My thanks to Gooniegirl3333 for beta-reading, to CSIMiamiFAN and anitra mason 1 for reviewing the last chapter, and to Christina for her keen legal eye. Any remaining errors are mine.
This chapter has a trigger warning for memories of physical abuse and self-harm.
Horatio Caine wanted to hit something. He had arrived at the courthouse too late, screeching tires and all, just in time to see his least favorite judge walk out with a man in a tan suit who looked considerably like an older version of Ryan. Both men were laughing, and tan suit clutched a thin sheaf of paper in one hand, presumably the emergency protective order. An overweight mousy woman shuffled along two steps behind them.
The lieutenant watched the trio in silence from the front seat of his Hummer. His first instinct was to reach for his gun and place its sights squarely on the head of Ryan's father. Surely, the world would be better off without this sick psychopath roaming the streets. But he curtailed that impulse. Once Ryan's parents had entered their rental car and were speeding back toward the hospital, he reached for his cell phone.
"Eric, we have a problem."
Eric Delko looked over at Ryan, sleeping peacefully in the hospital bed beside him. "He was awake before, H, but he's sleepin' now."
"Any minute now, Eric, they're going to escort you out of his room."
The Cuban leapt from the guest chair and began to pace. "What? They can't do that, can they?"
At the other end of the line, Horatio sighed. His voice was tight when he replied. "They already have, Eric. But we won't give up on Mr. Wolfe without a fight." A swallow, and an uncharacteristically tender voice followed. "Please let him know that."
"I'll try, H." As Eric hung up, he could already hear commotion in the hallway outside. Thinking quickly, he scribbled a few words on the back of a slip of paper, wedged the note inside his watchband, and placed his watch on Ryan's right wrist.
"You hang in there, Ryan," he said, softly. "I gotta go. I'm sorry, I wish I could stay." He squeezed Ryan's hand as the door burst open and an angry voice ordered him to leave the room.
Ryan clutched at Eric's hand, and the sudden movement caused Eric to look down at his co-worker. The younger man's hazel eyes were wide open and terrified. "Please don't leave me," he mouthed silently.
Eric's heart constricted painfully and he unexpectedly found himself blinking back tears. He knew all too well what it was like to be fighting for your life in the hospital. You needed your friends and family with you. But not this family, he thought sadly.
The angry man continued to bellow from the doorway, and Ryan closed his eyes and flinched with each word. Eric slipped his hand from Ryan's, clasped his shoulder, and whispered, "I'll be back soon, I promise."
Ryan's father gave Eric and his loud shirt a sidelong glance as he exited Ryan's room. "What's this, the gay lover?" he sneered in the direction of his wife, who was standing nearby. She merely stared at the ground and bobbed her head.
Eric tucked his fists under his arms and glared at the man. "Don't you have better things to do than harass your son? He's fighting for his life in there!"
"Young man, this affair does not concern you. This is a private, family matter."
The olive-skinned man stood toe to toe and glared at him. "I am more his family than you will ever be."
Rage broiled in the suited man's eyes, and Eric narrowly missed a punch to the face. He returned with a right cross, knocking the older man down. The gleam in the lawyer's eyes as he spat blood was unexpected. He smiled a feral grin at Eric from his position on the floor. "You've only strengthened my case. The Miami-Dade police department is full of brutal hoodlums." He touched his tender jaw. "And I have proof."
A crowd of curious on-lookers had gathered, and Eric found himself tugged down the hall by a hospital administrator. The CSI stared unhappily at Ryan's father's blood on his knuckles and prayed that he hadn't made things any worse for his colleague.
Horatio Caine sighed heavily as he sat behind his desk. A million tasks stared back at him from his overflowing in-box, but he couldn't focus on anything. In his mind's eye, he kept seeing Ryan, remembering the first time he had realized the depth of the young man's torment. It was rare to find someone who had endured a similar childhood to Horatio's, and he wondered if that was why he had bonded so quickly with the young Mr. Wolfe.
Ryan had been sitting across from Horatio in this very room, during one of their first meetings, when the overhead light had caught a scar just above Ryan's right ear. It would have scarcely been noticeable, but the young man's hair had recently been cut.
"Where did you get that scar, Mr. Wolfe?" The mark was distinctive, and Horatio recognized it instantly as a cigarette burn. What Horatio was concerned with at the time, he remembered, was that Ryan's previous departmental physicals had made no such mention of any scars or birthmarks. The scar appeared to be old, but perhaps he was wrong and the injury had occurred only recently. The lieutenant didn't know his new CSI very well. Was Ryan in an abusive relationship?
Ryan's hand flew to his hairline behind his opposite ear, and Horatio frowned. Yes, there were scars there, too. Three of them, if he wasn't mistaken, in a neat, meticulous line. His breath caught. The damage was too deliberate to be random. He waited uneasily for Ryan's reply.
"They're old, H," the young man all but whispered. He stared at the floor, and wouldn't meet his boss' eyes, even when Horatio came from behind his desk to sit beside him.
"Do you have other scars like those?" Horatio had asked.
Ryan began to tremble under the scrutiny. "Not exactly," he had whispered.
Horatio rubbed his eyes at the memory of forcing Ryan to see Alexx in autopsy and standing by as she gave him a thorough once-over. The boy had been beyond humiliated. Linear scars criss-crossed the undersides of both arms near his armpits. Horatio recognized the marks of a belt and stiffened. Similar scars were found inside his thighs. A small curving line ran across the base of his skull, another near his groin. Whomever had done this to Ryan had been very careful to hide their handiwork. His lower limbs were completely untouched.
Horatio had gestured to Alexx to leave the room and let him talk privately to his CSI.
Alexx had hugged Ryan before leaving. "I'm so sorry, baby." She gently lifted his face to meet hers. "You know you can always talk to me about anything."
Ryan had nodded, mutely, before resuming his contemplation of the floor.
Once the door had clicked shut behind her, Horatio walked over to Ryan. "Son, we need to talk," he had said.
Horatio stood up now and began to pace, remembering how their conversation had moved to his office. He had asked Ryan if the belt marks had anything to do with the fact that Horatio and Uncle Ron were listed as Ryan's emergency medical contacts instead of Ryan's parents.
Ryan had nodded.
"Son, if you ever want to talk about this, I'm here," H had said. "I promise you, what you've shared with me today doesn't leave this room."
Ryan's hand subconsciously flew up to the trio of scars near his left ear. "I guess you want to know what happened."
Horatio had taken a seat near his CSI. "I have a pretty good idea of what happened, Mr. Wolfe."
Ryan had lowered his hand to stare at Horatio. "You do?"
H nodded, his blue eyes filled with compassion. "My father was a violent alcoholic. He used to whip my brother and me with a belt."
Ryan's hands had flown to his sides, confirming Horatio's theory. "How did ... How did you deal with it?"
"It gets easier, Ryan," the redhead said. He took a deep breath and touched the scars in a line across the boy's scalp. "I'm sorry you had to go through so much pain alone."
Ryan had raised his gaze then, revealing two bloodshot hazel eyes. "How did you know?"
Horatio smiled a sad little smile. "I tried hurting myself once too. Anything to get away from the pain. Instead of cigarette burns, I opted for cutting." He had rolled up his sleeve then to reveal a faint series of pale thin lines on his right forearm.
His young CSI had broken down sobbing in his arms. At one point, Tripp had poked his head into the office to find H with watery eyes and one rolled up sleeve, rubbing Ryan's back as the young man told his story of abuse for the first time. The Texan had locked eyes with Horatio, their long years of friendship conveying more with simple looks than words ever could.
I told him, Frank.
That's good, Horatio. You okay?
I am.
Is he okay?
He will be.
But now, as Horatio Caine sat behind his desk with his hand over his face, he wondered. How long can Ryan stay strong in the face of that madman?
From his hospital bed, Ryan focused warily on the man pacing his room grumbling about government overreach, the encroachment of the police state, and the generally filthy conditions of the hospital.
"I'm going to give that administrator a piece of my mind," he declared, turning to his wife. She nodded from her spot in the corner, where she quietly worked on a piece of needlepoint.
George Wolfe focused his attention toward his son, but Ryan looked away before he spoke. "You don't worry about a thing, you hear me, Ryan? We're gonna have you out of here and back to Boston as soon as possible."
Ryan stared hard at the timepiece on his wrist and tried to fight an overwhelming sense of panic. This was all happening too fast, and he didn't have a say in anything. His life was completely out of control. He stared at the digital numbers on his wrist, only then remembering that Eric had placed the watch there with a promise that he would come back. Delko time, he thought, with a vague smile. Ryan touched the watch with his left hand, feeling the intricate knobs and dials. Counting things always calmed him down when he was this upset, and the second hand was his lifeline.
"You listenin' to me, boy?"
His father's face loomed large and Ryan blinked repetitively, the sense of panic returning. He focused on the numbers on the watch to keep his heart rate from jumping completely out of control. 24, 25, 26. "Yessir," he lied.
"Good." The man smiled. "I'll be back in a minute. You keep an eye now, Edna."
Ryan's mother barely acknowledged the man, choosing to concentrate on her embroidery. But once the door clicked shut, she set aside the hoop and needle. Walking to her son's bedside, she stood next to him. "You okay, Ry?" she asked softly.
He swallowed uncomfortably. "I could use some water."
She picked up a cup and brought the straw to his lips. Brushing the hair from his forehead, she smiled at him sadly. "You just never learn, do you?" She gave him a gentle kiss on the top of his head. "You can't change your destiny, Ryan. Fate is fate, and we got dealt the short end of the stick."
As she walked back to her chair, Ryan fought against the tears that threatened to come. That's not true, he wanted to argue with her, to scream at her, but it would do no good. She would simply cry and remain glued to his father's side, a passive voice of oppression.
He grasped Eric's watch harder, so thankful that his teammate had left something tangible for him to hold on to. It was only then that his fingers found a tiny slip of paper curled under the watchband. He unfurled the note and squinted at the tiny print in Eric's blocky scrawl:
DON'T GIVE UP