The Sound of Your Silence
He remembered the sound of silence waking him up. The room was filled with it; it crept under his doorway and pressed into his ears, nose, mouth, anywhere it could reach until it felt like he was suffocating.
For a few moments, a few, precious moments, he forgot. Later, he'd feel guilty about it. But now, as he lay tangled in the sheets, he was granted the wish of ignorance.
She'd left a week ago, he recalled. She'd packed her clothes back into her duffel, left a lingering kiss on his forehead, and went home.
It was funny. They'd managed a lifetime without one another, so why now was it so hard for him to sleep without her by his side? It was the smell of her hair he missed, the curve of her nose, the way she fit perfectly against him. He expected every time he woke up to see her face buried into the crook of his neck, expected to see her legs entwined with his, expected to hear the soft sound of her breathing. Instead, he felt a cold sweat running down his neck and the images of a blackened and contorted skeleton burned into his eyes.
It wasn't your fault.
It was. I let her go.
You had to. She was endangering herself and the lab.
But she wasn't. She was just…determined.
Don't be stupid, Mac. She hit her breaking point. She would've gone insane if she had stayed.
I know. Just let me live in denial a bit longer.
Didn't you do enough of that already?
Mac threw back the blankets tangled around his legs. The night was hot, and when his feet hit the floor he could feel the heaviness of the air seeping into the carpet. It wasn't that bad, really. Spring was the ideal time of year in New York for Mac, when the trees turned green and the flowers blossomed; when the air turned warm and the sun crept back into the sky earlier and earlier each day. It was hard to find this perspective in all New Yorkers, but Mac Taylor was a better man than most and knew when to appreciate his surroundings. Today, however, he knew it would be harder to stay away from the black place in his mind that had forgotten how to pick out the bright spot on the horizon.
The kitchen floor was cool beneath his bare feet. It was a welcome relief to the heat of his room, but still the silence pressed in around him.
It wasn't well known that Mac Taylor loved jazz. She knew, of course. She'd picked out a CD from the holder last week and had pulled him away from cooking dinner to dance with her, he marvelling at the fact that her hand fit so perfectly in his, she marvelling at the fluid grace he possessed as they moved to the music. For that moment, time fell away for both Mac and Stella while the soft, reassuring sound of Miles Davis washed over them.
Mac shook his head. The memory of that night swam out of his vision and was slowly replaced by a burned skull, staring hollowly at him as though it were his fault she was dead.
It isn't…He blinked his eyes until her face disappeared. Was he going mad? Did he feel so guilty about Aiden's death that she now haunted him while he was awake, too? It was bad enough that he had nightmares after firing her, goddammit. He'd had to let go of one of his own, and now he was forced to say goodbye, too.
It was too much. It was all just too much. First it had been Danny, caught in the middle of an investigation as a prime suspect while his brother was injured by the true criminals. Next, it was his Stella—Stella, he corrected himself—beaten so badly by her boyfriend (should he even deserve that title—Mac preferred something a little more colourful) that she had been forced to kill him to protect herself. And now Aiden had been murdered trying to stop a man she knew could hurt her. When would it stop? When would life return to the normal he had grown accustomed to?
Mac's senses were on fire as he opened the fridge. His fingers reached for the carton of milk by their own accord. Mac himself was miles away, trapped in the confines of his mind while swirling images of bloody yellow sundresses, charred skeletons, and razor blades flew through his thoughts.
"No!" Mac slammed the carton down on the counter. It burst, sending wave upon wave of white liquid cascading across the surface and crashing onto the floor. More images began to flash through his brain—Claire, waving at him as he drove away from their building; two majestic towers collapsing to the ground; standing numb outside a fenced-off graveyard that his wife had died in; breaching a locked apartment to find his curly-haired beauty in a pool of blood—
"No." Mac placed his head in his hands and closed his eyes.
Around him, the liquid continued to pool at the base of the counter.
Water. She needed water.
The bed sheets tangled around her legs as she attempted to make her way to the kitchen. She still wasn't used to being here again, amongst the memories and nightmares, but it was getting better. Everything that reminded her of that day was thrown out or destroyed, or packed up into boxes and sent to the landfill. He had promised to come over that weekend and help her strip the apartment down to repaint it. It was easier for her to move around her apartment without having to know that she'd have to live with that day she fought so hard to forget.
God, it would be nice to forget.
The kitchen was a mass of boxes and plastic tarp as Stella picked her way to the fridge. She always kept bottled water cooled in the refrigerator instead of drinking the tap water—it was common knowledge in New York that the water was a little short of drinkable.
The bottle was open and at her mouth before she realized she'd done it. The boxes lay scattered around the kitchen in such a way that it reminded Stella of a jungle, vast and twisted, proving a challenge to all willing to venture into its depths.
She shook her head. Jungles? Was her mind so unwilling to remember that she'd resorted to picturing giant tree canopies in her kitchen? Or was it that she just didn't remember?
No, of course she remembered. With a jolt that sent shockwaves through her body and flipped her stomach, she remembered. How could she not?
It would have been so easy to pick up the phone. So easy to dial the number she had kept in her pocket since that day on the street. She hadn't, though. And now, perched on her kitchen counter with the half-forgotten bottle of water in her hand, it was too late. The blackened and burned body they'd found had been her. It would have taken her ten goddamn seconds to pick up the phone.
Not anymore. The phone would ring, and ring, and ring, and there would never be an answer.
No…
She wanted it to stop. She wanted it all to go away.
She needed him.
The night crept in through her apartment and surrounded her. The only light in the kitchen came from the soft glow of the city itself, always alive, even during the dead of night. She sat on the counter with tears running down her face and wondered when she had turned into the kind of woman that didn't look out for the ones she loved.
And then, when she had hit the point where no more tears could fall and she felt like collapsing, he came. It was the dead of night and he came to her, brushing the tears away with the pads of his thumbs and placing butterfly-light kisses on her eyelids.
She looked up. The pain in his eyes shone through the tears that lined his lids. She'd only ever seen him cry once, on a cold night when the rain was there to wash away the salty liquid. She could see the silhouette of his face in the light filtering in through the window and wondered why she felt such comfort staring into the eyes she'd known for so long.
"Hi," she whispered, reaching up to place her hand on top of the one laying on her cheek.
"Hi."
She took him in her arms and he buried his head in her neck, thanking whoever was listening that she was his.
That he was hers.
A/N: This story is the sequel to 'The Salt of Your Tears'. I'm planning one more for a post-ep of 'Charge of This Post', 'cause, well, that was just so full of Mac/Stella love that I'm still running on a happy high (yay!)
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