A/N: First of all, I'm aware that this chapter is a bit shorter than my chapters usually are - I apologize for that, but I couldn't add any of the other parts that I wanted to without throwing the flow of the story off. Still, it is still a fairly good-sized chapter, so I hope you'll enjoy it.
And for the record? I absolutely bawled when I was writing the last bit of this chapter, so I hope you'll let me know what you think - I had this gorgeous, heart-breaking image in my head, but I'm not sure if I conveyed it as well as I could have, so any feedback is appreciated!
Don sighed as he leaned forward in his chair, his forearms resting heavily on his thighs as he held Stella's engagement ring in his hands. Slowly, he twirled the elegant platinum band between his fingers, his thumbs running over the sweeping circle of small diamonds surrounding the brilliant center stone, trying to focus on the happy memories he associated with the ring instead of the bleakness of the current situation.
"That's quite a ring," Mac commented, sinking into the chair next to Don and pulling him out of his thoughts.
"She's quite a woman," Don replied, his eyes not moving from the diamond.
"Touché," Mac conceded, an awkward silence descending upon the two men.
"She wanted to tell you," Flack said quietly. "She wanted to tell everyone, but she especially wanted you to know. This isn't…this isn't how she would have wanted you to find out, Mac, I'm sorry."
"Is she happy?" Mac asked.
"What do you mean?" Don asked in confusion.
"It's a simple enough question," Mac said. "I'm afraid I haven't spent a lot of time with Stella lately, so I can't judge for myself. Is she happy, Don? Do you make her happy?"
"I don't know," Don sighed. "It's been…well, I guess you could say it's been a bit of a rough road for us. But yeah, for the most part, I think she's happy. I know you might not think much of the way we went about this, but it doesn't change the fact that I love her, Mac, more than anything."
"I don't know much about how exactly it is that you two 'went about this', Don, but if she's happy, then I guess that's all there is to say," Mac said, his eyes flitting back to Stella's ring. "You must have been quite certain that she'd say 'yes'."
"Excuse me?" Don asked, again confused by Mac's question.
"I'd say that ring cost you four, maybe five months' salary," Mac said. "I remember being terrified to spend even one months' salary when I bought Claire's engagement ring."
"Why?" Don asked. "Wasn't she worth it?"
"Of course she was," Mac said. "That and a lot more, actually. Problem is, it's hard to return an engagement ring…and even though we'd been together almost two years, I wasn't entirely confident that she was going to say 'yes'. It seems you didn't have that worry with Stella."
Don shook his head and laughed slightly. "It was a little late for her to back out by the time I bought this baby," he said.
This time, it was Mac's turn to shoot a confused look at the other man. "How so?" he asked.
"Gave this to her on Christmas Eve," Don said. "We'd already been married a little over three months…"
"Don, it's freezing out here!" Stella exclaimed, pulling her coat a bit tighter as Don helped her out of the cab. "What are we doing here, anyway? I thought you said you had a Christmas present for me."
"I do," Don said, grabbing her hand and leading her through the streets toward their destination.
"And I have to freeze to get this present?" Stella asked playfully.
"It's character building, Stel," Don laughed as Stella shivered again. "Geez woman, you'd think you grew up in the desert instead of Manhattan."
"Very funny," Stella said, pausing as she looked around at where they were. "Don, what are we doing at the Brooklyn Bridge?"
"So impatient," Don scolded playfully. "Haven't you heard that good things come to those who wait?"
"It's hard to wait when it's thirty degrees and snowing," Stella pointed out as they made their way to the center of the bridge.
"Come here," Don instructed, holding open his arms and motioning for Stella to step into them. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her tightly as he turned them to face the Manhattan skyline. "So, I have a confession to make," he whispered in her ear.
"What's that?" Stella asked.
"When I was a kid, I used to carve my name into the bricks on the side of the school," Don said. "I used to put my initials, that cheesy little heart and then the initials of whichever little girl I thought I loved that week."
"You brought me here to tell me about your childhood girlfriends?" Stella asked suspiciously.
"Nah," Don chuckled slightly. "But I just wanted you to know, I never really grew up – I'm still writing on the sides of buildings."
Pausing, Don watched as Stella's gaze drifted across the skyline, gasping as she finally settled upon the display he'd spent so long arranging. It hadn't been easy convincing the managers of three separate but neighboring skyscrapers to cooperate, but a few flashes of his badge had generally done the trick. He knew the effort was worth it as he watched the tears in Stella's eyes as the buildings glowed with 'D', a heart and 'S'.
"I think I took it up a notch from the playground, though," Don whispered. "Don't you agree?"
"It's perfect," Stella sighed happily, leaning back against Don's chest to take in the view. "But Don, don't think I don't recognize that you stole this idea from a dead guy."
"Shh," Don scolded gently. "You're spoiling the moment. Besides, I bought a much nicer ring than dead guy did."
"You what?" Stella asked in confusion. "You bought a ring?"
Don smiled slightly, twirling Stella around so that she was facing him as he dropped to one knee and pulled out the iconic light blue Tiffany's box he'd been carrying all day.
"Oh, Don," Stella sighed. "What is all of this?"
"You don't recognize a marriage proposal?" Don asked.
"Don, we're already married," Stella pointed out, holding up her left hand to show him her simple platinum band that matched the one on his left hand.
"Will you just let me do this?" Don asked in frustration. "Otherwise my knee's going to freeze down here in the snow."
"Fine, fine, go ahead," Stella conceded. "Propose."
"Okay, here's the deal," Don said, taking Stella's hand in his. "We could argue the point all night, but the fact of the matter is, we rushed into this marriage thing. We closed our eyes and jumped without looking, and for a while it looked like we were going to crash and burn. We've been through hell and back, Stella, and I know it hasn't been easy for either of us…but we're still here, and that's got to mean something, right? I know the first time around, I didn't exactly have the smoothest proposal – hell, I'm still surprised you actually yes when I asked the way I did."
"I thought it was perfect for us," Stella interrupted.
"It was appropriate, maybe, but that doesn't make it perfect," Don said. "And I want us to have the chance to do this right, just you and I, nothing else getting in the way. There are a million reasons that we shouldn't have gotten married, and probably a million more why we shouldn't have stayed married. I don't know when exactly it happened, though, but despite everything that says we shouldn't be together, I am head over heels in love with you, Stella. And yeah, I know this isn't the most romantic speech in the history of romance, but I'm tryin' here…I guess what I'm tryin' to say is that I love you, so would you please be my wife? Again?"
Stella could hardly hold back the tears that were welling up in her eyes as she looked down at Don and nodded. "Yes," she said, laughing happily as a grin came over his face. "Of course I will, Don."
"Well, that's a relief," Don said, slowly opening the ring box. "Because this baby's not exactly returnable, you know."
Stella's eyes grew wipe as Don carefully slipped the elegant Tiffany engagement ring onto her finger, a brilliant round center stone surrounded by a sweeping circle of smaller diamonds, all centered on a band of platinum encrusted with even more small diamonds.
Easing himself up off his knee, Don gently brushed a strand of hair out of his wife's eyes, tucking it behind her ear as he leaned in and placed a soft kiss on her lips. "I love you, Mrs. Flack," he whispered, using the name they saved for only the most private of situations, smiling as Stella reached up, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him back down to her for another kiss, losing themselves completely in the moment.
Julia Harper shook her head as the team of detectives descended upon her the moment she walked into the waiting room. Raising her hand to silence their flurry of questions, she looked around, not seeing the one person she needed to talk to.
"I'm sorry, I can't tell you much right now," she said apologetically. "I need to speak with Detective Flack. Where is he?"
Glancing around in confusion, the team realized for the first time that Don had somehow slipped away while they'd been waiting.
"Sam, where'd he go?" Lindsay asked anxiously.
"What am I, my brother's keeper?" Samantha asked. "How should I know where he is?"
"Can't you just tell us if Stella's alright?" Danny asked impatiently.
"I can tell you that she made it through surgery," Julia said. "Beyond that, I really need to speak with her husband first."
"Where would he go?" Mac asked, looking around in frustration. "I was just talking to him a few minutes ago."
Samantha pursed her lips in concentration, running through her last conversations with her brother in her head. Finally, she sighed and smacked palm into her forehead lightly. "Of course," she said in exasperation. "I'll be back in a bit."
"Is it just me or does that girl confuse anybody else?" Angell asked.
"Definitely not just you," Lindsay said, shaking her head as they all watched Samantha hurry away from the group. "Where the hell is she going?"
Samantha sighed as she slipped silently into the small hospital chapel. She honestly couldn't put her finger on how she'd known Don would be here. Although their parents had raised them Catholic, none of the Flack children were particularly religious as adults. Samantha couldn't even remember the last time she'd been to church, and the last time she'd prayed, she'd been sitting in a jail cell and it had ended up being more ranting than actual prayer.
Now, however, Samantha watched quietly as Don knelt in the front pew, his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed so that it rested on his forearms. Unsure what to do, she simply stood there, glancing nervously back and forth between her brother and the cross hanging above the altar in front of them.
Only a few moments later, Samantha watched as Don's shoulders began to shake, his head dropping even lower as she saw him give in to his fears and begin to sob. If she had been surprised to find her brother praying, Samantha was shocked by this turn of events. She couldn't once remember seeing Don cry, not really. Sure, she'd seen him shed a tear or two from time to time…when their father had given away the family dog, when his high school sweetheart had dumped him three weeks before graduation, when their grandmother had passed away six years ago. She was even fairly certain there'd been a tear in his eye when she'd hugged him after her release from prison. In all her twenty-seven years, though, Samantha Flack could not recall a single time she'd ever seen Don actually straight-up crying.
Moving down the aisle and slipping into the pew next to her brother, Samantha allowed herself a quick moment of apprehension before putting aside her discomfort and kneeling next to her brother, her left arm slipping around his shoulders while her right hand covered his clasped hands. As Don looked over at her, his bloodshot eyes registering his surprise at her presence in the chapel, Samantha simply nodded, an unspoken message passing between the siblings as they both bowed their heads once again.
