A/N: Thank you so much for the inputs of smuffly, FallenAngel0601, no accounter. The fact that your guys still review means a lot to me.

Okay, here we go with another heavy chapter. I've touched on a somewhat delicate subject here, so I hope the way I have written it has paid off. I'm happy with the way Don and Savannah act in this chapter, so I hope you will too.

Characters: Det. Don Flack Jr/OC – Savannah 'Anna' Patia Cormier, Danny/Lindsay, Stella Bonasera, Mac Taylor, and other members of CSI NY.

Set: This is canon up until after episode 6.08 'Cuckoo's Nest.' It's intended to be set three months after that episode. After that, it's AU.

Rating: M.

Warnings: Mild swearing, descriptions of sex and violence.

Disclaimer: I do not in any way own CSI NY or affiliates. I'm using the characters to no profit. I do not own the song or song lyrics at the beginning of each chapter that inspire me. But I wish that there were a few clones of Don Flack…mmmm….Oh, but I do own Savannah Cormier.

On the Mend – Chapter 9 – Past Pain

See, here's the bloody, bloody truth
You will hurt and you will lose
I've got scars you won't believe
Wear them proudly on my sleeve

P!nk - Run

A week later, Flack was better and back on top of his game. Of course, when he had been gone, paperwork had somehow made its way onto his desk in his absence, making the detective wonder who he pissed off to get that large a stack. Because his chief didn't want him to do anything too strenuous, he told Flack to get at least half of the necessary work done before he went gallivanting around looking for witnesses and suspects.

Luckily for Flack, the first exciting call of his day came after that halfway point.

"It's Flack," he answered the ringing of his cell.

"Don? It's Savannah."

"Hey cleaning fairy."

"Haha, you're a genius. Very original. Would you like some information on a guy some nice police officers dropped off some information on?"

"Information?" he questioned.

"While you were still recovering, Officer Priestly came past and gave me some pictures of guys that the PD is looking for as witnesses or suspects in the area," explained Savannah. She quickly looked out through the kitchen door window. "As it so happens, I have one of them right here, right now."

Flack leaned forward in interest. "Who?"

"Harry Gort."

Don's face turned grave. "He's our number one suspect for a murder Anna."

"That's what it said on the fact sheet. So what do you want me to do?"

"Stall him until I get there with some back up. We don't know if he's armed or not, so be careful," the detective warned.

"10-4," farewelled Savannah.

Sensing the thrill of catching up with someone they had been looking for since he had taken ill, Flack moved quickly, strapping on his gun and stuffing his arms into his jacket. He quickly got two uniforms to accompany him just in case things got pear shaped. If luck was with them, it would only take fifteen minutes to get through downtown traffic to the Comfort Cafe.

As he and the other cop car screeched to a stop in front of the cafe, Flack pulled his gun, hoping it wasn't needed. Keeping his gun hand tucked in the folds of his jacket, he and the two officers rushed inside.

As it so happened, he needn't have worried about his gun. Or about the other officers with him.

It was one of the strangest scenes Flack had ever stepped into (and this was New York, where strange things were commonplace) – one where his job was already done for him.

He grinned as he took it all in.

Savannah, caring, cheerful, cheeky Savannah, was sitting on Harry Gort's back, filing her nails nonchalantly. Gort was covered in a nasty mixture of flour and eggs, his hands and feet bound with two differently coloured jump ropes, a wad of napkins serving as an effective gag. He glared venomously at those around him and made noises of protest. Savannah ignored it all, merely calling out instructions to her staff from her position.

Holstering his firearm, the detective made his way through the small crowd of onlookers and stood in front of the spectacle, holding in his laughter.

"Okay…this is new. Is this the way you always stall people?" Don asked, attempting to hide the grin.

Looking up at him, Savannah's eyes sparkled with mischief. "Oh, I tried to. But apparently this guy doesn't like to chat. Tried to punch me. And then he tried to leave without paying for his meal. I thought that was enough to warrant this citizen's arrest."

"Do I even want to know how much flour and eggs got on him?" Flack shook his head and crouched down near Harry Gort's face, taking the napkins out of the man's mouth to allow him to speak. "Now, on the run from me and my guys is stupid. Trying to leave this cafe without paying is even more so."

"I'll sue her for false imprisonment," Gort spat.

"Like that's got much chance of sticking. Now let's go cupcake. I think the half-baked look is something that's going to trend in Rikers."

The brunette woman stood to allow Flack to get to Gort. As he wrestled the stringy haired suspect up, he said to Savannah, "I'll get you your ropes back after they've been processed."

"No rush," she reassured.

Gort didn't want to go quietly though. As the tall detective began to drag him away, he cursed, "You bitch. Tattle-tale bitch. Couldn't leave well enough alone."

Savannah stood, arms akimbo and eyes determined, and said, "I'm only doing what any good citizen would do."

Pissed off at her defiance, Gort shouted the one word no man should ever shout at a woman. That dreaded 'c' word. As soon as he shouted it, all sound seemed to be sucked out of the space with all the force of a black hole, it was so silent. Even Don was gobsmacked that Gort would have the guts to even say it in police custody. He was about to shove him up the nearest wall and settle this when Savannah's voice rang out, strong and furious.

"Wait," she snapped, and approached the bound man glaring at her. She approached slowly, cold ire radiating off her tall form. The colour of her irises seemed more grey than green, and there was no trace of her usual jovial nature.

"No one…" Savannah murmured, and then she lunged at Gort and thrust her arm into his neck to silence him. "No one calls me that. EVER," she growled.

The occupants of the cafe watched and waited with bated breath as the woman, shorter than both Flack and Gort, stared the suspect down. "You're lucky you didn't call me that in a dark alley Gort. No man will ever call me that again."

Flack began to pull Gort away, taken aback by the personality change in the dark haired woman who had taken such good care of him. "Let's go," he muttered, passing off the snarling Gort to the unis. He looked back at Savannah, who crossed her arms and stared away from him, shaking her head mutely. He understood. 'Not here,' it meant.

"Carry on everyone," Don called out, looking to Jacks and mentioning for her to look after her spitfire of a cousin.

The silence broke, and low murmurs cropped up as people gossiped about what had occurred.

And as the detective left, Jacks led an uncharacteristically subdued Savannah away.

As had become his habit, Flack found himself back at the cafe at the end of the day, but was curious when he didn't see Savannah counting the till, as was her custom. Instead, the shorter form of Jacks was doing the task. Still, he entered. He wanted to talk to his friend.

Jacks noticed him immediately and pointed to the kitchen door. "She's out back if you want to talk to her. She hasn't been herself since the Gort incident."

"Thanks Jacks," said Don, pushing through the door and crossing through the spotless kitchen and to the door that led to the back alley. It was there he found Savannah, her curly wavy hair falling around her face as she leaned her chin on an upraised knee, sitting desolately on a milk crate. She tilted her head to the side to glance at him briefly, but said nothing.

"Gee, I'm not important enough to get a hello anymore?" Flack asked in mock-indignation.

It worked in getting the dark haired woman to smirk a little and to greet him with a, "Howdy sheriff."

Lowering himself to a crouch, the detective said, "I just wanted to let you know that nothing is going to come up about the fact you trussed Gort up like a thanksgiving turkey and made him mimic a pastry. Also, nothing about your little dominance display on Gort about…that word. Although I thought you were a bit justified, Gort was kicking up a stink about it."

"Great," Savannah replied unenthusiastically.

Flack frowned and canted his head to the side. "Did that word really affect you that much?"

"Drug up bad memories," she supplied cryptically. "And unless you want to go through another saga of the Cormier sob story, no, I don't really want to explain."

"What if I wanted to hear more of that story?" challenged the off-duty detective.

Savannah brushed her hair out of her face to get a good reading on the man in front of her. As always, he was sincere. But she couldn't help but think that he would think she was pathetic if she told him about yet another part of her life she wasn't proud of. "Would you really?"

"Yes," replied Don.

"This isn't some sort of guilty conscience wanting to make us even after you were sick?" asked the shorter woman sceptically.

"What do you take me for? An idiot? No, nothing like that. I'm curious. Your actions spoke of some pretty good self-defence skills you must have, and I kinda wanted to know how and why you learned them," answered Flack. He reached out and squeezed her shoulder comfortingly. "I don't want to push you."

Savannah swore those blue eyes should be listed as compelling weapons. "If you stick around, you can follow Jacks and I home."

"All right."

Flack followed the cousins in Jacks' car which she shared with her mother, Savannah's Aunt Emilie. Turns out that they lived in a well maintained five storey building owned by Aunt Emilie, and they shared the two apartments on the ground floor.

As they entered her apartment, Flack instantly knew that the place was an extension of Savannah herself.

The walls were a warm white with colour accents brought in through furniture and artwork. A large painting of a purple and green flower hung above a soft grey couch covered with a jewel toned purple throw. This kitchen looked new and like a cook's dream. The bench was made of some kind of pale wood and looked fantastic against the white cabinetry. The table was the same light wood as the benches, with a purple candle as the centrepiece. A bright red light pendant hung above the table to bring extra brightness and intimate warmth.

"Nice place," Flack observed, scanning the area.

"Thanks. It's a haven for me to come home to after a tiring day," said Savannah, smiling fondly at her apartment.

She beckoned him in. "The coat rack is there. Just make yourself comfortable anywhere, I'm not fussed." Seeing Don peer around at everything, she smirked. "Satisfy your detective nosiness. You can have a poke around if you like while I get us a drink. Juice?"

"Yeah, sure." Taking the invitation he had been given, Flack went down the hallway that led to a bathroom and two bedrooms. One was used for an office with a sofa bed in the corner, while the other was obviously Savannah's bedroom. The king bed was the star of the room, covered in a teal and silver patterned coverlet and with pillows in matching colours. Like the rest of the apartment, the walls were a warm white, but were decorated with artworks and shelves holding books and mementos.

It was a room that spoke of true tranquillity.

Satisfied, he went back out and sat on the comfy couch. He made a low noise of appreciation as he stretched back in it. "Yeah, this is nice. Your couch is even better than mine."

"Aunt Emilie split half the price for me as a welcome to NYC gift," informed Savannah. "So I went for a better quality one than I would have usually gotten."

"No wonder. I know whose place I would want to crash at if my place went up in flames," Don quipped.

"Uh-oh, I'm doomed," joked Savannah, returning with their drinks. She set them down on her coffee table and settled herself on the brown wicker armchair adjacent to the couch. "Before we begin part two of my emotional past, are you hungry? I've got leftovers if you feel like it."

"I'm fine, Savannah. We can do food later if necessary. You got me here under mystery, so I want to know first. Your behaviour today was abnormal, I want to know why."

"I have to ask you again Don…are you sure? I'm sure you hear a lot of this kind of thing at work and all."

Seeing the insecurity made the detective more determined to support her than ever. He nodded. "Surer and more serious than a heart attack."

Savannah was half hoping that he would hesitate at the last moment and say 'no,' but he didn't. Besides, deep down, she knew this story had to be shared. Without a word, she reached up and began undoing the buttons of her shirt. When she got the second button undone, Flack looked weirded out.

"Uh…this doesn't look to be much of a story," he commented, his eyes flicking between Savannah's face and the skin of her décolletage revealed.

"It will be in a moment. I'm not trying to get fresh with you," she murmured. Leaving it at the third button, she pulled the shirt to the right, showing a ragged scar. It was about an inch long, but it was at least a few years old. "That was from a pocketknife." Then, feeling the detective's eyes searing into her skin from the force of his stare, she turned her back to him and let the shirt drop a little. Seven inches down from the base of her neck, just off to the right of her spine, was another scar. This one was crescent shaped and at least four inches long, leaving a patch of skin discoloured, slightly darker than the shade surrounding it. "That was from a baseball bat."

"Who did this to you?" asked Don quietly, but Savannah could tell from his tone that he hated seeing the scars.

"Parting gift from my second and last boyfriend, now my ex," she told, her tone equally as soft. "Jake Wallace."

"Did he get caught?"

"No, he ran. But prior to this…incident, he seemed like a regular guy. My instincts were so off on him," admitted Savannah. She did up her shirt again, but noticed her friend was still staring at the spots where they were. "This happened about four years ago."

"Tell me." The words were soft, almost plea like, but they held the ring of demand in them.

Sifting through memories of a certain part of dark time in her life, Savannah begun her tale.

"We met at a bar, nothing out of the ordinary. We hit it off pretty much right away. It was practically a textbook romance. And like a textbook tragedy, everything changed." Her voice went lower, almost monotonic, as she told Flack about Jake. It was like she was in a dissociated state, lost in memory. "He no longer took me out to dinner or did anything romantic. He kept pressuring for us to live together so I could be his 'perfect partner.' More often than not, he was angry that I wouldn't. So a few days after I rejected the twentieth proposal for us to move in, he comes to see me. Acts all sweet, and so I'm thinking, 'this is the old Jake. He's back. What happened was just a phase.' But I was wrong."

A lone tear fell from the corner of her eye. Her voice choked up with emotion as she repeated, "I was so wrong."

"That night, right before we were fully into sex, he tells me to flip onto my stomach. When I asked why, he said he wanted to take me from behind and in my…"

"Door number two," Flack supplied as an alternative.

Savannah had the grace to blush. "Yeah, well, there. I refused. He begged me. I still said no, I didn't even want to think about that. After the fifth time I denied him, he got angry. I didn't even see his fist coming before he clocked me out cold."

Blowing out a breath to keep from degrading into hysteria at the memory of the fear she felt, Savannah fiddled with her purple throw as a focus point and made sure not to look at the detective sitting rigidly on her couch. She refused to cry any more than one tear. "When I woke, the pocketknife was already embedded in my skin. I don't really recall what happened next. At the time, I was just too scared. Jake wasn't in the room. So I made a break for it – I think he underestimated how long I would be out for. I almost made it too, but he got me just before I escaped. The baseball bat got me on the ground. He hit me a few times with it and then yanked the knife out of my shoulder. He kept screaming that word at me. That was the clearest moment: when he was calling me a 'c'. Here's where it gets hazy. I can't remember the other injuries he caused, but I remember having the strength to smash his balls up to his throat. It gave me just enough time to get out of the house and run to the local police station in nothing but my jeans and bra."

"When the cops got to the house, Jake was gone. He took his weapons and got the hell out of dodge. I haven't seen him since," she finished off, finally looking up at Don who had his cop face on. "And they didn't catch him." Savannah said, "You know the why I got those skills. How is easier to answer. A week after my attack I started taking a women's self-defence class at the local PCYC. I felt much safer when I participated. I refuse to be a doormat."

Flack brought his hand up to his mouth, leaning into it and saying nothing, but staring at Savannah. "Whatever I was expecting you to tell me, it wasn't that," he said after a short silence.

"Much like how the story of my mother was."

"Yeah." He leaned forward and clasped his hands in front of him. "And explains why Stella is so comfortable around you. You knew the signs." Sighing, he said, "You know what gets me Savannah? How much you work at it to be happy. To serve others, to try and make them feel good about themselves."

"I'd go nuts otherwise," joked the brunette weakly. "There's only so much time one can spend on themselves, I think."

"Not if you saw some of the cases I had. Some people were so vain it disgusted me," replied the detective.

Savannah worried her lower lip between her teeth before asking shyly, "Could you tell me something about any memorable cases? It doesn't have to be a big case, just something memorable."

Flack smiled. "The question is where do I begin on that one?"

He only acquiesced to switch topics because he saw the tactic for what it was. Diverting the topic from Savannah's past to something less emotionally potent. He could roll with that. He did that when thinking about Jess. Grief still hit him hard and unexpectedly, so he guessed the same would be for the spitfire of a cafe owner sitting there. He momentarily wondered what tragic story awaited him when Savannah told him about her friends.

"Start anywhere," she encouraged.

"Well, there was this case where three uni students robbed a bank. The genius of the plan was that they were all dressed up like Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's…"

The night passed as their familiar friendly chatter resumed. Flack passed on anecdotes of cases while Savannah shared incidents of her less than successful cooking attempts. Equilibrium restored, Flack left that night with the promise of furthering Savannah's self defence skills.

He wanted to help her ensure she would never be a victim again.

A/N: Okay, there won't be too many 'revelations' about Savannah until a bit later in the story about her friends Amber and James. In the next few chapters, there will still be elements of drama, but the tone will be slightly lighter than this chapter.

As always, feedback is very much appreciated. I really want to know what you all felt about this chapter, as it was a particularly challenging one.

Next update should be in about two days time. See you all then!