Disclaimer: My best friend is a lawyer and says I need to tell you that Horatio and and the members of his team and all references to events in CSI: Miami are not mine, no matter how much I want Horatio to be mine. I am making no profit on this (see the sad state of my students loans and you'll believe me) and certainly no copyright infringement is intended. Also, "The Second Coming" was written by W.B. Yates and is used as the setting for this fic. I make no claim of ownership of this moving poem.

Spoilers: The entire third season. In fact, it's necessary to have seen the season to understand this.

Author's note: The writers have worked very hard to take the team apart this season. I can only implore them to fix this next season. Just compare the closing scenes of last season's finale with this season's and you will understand my frustration.

The Widening Gyre

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

WG


Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

WG

Turning and turning in the widening gyre. Someone in high school made me memorize that poem. I thought it was a stupid poem then – but over the years it has come back to haunt me. It was a riddle, a message I could someday puzzle out. But I never did. Until I lay on the floor of the jewelry store as Horatio leaned above me. Then all I could do was watch from wherever it is that I can watch. It is true, I saw them live the threads of the puzzle, but instead of tying all the lines together, it led them each their own way, out of the center. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere; The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

Damn. It wasn't supposed to be this way.