I ended up going back and watching a couple of episodes from the first season of CSI:Miami, one of which was 'Losing Face'. I think this has to be one of my favourite episodes so far in the whole run. Horatio is a) actually in the lab, b) vulnerable and c) not always right. It's nice to see that he's only human! So I thought I'd write a little bit on how Horatio deals with the loss of his friend.

Hope you enjoy.

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There was this one tiny beach in Miami that Horatio loved beyond any other; to be honest it was such a small patch of sand that Horatio wondered if it could even be called a beach. It seemed that no-one other than him knew that this space even existed, or at least every time he'd found his way down here it had been deserted, never any trace of another human being to be seen, not even a footprint left in the soft peaks of white sand.

In order to get here you had to cut down a narrow alleyway between blocks of flats, before skirting around the edge of a couple of warehouses, but when you finally emerged on the other side it was like entering a little bit of paradise, a slice of the idealistic Miami that used to be portrayed in the movies. A line of palm trees flourished at the back of the beach masking the dirty red bricks of the fabric warehouse beyond. Barely a few metres of pure white sand, the kind that drained away between your fingers within seconds, stretched out to where the clear, turquoise blue waters threatened to consume the beach, dragging the fine grit back into the ocean to later be deposited elsewhere along the Florida coast.

This was Horatio's private refuge, the place where he came to analyse the often horrific events of the day. And all things considered, today definitely ranked amongst some of the worst days he had experienced throughout his life. Now, caught in the silent vacuum that followed the hellish day, Horatio stood with his hands on hips, head down, staring at the movement of the sand as it gradually sucked at his feet, burying the bottom inch or so of his black shoes under the surface. Slowly he lifted his head and pulled off his jacket, laying it on the ground beside him before allowing himself to drop softly backwards, into a sitting position. He raised his knees up towards his chest and looped his arms around his knees, clasping his hands in front of his shins. Horatio sat perfectly still in that position for many minutes, staring straight ahead into the fiery mix of reds and oranges of the setting Miami sun. The sunset was perfectly and vividly reflected on the moist surface of his usually clear blue eyes, giving the impression that his corneas were ablaze. Despite the picture postcard beauty of the view Horatio saw none of it, his mind far too preoccupied with its internal working to be able to identify such things.

From somewhere in the distance a gentle jazz melody, accompanied by the smooth, deep notes of a saxophone, drifted on the light breeze,

"What a difference a day makes…twenty-four little hours…"

The irony of those particular lyrics was not lost on Horatio, and he snorted softly. In the past twenty-four hours he felt like his soul had been ripped from his body, like a depression had descended around him, a cloud so dark that he felt that he might never escape its all consuming reach. Twenty-four hours ago, his friend, no damn it, Al had been more than a friend; he'd been a mentor, and someone Horatio had come to regard as a father-figure, had been alive. Walking, talking and whipping the bomb squad's members into shape until they made the grade. Now, what remained of Al's lifeless body was laid out on a slab in the frosty surroundings of the MDPD morgue.

It seemed like a lifetime ago when Horatio had first pulled on the uniform of a beat cop, and yet the memory came back to him now as vividly as if it had been yesterday. Fresh out of the academy, that morning he'd pressed his shirt and pants, proudly fastening the buttons that gleamed in the morning's first light. He stood in front of the mirror for a minute or two, reflecting sadly how proud his mother would have been to see him step out of the door and onto the street wearing the uniform of one of the country's finest. And twelve hours later he'd finished his first official shift, his pride and optimism severely dashed. Horatio had joined the police force at a time when corruption was rife, before the upheaval that the Rodney King brutality footage had brought about. That first day on the job he'd witnessed a senior officer beat a suspected perp senseless, before lifting his entire supply of coke, pocketing the stash to sell for his own profit at a later time. Street justice he'd called it, but Horatio abhorred the stinking perversion of justice that he experienced from that very first shift until he walked out of that precinct for the last time just six months later. In the weeks following that first shift Horatio became more and more disillusioned. All the cops he worked with seemed to be crooked, skimming a profit off the crimes they were employed to stop, taking kick-backs from the criminals they were meant to be putting behind bars. It was during this time period that he first met Al Humphreys, a beacon of hope in an otherwise dark world.

It had been a long and particularly crappy shift. Horatio was sitting on one of the long wooden benches in the locker room, elbows resting on knees, and head cradled in the palms of his hands. Was this what he'd signed up for? Was this what he'd gone through the academy, come top of his class for? The questions swirled around in his head like a fog, blurring out any other thought. The public expected the cops on the street to defend them, when in fact most of them were controlling the damn gangs. Every fibre of his being told him that he needed to tell someone what was happening, but at the same time there was this inbuilt loyalty that he had to the uniform. There was a code that you learnt before anything else as a cop, call it the blue wall of silence, the blue line, whatever term you chose it all came down to the same thing, you didn't rat on your team. Blowing the whistle would only serve to discredit the whole force, and despite everything that Horatio had seen in the past few weeks he desperately held out hope that there were other honest and incorruptible officers out there somewhere, besides, crossing the line would also cut his career options placing him firmly in IAB territory, and he couldn't abide being part of the rat squad.

Horatio hadn't been aware of anyone in the room until he felt the bench shake a little as someone sat beside him. He lifted his head out of his hands, red hair sticking up at a jaunty angle, and turned to see who was interrupting his alone time. The face staring back at him was that of a middle-aged man, dark skin and close-cropped black hair. But the feature that struck Horatio more than anything else were the eyes. Dark eyes, the irises such a deep brown they were almost black, and yet they shined with a compassion that warmed Horatio's heart.

"Hey kid. You know, I could use a beer about now. You wanna come along?"

And that was it. That evening in the bar Horatio unburdened his soul to this relative stranger, who had sat and listened, nodding at the appropriate moments, prompting him to continue, but never interrupting. And from that moment on Al was a best friend and someone Horatio could always turn to for help. A week later Horatio was called into his commanding officer's room and was told he'd been offered a training place on the bomb squad under the tutelage of Al Humphries. He never looked back.

Al had saved him, saved his career and saved his faith in the human race. Something he had said to Felicia, Al's widow, during the course of today floated back into his brain,

"Everything I am I owe to Al, everything I know he taught me."

Beyond anything else, Horatio believed that unequivocally.