ears.
"Good God, no! The last time I tried to draw anything I was a short thing, full of piss, in reform school." The diner owner leaned in conspiratorially and winked at Mac. "That was almost fifty years ago, in case you were wondering, detective." Iggy sighed and leaned back, again. "No, no, that would be my daughter's doing, Jay. She's quite the artist—and she bakes, too, you know? This whole place is her doing, really."
"Hmm." Mac pondered while looking around the diner again. It looked like almost any other diner he could find open on the corner streets of Manhattan, but it smelled unbelievable. Looking at the display case behind the bar, Mac counted almost a dozen pies and all of them looked fresh. In the case next to the register he noticed a stockpile of cookies overflowing from silver trays. "And the name?" Mac asked, turning back to the others. "Surely it's not a coincidence that it sounds like Iggy Pop?"
"Wow, Mac." Danny laughed at his boss. "Leave it to you to make the connection. You know it took Linds a whole three months to get the name? Hey!" He jumped back as his wife swatted his arm.
"That was my idea." Iggy nodded with a victorious smile. "But enough tongue wagging; how about catching those idiots that shot up my customers? It's bad for business, you know."
"Of course." Mac turned back to open his kit and pulled out a set of gloves. "Danny," he called over his shoulder. "Stella's—"
Just then the door to the diner opened and his partner walked in with Sheldon Hawkes in tow, both shaking off a few flakes of snow from their hair.
"Brrr." She shuddered. "I don't care what you say Mac, the snow's coming down hard, the temperature's dropped five degrees in as many minutes, and it's freezing out there. We can't finish processing the scene until we've gotten feeling back in our fingers. Plus, there's an old, steel locker in the back of the truck that's completely frozen shut; we're going to have to take it back to the lab and warm it up before we can pry it open."
Mac opened his mouth to respond, willing to trade places and finish up outside, but turned curiously as he heard movement behind him. The silver doors that led to the back room—presumably the kitchen—swung open with a clatter as if someone had kicked them. Slowly, the brown-haired woman he had seen earlier walked backwards through the doors, her oven-mitt clad hands carefully balancing two full trays of cookies. They were chocolate chips, judging by the large, glistening and delicious looking brown spots scattered across the cookies. Her head down, watching the items in her hands and her brow knit in concentration, she turned towards the counter and called out to the room.
"So, I think they're a little too burnt to sell, Ig, but I'm sure there are a couple of friendly, neighborhood cops around here that wouldn't mind a chocolate chip or two to keep them warm, brown edges or not!"
Mac felt his heart constrict at the sound of her cheerful yet matter-of-fact voice. Her brown hair was short, sweeping just past her chin, with lighter highlights in places, while the occasional wave flipped the end of a lock up. But it wasn't all that much shorter, nor all that much lighter, Mac realized with an electric jolt that traveled up his spine. The front of her burgundy t-shirt read in bold capital letters, "NYCPS PI DAY, 3.14.2010 —IGGY'S POP & PIE," while the top of it sloped off her left shoulder, clearly several sizes too big for her and dwarfing her light frame. She kept her eyes focused downwards on the trays as she approached the counter and Mac couldn't see her whole face, but her eyes were blue, he knew; her eyes had always been blue. He tried to open his mouth to say something or to call her name, but his voice abandoned him.
Having finally set the trays down on the counter, she pulled off her mitts, tossed them to the side, and looked up with a genuine smile at the rest of the room.
Mac finally found his voice and called to her, though it came out no more than a whisper.
"Claire."
Her eyes landed on him in surprise and her face faltered, the color draining from her face as her mouth fell open. A distraught and confused looked wrinkled her forehead and she leaned forward to steady herself on the counter.
"Claire!" Mac called out again, this time in warning, and took a step forward to stop her but he was seconds too late as her hand came to rest on the hot cookie sheet.
"SONNUVABITCH!" The woman jumped back from the counter, waving her hand in the air and cursing. "MOTHER-LOVIN' SONNUVABITCH!"
"Jay, girlie, are you okay?" Mac heard Iggy stand up from the booth behind him but Mac beat him to the woman's side. Reaching for her hand and dragging her to the counter sink, Mac turned on the faucet and thrust her hand under the cold tap water.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" The woman struggled to free her right hand. "Let go of me!"
Mac held her arm still, refusing to let go, and took the opportunity grab her left hand and examine it. She went rigid. His grip was forceful, and somewhere in the back of his head he knew he was probably scaring the woman, whoever she was or seemed to be. Looking at her palm he noticed the skin was completely scarred; smooth, shock white, and soft like polished porcelain. There was a thick band of darker skin wrapped around her fourth finger, the faintest hint of ridges on that small patch of unscarred skin was a stark contrast to the unmarked planes that covered the rest of her palm. Glancing over to her right hand, which he was still holding underneath the running water, he noticed similar scaring on her other palm.
"How did this happen?" Mac whispered, lost in his examination. The young woman gasped, tugging her left hand away from him gently. Mac realized that until that point she had stayed stiff as he had clutched at her hands. Lifting his eyes, he searched her face for clues. There were more lines on her face now, the smile lines around her eyes had deepened over the past nine years, and she had a small, star shaped scar on her right temple—but it was Claire's face, all the same. She would be what, now? Thirty-seven? No, her birthday wasn't for another week. Thirty-six, then. Mac smiled. He found himself lost in the impossible familiarity of her stare as it seemed to look right through him. Her eyes were wide and she bit her bottom lip, drawing her mouth tight. If she had been anyone else, Mac would have expected to find fear in her eyes; instead, all he read was shock and pain in the lines of her face as she searched his own eyes for understanding.
What had happened to her? How could she be here? He was in chaos; his mind insisted that he be rational but every instinct he possessed yelled at him that this beautiful, brown-haired woman was his wife. Of course, it was utterly impossible, he knew. She wasn't Claire; Claire had died on September 11th in the Towers, of that much he was certain. The fact that the surprised woman he was now standing next to looked identical to his dead wife was simply coincidence. A terrible, awful, gut-wrenching coincidence, Mac reflected, but the alternative simply wasn't possible. With a sigh, Mac swallowed his questions and finally let go, his hand still hovering above her arm, realizing that he had been acting without thought, almost robotically, as though this woman actually were Claire.
"What's going on?" He heard Danny ask and he suddenly became aware of the rest of the room again. Looking up, Mac saw the surprised faces of his team.
"I don't believe it." Stella whispered, her eyes tightly focused on the woman standing next to Mac. "It's not possible…"
Mac heard a small splash as the faucet shut off.
"Claire?" A ghostly voice next to him asked and he turned back to the heart-wrenchingly familiar brown-haired woman. "Who's…?" Her question trailed off and Mac noticed with alarm as she brought both her hands up to her forehead, her skin turning sheet white before his eyes. She took an unsteady step backwards and sighed, rubbing her forehead.
"Jay?" With unusually spry movement for a man of his age, Iggy push past Mac and reached his daughter, gripping her arms in concern and holding up her now clearly sagging frame. Mac remained frozen, completely at a loss as to how to help this woman who looked so much like his wife.
"Here." Mac looked over with surprise as Sheldon walked up behind the diner owner. "Let's get her sitting."
A sudden flurry of movement behind him reminded Mac that the rest of the team was still there. Turning, he met Stella's concerned eyes, still wide with surprise, and simply stared back. He was at a loss and she would know it.
In another life, Stella and Claire had been friends—at first it was because, as Claire had often teased him, any woman in Mac Taylor's life, bullheaded and strong-willed as he was, needed a friend to commiserate with. But Mac liked to think that they had become real friends in the short time they had known each other, establishing a relationship that extended well beyond their mutual connection. They bought shoes together, which he knew counted for something, though the exact reason why would forever be beyond his comprehension. When Claire died, Stella had found him, and together they had shared their grief. Stella knew; she had been there when Mac finally started to pick up the pieces of his life again, and she knew that Humpty Dumpty would never really get put together again, not without Claire. And yet, somehow, he had kept going and he had been okay.
Mac watched as Danny and Lindsay made space for the distressed woman at the booth, both shooting each other questioning glances as Iggy and Sheldon eased her light frame into the seat.
"Water?" Sheldon looked up hopefully at Mac. Mac ignored the young man, too engrossed in the rest of the scene at the booth. She looked just like Claire, he wondered to himself again, she had to be Claire, she couldn't be Claire. She was leaning forward in the booth, her head resting in her hands and her shoulders tensed. Truly, she had turned so white Mac wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't looking at an actual ghost.
"I've got it, Sheldon." Mac felt Stella place a hand on his arm, gently pushing him aside, as she acknowledge the young doctor. She had grabbed a glass and was filling it with water from the faucet, her eyes watching him carefully and then glancing back at the woman in the booth. "Mac?" Her soft query brought him back to reality and he found his voice again.
"Yeah," his voice was gruff with emotion and he gripped his hand in frustration. He needed to regain control, and he need it now. "I just don't know how—"
"I know." She smiled comfortingly at him. "Let's sort things out, okay? And here." She handed him the glass of water. "Let's go introduce ourselves, properly."
Looking down at the glass in his hand and then up at the brown-haired woman in the booth, Mac nodded to his partner. Stella gripped his arm lightly and offered him a final smile before turning towards everyone else. Grateful that she seemed to have a better handle on the situation than he, Mac fell in step behind her and crossed the room.
"What's going on?" Lindsay asked her husband, leaning into his solid form.
"Ya got me, babe." Danny shook his head and met Mac's eyes as he and Stella approached from the other side of the counter, his eyebrows raised in question. "Boss?"
Mac pressed his lips into a frown and shook his head. Now was not the time to explain his own irrational behavior, he realized, if there was a time. The head of the crime lab didn't exactly relish explaining to his team that he thought the diner owner's daughter was somehow, impossibly, his wife. He was close with his team, it was true, but this was bordering on certifiable insanity—he might as well submit his resignation to Sinclair now and check himself into the psych ward at St. Vincent's for testing.
"Jay." Iggy sat next to the very distressed woman, rubbing her back comfortingly. His daughter, Mac reminded himself. "It'll go away soon, just like always—but I can grab the pills Moritz gave you, too."
"Does this happen often?" Sheldon asked clinically, standing to the side and watching the woman very much, Mac realized with a smile, like a hawk.
"Yeah, sometimes." The quiet voice was suddenly stronger as the brown-haired woman pulled her head out of her hands and looked up at everyone else. "Sorry." Her voice fluctuated nervously as she offered up an embarrassed grin. "Didn't mean to make a fool of myself in front of a bunch of strangers." Mac found her eyes resting on his face again as her words echoed in his head, strangers, and he felt his blood run cold, still unsure of himself. He watched as her brow furrowed though her smile stayed in place.
"Don't sweat it." Danny piped in encouragingly. "Though I don't know if Lindsay and I count as strangers, exactly."
She grinned nervously and shrugged her shoulders in surrender. "Fine, but I'm pretty sure the NYPD has more important things to deal with right now, all the same." Again her eyes found his, searching and confused—Mac found himself riveted by her questioning gaze, wondering if his face held the answer to the unknown question her eyes seemed to be asking.
"Hey, Ig," Danny's almost forced lighthearted call cut through Mac's thoughts. "Are you the one who taught Jay to curse like a sailor? I'm not gonna lie, that was pretty impressive."
"No." Much to everyone's surprise, Mac's clear and definitive answer echoed Iggy's own guffawing protestation. The room suddenly seemed very still and quiet as Mac finally realized he had answered the question out-loud.
"Oh?" Iggy's voice was tight and controlled. Mac noted the guarded curiosity in the older man's eyes, tempered by his tightly clenched hand on his daughter's shoulder. He was protecting her, it seemed. Protecting her from me, Mac considered, realizing how untoward his recent actions must seem to everyone else.
"I..." Mac hesitated in his response, unsure of what to say but unwilling to confess the truth behind his words. He knew he couldn't explain. Claire had always had a rather hilarious blue streak in her, Mac remembered, it was part of what endeared her to him, which is why he had replied the way he did. Mentally kicking himself, he knew the brown-haired woman couldn't be his wife and still he had responded as if she were, as if he really knew her.
Just then, as if she had sensed his own confusion and took pity on him, she laid her good hand on her father's arm, drawing his attention away from Mac.
"Ig, the pills? Could you, please?"
Mac watched the old man nod, kiss her temple lightly, and stand up from the booth, taking the time to raise his eyebrows humorlessly and give Mac a not-quite-cold warning stare before heading past Sheldon and crossing to the other side of the diner.
"I'll be right back, girlie."
Finally firming up his resolve as the old man disappeared into the back room, Mac cleared his throat and stepped forward, placing the glass of water in front of the woman who was causing him so much trouble by simply existing.
"Here. It'll help."
She looked up at him again, her eyes searching. It was the oddest sensation; it reminded him of his days in the Marines. After he had come home from Beruit, he and the other men in his battalion had unloaded from the plane at the Airforce base and walked into a sea of waiting wives, girlfriends, and anxious family members—all of them searching the soldiers' faces for some hint of recognition. He did understand the looks then but he did now; war changes people and distance and time can warp relationships beyond familiarity. Mac remembered looking into his own mother's eyes as he disembarked. She had place her hand on his face and asked him quite bluntly, Is it you? Are you the same? He hadn't understood then, but his mother had been right; he was not the same man he had been when he had left for the war.
It unnerved him that this woman, Claire's doppelganger, looked at him in a similar fashion now. She was a stranger; there should be no recognition. Mac tightened his fist, willing himself a thousand miles away, and pressed on.
"I'm sorry for my actions earlier; I did not intend to distress you." Unable to continue looking at her, unable to pretend she didn't look exactly like Claire, he looked down at his hands. "My name is Detective Mac—"
"Mac?" He looked back up, surprised by her interruption. Her face was now indecipherable and she held her hands tightly clasped in front of her.
"Yes." He nodded at her with chagrin, feeling completely out of his depth. "Detective Mac Taylor."
This time she rewarded him with a slight smile before furrowing her brow again and pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Hmm." She closed her eyes briefly and shook her head thoughtfully. "Mac."
"Yes?" Hearing the woman repeat his name gave him goosebumps, the softness in her voice too familiar—it was hard for him to believe that she wasn't Claire. And yet, her face was clearly troubled, though Mac could not decided if it were her burnt hand, her now evident headache, or his own name that was the cause.
"Mac." She quietly rolled his name around in her mouth again to his growing confusion and exasperation, and she stared out the diner window, distractedly rubbing her right temple. After a moment she turned her head back towards him, her eyes searching his face. When she finally spoke again Mac felt that the floor must have dropped out from under him as the real world quickly disappeared from view. Her voice was quiet and distant, like a ghost. "McCanna?"
Mac heard Stella gasp behind him as Danny shuffled nervously at his side, cursing with surprise under his breath, but they all were distant noises, far away from the upside down planet he now seemed to be inhabiting. He felt as if life had just run up and smacked him between the eyeballs. Unsure of his own feet and slightly dizzy, he quickly grabbed the chair he had seen Lindsay sitting in earlier and promptly sank into the seat, all the while staring at the woman who could only be his wife. Now he recognized what his heart had been trying to tell him from the moment he stepped into the diner; it was impossible but he knew Claire was sitting not four feet in front of him. Alive. She was alive. Alive. The word echoed in this head, clanging so wildly it deafened him.
She was watching him intently, her azure eyes searching his face with something that Mac thought looked like a mixture of fear and hope. But then the world bloomed into motion around him again. Mac turned as the diner door opened, Don standing in the door way.
"Someone wanna tell me why I wasn't invited to the party?" His voice was irritated, despite his joking. "I got a dozen uniforms out there freezing their badges off waiting on you guys and Sinclair on the phone wondering why the hell the scene hasn't been processed yet!" He looked seriously at Mac and the team gathered around the booth and gave them a concerned frown. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"
Mac stood up slowly and shook his head, taking a moment to shoot a 'back-to-business' look to the rest of his team. It was an automatic response; inside he was still sitting in the chair, floundering at the impossibility of the situation.
"Danny," He turned to the young detective. "Are you staying?"
Danny pulled his arm away from his wife, shooting her a confused look before looking back at him.
"Uh, yeah, Boss, but—"
"I want you to finish up in here." He cut in, unwilling to broker any discussion about what had just occurred. He was still unsure himself and he was now pointedly ignoring the woman in the booth behind him. "Lindsay, go home, I'm sure Lucy's missing you. Stella and Sheldon, if you think you've warmed up enough by now, let's go outside and see if we can't find anything in the van that will clue us into who our shooters are—or something to warm up the lock on that case you found."
Mac sighed and watched his team mobilize again, the significant looks they were shooting each other weren't lost on him, but he chose to ignore them all the same. Suddenly, he found himself ignoring quite a lot. Iggy had walked back into the room while Mac was addressing the team and he could hear him quietly talking to his daughter behind him.
"Look, Mac." Stella walked up to him, waving Sheldon on through the diner door with Don on his heels. "I'll be right there," she called back. "Look, it doesn't take three CSIs to process a utility van—"
"Stella—" Mac cut in as tried to walked past her, only to find her standing squarely in front of him again.
"No, Mac." She glared at him and then looked behind him at the booth he was trying so hard to forget. Her face softened as she looked past him. "I don't have any more of an idea of what's going on right now than you do. But you want to find out, I know you do. Hell, I do! And maybe, well, just maybe…" Her voice trailed off. Mac guessed that even she was unwilling to properly voice the same hope he had been trying so hard to silence in his own heart. She looked back at him and offered him an appeasing smile. "Damnit, Mac, just talk to her." And with that she briskly turned on her heels and headed out the door, turning back with one final thought before leaving. "And we're not even going to try opening that box here; I don't care what you say, it's iced shut and it's going to the lab with the rest of the van for full processing."
Mac shook his head, speechless in the wake of his partner's departure. Stella was right about everything, of course. He knew he was being ridiculous about the situation. Only Mac Taylor would discover that his wife was alive, after nine years of believing she had died in the Twin Towers on 9/11, and then promptly go back to work as if nothing had happened.
Steeling himself, he turned back to Danny, Iggy, and the troublesome woman who could only be Claire. She was leaning against the diner window, her eyes closed with her forehead pressed against the cold, snow-frosted glass. Her brow troubled, he watched her uninjured hand snake up to the collar of her shirt and distractedly tug a necklace out from beneath. Mac's breath caught in his throat as he realized that the simple gold chain she had pulled on held a thin gold band, a wedding ring, which she was now rolling back and forth in her fingers worriedly, her eyes still closed and face taught with tension.
Mac exhaled, suddenly feeling short of breath and dizzy, and he noticed that it was quiet and that the two other men standing in the room were watching him expectantly.
"Yes?" He demanded with exasperation. Danny shifted nervously looking as if he wanted to say something but thought better of it. In the end, it was the old diner owner who spoke up.
"With respect, detective, what the hell is going on?" It was a simple, blunt demand for an answer and Mac appreciated the man's forthrightness, but he couldn't even begin to explain everything he was feeling and thinking at the moment. He knew he needed to talk to Claire, to confirm everything that his heart already knew, but it was a difficult conversation and he didn't know if he had it in him to begin. Tightening his fist, Mac forced himself back into his usual, practical work mindset, retreating behind the routine control of the badge and uniform—this was personal, but he would need all the discipline he usually applied to the Job to keep himself together.
"Of course, I can try to explain." He paused and looked at Claire, knowing that there was very little he could actually explain about her appearance and the situation—really, it was she who had all the answers. Looking back up, he focused on the police lights flashing murkily through diner's window, reminding him that they were still in a crime scene inside. "Is there a place we can go to talk while Danny processes things in here?"
Claire opened her eyes groggily and lifted her head and looked at him, biting her lip she nodded at him.
"Yes." Her voice was strained and Mac began to wonder from what exactly her obvious pain stemmed; Claire had never been the sort of person to be felled by a slightly singed hand or a small headache. She pushed herself out of the booth with effort and stood up, momentarily steadying herself against Iggy's proffered hand.
"Jay?" The diner owner's question was quiet; clearly he too had noticed her troubled looks.
"Stop asking-I'm good, Ig. It's just those damn pills, you know what they do to me. It'll wear off in a few minutes." Slowly she turned back to Mac and offered him a tentative smile and for the briefest second Mac saw a mischievous twinkle in her eyes erase the uncertainty and pain etched on her face. His breath caught in his throat as his mind hurtled back to all those years before when she had looked at him just like that for the first time; it was the day he had fallen in love with her. "This way, McCanna, something tells me you're an apple pie kinda guy." And with a half-hearted wink she turned and strode back through the metal doors she had come crashing through earlier, long ago, before his world had shifted.
Danny whistled under his breath and shook his head before looking at his boss. Were it any other circumstance, Mac reflected, Danny's expression would have been comical; clearly, the young CSI was trying to balance looking supportive while also maintaining a straight, professional face. Unfortunately, Danny was an open book. Mac smiled, secretly grateful to have such a good and solid team.
"Danny." Mac nodded at him in dismissal, indicating that it was time for the CSI to get to work, and then turned to Iggy. "Sir?"
The diner owner smiled at him cautiously.
"Well, detective, do you like apple pie?"
Mac ran his hand through his hair and nodded in the affirmative. In fact, apple pie was his favorite, though he wondered what answer the older man was looking for exactly. Instead he settled for a simple, "Yes."
The corners of Iggy's mouth tugged up, creasing the corners his eyes, though he maintained a straight-face.
"Well then, you heard the girl." And with that he too turned and headed through the metal doors, leaving Mac to follow in his wake. Walking towards the kitchen, Mac felt his heart skip as his thoughts spiraled around one single, unbelievable fact: Claire was here, with him. Claire was alive.
A/N: Phew, Chapter 1 is done! Let me know what you think, folks - feedback is always appreciated. :) Peace!