I saw Toby Keith live a few days ago and I'm still on an adrenaline high because of it (seriously awesome concert!). And I also found out that Eddie Cibrian won't be back next season and that CBS wants to, since Adam is back, focus on the old team (H, Cal, Frank, etc.). So, I'm feeling good about next season. Since I'm in a great mood, I decided to try another chapter of this.

Chapter 7

Heaviness

Calleigh felt the sun against her skin as it creeped through the blinds of the window. She blinked her eyes open but squeezed them shut again as the sun's glare made her see spots. She moved her head away from the sun's beams and blinked her eyes repeatedly to make her vision clear. Calleigh saw, once all the annoying blobs were gone from her sight, that Eric wasn't in the bed next to her. She vaguely remembered him brushing his lips against hers when he had left a few hours ago for work. Calleigh thought she'd be annoyed, maybe envious was a more appropriate word, that he was going to work and she was being forced to stay home. But she was actually grateful, somewhat, that she got to sleep in. Her moment of refuge at the beach had deeply effected her sleeping pattern and she would have been very sluggish if she had been forced to wake up at the usual time.

But now it was nine in the morning and she was more than ready to move. She slipped out of the sheets and stood up. She stretched her stiff arms in front of her and flexed her fingers, though the stretching did little to loosen up some of her muscles, it brought discomfort the arm that had been twisted and held behind her back. Thinking a shower would cure that inconvenience, Calleigh made a beeline for the bathroom, moving almost mechanically due to she was thinking about being stuck in this house, by herself, for a sure few hours of boredom. A boredom routine she would have to face every day this week.

Not wanting to think about that right now, she turned on the water to the temperature she was used to, well, actually what she and Eric were used to. As the sound of water hit the tiled floor of the shower, Calleigh turned to her reflection to gently remove the bandage still on her forehead; the constant removal and replacement of the bandage was getting very tedious, very quickly. Calleigh looked at her stitches and hoped they wouldn't leave too big a scar, the last thing she needed was people staring at a scar on her forehead like she was Harry Potter or something. People already worried about her when anything involving smoke came up in a case, especially if there as the chance of her inhaling amounts of it, a scar was the last thing she needed.

Calleigh pulled out another bandage and her medication from the medicine cabinet and placed them on the countertop of the sink, so she wouldn't have to pull them out after her shower, before stripping out of the tank top and shorts she had worn to bed. She had been about to step into the relaxing shower, the light steam starting to arise from behind the shower door making the invite of relaxation more promising, before she noticed something about her reflection.

On Calleigh's bare stomach were four bruises, each separated by a crevice, Calleigh knew exactly where this had come from. The bruise of where Orlando's fist had collided with her abdomen. Though the bruise was light and pain only became noticeable when she applied pressure on the darkened skin, it was visible and she knew Eric would overreact if he saw it. She made a mental note to try not to reveal it to him if she could help it before finally being able to step into the long awaited shower.

Eric had to admit that he felt a bit guilty leaving Calleigh alone. Not so much because of the injury she had endured yesterday, he knew damn well she could handle that, but more of the emotional turmoil yesterday's events had caused. He didn't care how any times she said 'I'm fine' or 'Don't worry about me' Eric did worry and still didn't believe she was fine. But, no matter how bad he felt about leaving her, he knew she would've killed him if he had offered to stay home. Knowing Calleigh, she may have said something along the lines of: "It's because of your and Alexx's worrying I'm stuck here in the first place, you'd better go make up for my absence."

Eric could almost hear the playfulness in her tone and the teasing smile she may have worn.

Eric let his mind switch back over to work as he approached Natalia in DNA.

"Hey, did we get a hit on the DNA from the glass?" Eric asked her, they were investigating a homicide of a professor at MU.

"No hits in CODIS," she said. "But the DNA did come back as XX."

"So a woman was with him in the room at sometime before the janitor found him."

"But, unfortunately, we can't get her name," Natalia sighed. "But the good news is that we still have that security camera, Ryan was looking at the footage earlier."

"Okay, I'll see if he's got anything," Eric said, turning away.

He had been about to make his way towards AV, but then…

"Eric one sec," she called after him.

He made his way back and she met him halfway.

"How's Calleigh doing?" she asked, snapping off her gloves.

"Um…she's fine. She needed a few stitches, but she didn't have any brain damage," he said, still grateful that the stitches were the worst part.

"That's good," Natalia smiled.

"Yeah," Eric agreed. "But Alexx prescribed her some med's and a few days off, so she won't be back until next week."

"Day's off until next week? Bet Calleigh loves that," she said, sarcastically.

Eric chuckled, lightly.

Natalia seemed hesitant about what she was about to say, as she chewed on her lip, thinking of an appropriate way to go about this.

"Okay…Eric…you know the last thing I want to be is intrusive…but, I'm concerned," she admitted.

"About?" Eric coaxed.

"You and Calleigh," she sighed. "Now, maybe it's just me, but you guys have been acting…"

Eric waited, so far not liking the direction of this conversation, as Natalia searched for the right word.

"Different," she settled for.

"Different?" Eric raised his eyebrows, questioningly.

"Yeah. For the past few months, you two have been getting more and more closed off…I mean, when was the last time you two came to grab a drink with us after work?" she asked.

Eric didn't say anything. When Natalia realized he wasn't going to, she continued.

"And Calleigh…I've known her for about ten years now, and I've noticed she's recently become…almost haunted," Natalia said, becoming more hesitate with her words. "And there was something about that case yesterday that kept getting her…I saw it."

"Natalia, she was assaulted," Eric pointed out, hoping to distract Natalia from the haunting he had also been noticing in his wife.

"But passed that," she tried to explain, but Natalia was realizing she was approaching territory that she had no business being in and she started to draw up the ending to this conversation. "But, like I said, it's probably just me…but is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," he lied, slowly moving his feet so she could get the message he was trying to get away.

Natalia looked at him, skeptically, before taking a deep breath.

"Okay," she sighed. "But you guys call if you ever need anything."

"Thanks," he nodded, gratefully. "But everything's fine."

Natalia watched him walk away. She sighed and walked back to the DNA table.

"Delko, you are the worst liar," she whispered, frustrated.

Calleigh walked into the kitchen, her hair damp and feet bare. She saw the message light was blinking on the machine, the phone probably rang when she was in the shower. She hit the playback button as she made her way towards the fridge.

"Hey, Calleigh," Alexx's voice spoke through the speaker as Calleigh pulled some eggs out of the fridge. "I just called to make sure you are staying home and didn't sneak out somehow," Calleigh rolled her eyes at that as she pulled out a skillet and applied some non-stick spray to the cast iron bottom.

She waited for the message to end or Alexx to continue, but Alexx seemed to have paused and was trying to think of a way to continue. Calleigh turned up the heat on the stove and put some bread in the toaster, then she heard Alexx take a deep breath.

"And, baby," Alexx finally continued, Calleigh was taken aback by her change of tone. "If you want to talk about anything, call me. My cell is always on, day or night."

Calleigh's eyebrows knitted together in confusion as she cracked the shell of the egg and let the yolk and white fall onto the iron. What did Alexx mean by that? Sure, it was a nice gesture, but why was she giving it?

"I'll talk to you soon. Bye," then the message ended.

Calleigh cracked another egg as she puzzled over the meaning in Alexx's words. There was something in her tone that was almost too reassuring, even for Alexx's standards. Besides, first she had called to see if Calleigh was following doctor's orders, but then she suddenly switched to a personal level of conversation? There was something defiantly fishy there. And that pause, it seemed like Alexx had been using that time to have a personal debate whether or not to speak something aloud.

Calleigh thought this over as she flipped her eggs onto a plate and grabbed the toast as it popped from the toaster. She sat at the dining room table as she contemplated what Alexx's concern was.

She began to eat her breakfast when she sighed, frustrated with herself. Calleigh realized she was reading way too much into the message. She had been beat up yesterday, bad enough to be knocked out for several minutes, so of course Alexx would call and be concerned. Maybe she thought that they would need to talk, woman-to-woman, completely understandable. But Calleigh had managed to take a perfectly normally phone call and turn it into something suspicious.

Calleigh shouldn't have been surprised; she was reading too much into everything nowadays. She would call Alexx later and assure her that she was fine. Meanwhile, as she finished her breakfast, she was going to have to think of ways to entertain herself or risk the possibility of trying to decode normal things, again.

Eric sat in the break room, needing some time to re-think his discussion with Natalia. She had noticed the change in Calleigh, a change that had been drifting in on her, slowly, so slowly that Eric thought he was the only one that had noticed it. He figured he would be the only one noticing the change because he had been with Calleigh practically everyday for the last five years and knew the reason for Calleigh's stress, but he had been wrong.

Whether he liked it or not, Calleigh had changed. She still had Calleigh's usual attitude, but her optimism seemed to be slowly draining from her. It almost seemed as though she was there, but her heart was somewhere else and her soul was diminishing. But how could that be? How could the strongest woman at MDPD be in such despair? Even with everything they had been through the last few years, the normal Calleigh would still be able to find some of herself in the mess. Calleigh was normally able to maintain composure at work, letting her emotions spill out a bit when she was in the comfort of home, but her pain was starting to effect her everywhere she went and that was defiantly unlike Calleigh.

He wasn't sure if this was his overprotective instinct's coming out, but Eric felt the need to do something, to attempt to fix this. He knew the main cause of this mess, the cause that could have triggered a load of negative thoughts in Calleigh's mind, and he had the key to taking the first step towards possibly finding an answer. Eric pulled the number Alexx had given him yesterday out of his wallet. He didn't talk to Calleigh about the number the night before; it wasn't exactly appropriate timing. In all honesty, he wasn't sure if it would ever be appropriate timing. Calleigh had made up her mind about going to the doctor's years ago and if he pressured her she would defiantly not go. But it was clear that this was getting out of hand and he had to try.

Eric would talk to Calleigh about Dr. Benson in a few days, maybe a few weeks. After yesterdays assault, Alexx's question and their discussion at home, Eric knew that bringing it up at this moment in time would be less than helpful.

His mind made up, he slid the card back in his wallet and walked out of the break room and on his way to interrogation.

Noon approached and Calleigh sighed in defeat as she clicked off the television; absolutely nothing was on, adding fuel to her very bored fire. The only thing that seemed to be on at this time was the pointless, melodramatic, soap opera's and the mindless sitcoms, the kind in which you could feel your IQ dropping as you watched. Not wanting to expose herself to more drama or ridiculous jokes, Calleigh just looked at the black screen as she was consumed by boredom.

She picked up one of the pillows and put it against the arm of the couch. She put her head against the pillow and closed her eyes, feeling tired, despite the fact she had slept most of the morning away.

The ringing of her phone made her jerk up in alarm, she looked at the nearby clock to see that it was almost five-thirty, she had slept most of the day. She let a smile come to her, the first she had all day; Eric would be home in about an hour. She reached over for the source that yanked her from her dreams and looked at the caller ID and answered.

"If I die from cabin fever, I can hold you responsible," she joked when she answered the phone.

She heard Eric chuckle, but it was halfhearted.

"Well, if you would stay out of danger there would be no reason for you to stay home," Eric pointed out.

"I'll keep that in mind," Calleigh grinned. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to make sure you're okay," he said, innocently.

"I'm fine," she assured him. "And, before you ask, I'm sure I am...well, except for the fact that I'm bored out of my mind."

Calleigh expected him to say something, but she only heard the sound of light static on the other end.

"Still there?" she asked.

"Yeah, sorry," he said, hurriedly, as though she had pulled him back out of some trance

"You okay?" she asked him. "You seem like something's bugging you."

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just…I need to talk to you about something," he sighed. "But it can wait until you're feeling better-."

"Eric, we can talk about it, I'm fine. Is everything okay?"

"That depends…"

"On what? Did something happen at the lab?" Calleigh asked, his tone making her anxious.

"No, no. It's nothing like that, its…we'll talk about it when I get home, okay?"

"Okay," Calleigh nodded. "I'll see you then…I love you."

"I love you, too and remember to-."

"Stay off my feet, rest my head," Calleigh rolled her eyes.

"See you later," Eric said, Calleigh could hear the smile in his voice.

"Bye."

The next chap is already in the works, so the wait for how their conversation goes won't be too long. Please review!

P. S. I hope y'all are enjoying your summer!