He'd been glad when Andy had taken Kyle for a walk around the city, he wasn't sure how much longer he would have been able to hold it together had the two men stayed for a moment more than they had. Returning here to New York, it had been worse than he ever could have imagined. As soon as he saw the famous skyline of Manhattan, all of the painful and bitter memories from his past came rushing back at him. Gianni and Danny had been brutal in their treatment of him, yet being made to come back here made him feel so much worse. It was here that he would be confronted with the reality of his past transgressions, there would be no running away from the truth this time. He'd be paraded around headquarters like some kind of show pony while all around looked at him, staring at him with questioning eyes.
He felt his defensive walls shatter as he heard the door close, letting the breath out of his body as he exhaled heavily. His legs faltered beneath him as he clumsily lowered himself down onto the large bed before him, the tears pricking painfully at his eyes as he screwed them shut, grabbing his head in his hands and squeezing at his temples as the negative emotions that he'd been hiding all day finally spewed forth in a disorganised jumble. He squeezed the sides of his skull with closed fists, so hard that it hurt, yet he used the pain to try to focus his thoughts instead.
Nothing seemed to work, the memories - and emotions associated with them, came hurtling at him with a vengeance. Powerless to stop what was happening, he felt his temper fray and finally snap as he threw his holdall wildly, clothes scattering across the room as he did so. Even the anguished growl that he let out did nothing to calm his ragged nerves, his breath coming in heaving sobs as the tears of frustration rolled down his face. How much more of this was he expected to take? Hadn't he paid enough for the crimes of his past? How much more was he expected to lose - his sanity?
Right now, all he wanted was for everything to stop - just for a moment, until he could catch his breath. He wanted the soothing hands of unconsciousness to hold him in their firm embrace so that he could escape from the never ending nightmare that his life had become.
Lying back on the bed provided little relief, shutting his eyes was futile when he had so many conflicting feelings swirling around in his mind. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of the people he had hurt, the faces of the people who had died because of him. He was haunted by his past actions, the demons never letting him get more than a moment's rest before they returned for him - faster and stronger than they had been before.
Maybe that was the problem, he was getting steadily weaker against the ghouls that taunted him, while they became stronger and louder with each passing second, tormenting him for the choices that he'd made. He had no doubt that, if Jeff were here, that the man would tell him he was being overly dramatic, but he couldn't help the sense of fear and dread that he felt at the thought of coming face to face with his chequered past.
It would have been at times like this that he would have indulged in some kind of substance abuse to rid himself of the memories that he had worked so hard to forget. The last time he had been here, he'd spent more nights than he cared to remember indulging in as many unhealthy coping mechanisms as he could find, becoming increasingly accustomed to alcohol and various prescription pain medications. Getting hold of narcotics had never been particularly hard back then - working for the Malucci's had to have some benefits after all.
But he'd given all of that up when he came to Miami. It had been his chance to start again, and that meant ridding himself of the habits of the past and turning over a new leaf, immersing himself in a healthier lifestyle and culture. Even after everything that Gianni and Danny had done to him, he had never returned to those damaging ways again. Maybe it was because he had a new addiction in his life. Each time he felt himself stumbling, he had found himself wrapped in her arms as she soothed him from one horrific nightmare to the next. Calleigh had become such an important part of his support system that without her he felt lost.
It had been his choice to leave, though. He had been the one to walk out of her life, not the other way around. Suddenly, his actions of last night now seemed much less sensible than they had back then. Little more than over twenty-four hours ago, he had known what he was doing and had been sure that he was choosing the right path. Now, he wasn't so sure.
Now the fear and uncertainty were beginning to set in and it was a feeling that was alien to him. He was a man who had spent so many years being sure of himself, giving off an air of confidence as he went about his job, making things look easy. But now that assurance and confidence had been broken as it lay in a sorry state of disrepair, his spirit as damaged as his body had been those few horrific months ago. He hated feeling this way, feeling weak and needy as his body craved the touch of the woman he loved. She would keep him safe, tell him that everything would be alright, and he would choose to believe her, even though he knew it to be a lie.
He knew deep down that this was just the first in a number of tests designed to examine the strength of his resolve. Still, it didn't make it any easier to lie on the damn hotel bed, stuck in a city that he hated. Balling his hands into fists, he cursed the day that he'd ever been born, blaming himself for the stupid choices that he'd made, the choices that had brought him to this point in his life.
He must have lay there for hours, listening to the sound of the traffic on the street outside, feeling the repetitive noise lull him into an almost hypnotic trance, his eyes growing heavier as his body lost its internal battle with his mind. Things were growing quieter, dimmer. Even the demons in his mind seemed to be resting briefly, allowing him to snatch a moment or two of peace.
He wasn't so deeply asleep as to not here the door to the hotel room open quietly, the light from the corridor outside illuminating a small portion of the room. He opened his eyes with a quiet groan as he rubbed at them with the palms of his hands, sitting up and smoothing down the front of his top, trying to make it look as if he'd not just woken up.
"John?" a quiet voice asked. Uncertainty tinged Andy's words as he poked his head further into the room.
"Yeah," he answered in a breathy whisper as he lifted his legs off the bed and placed them back on the floor, not even looking up when he heard the door close. It was then that he realised that his son wasn't with his old partner. "Where's Kyle?"
Andy shrugged his jacket off and sat down on his own bed. "Down in the bar. Said he wanted some time to himself."
He said nothing except to nod his head, keeping his gaze averted from the man that knew him too well.
"You ok, kid?"
He ached to answer that question honestly. No, he wasn't ok, not by a long-shot. Yet the lie was out of his mouth before he'd even realised it. "I'm fine." It seemed to be his automatic response to most questions these days, he was too tired to sit and talk about his feelings anymore, knowing that he'd already had enough of that from Jeff to last a lifetime.
Andy sighed deeply. He'd had this conversation with his old partner before, and not all that long ago either. It would most likely end in the same way too. "You don't look ok."
It was almost an exact repeat of the words he'd spoken only a couple of weeks ago, only this time the setting was in New York, not Miami.
"Please, Andy, just leave it."
John looked at him with those sad blue eyes again, eyes that held more pain than any good man should ever have had to know. He didn't want to push his friend when he was already so close to the edge, but he didn't have much of a choice. John needed to open up to someone, there would be no way that he could deal with the repercussions of this trip without letting at least some of the emotions associated with it out.
"Talk to me, John…please." He'd never been a man who would resort to begging, but John needed to be honest, he needed to find an outlet for the negative feelings that were bubbling inside of him, barely held below the surface. The man was a ticking time bomb, primed and ready to explode at a moment's notice, better he do it in front of him than Kyle.
He watched sadly as his old partner stood up suddenly and began pacing the room, eerily similar to the display of agitation that he'd witnessed earlier in the day. "I know you're scared….frightened…..it's ok."
He'd had a feeling that preying on John's weaknesses would get the desired response from him, and it worked as those laser-like eyes pinned him with a withering glare. He'd expected John to react angrily to his words, to deny the feelings that he seemed to associate so closely with weakness. Yet he didn't. Andy found himself taken by surprise when the spark went out of John's eyes and he finally mumbled. "It's not ok."
"We'll get through it." Andy inwardly cringed at his own words and how pathetically inadequate they seemed at the moment.
"I'm tired of getting through it, Andy….It's one thing after another….I get past one hurdle, then something else comes out of nowhere and blindsides me. When is it going to stop?...When is it going to be enough?
He felt his heart pounding in his chest painfully. It sounded as if John were giving up. After everything they had been through, why was he giving up now?
"You're tired. You just need to rest…..things will seem better in the morning."
It was another lame reply. God, he was no good at these types of conversations.
He watched as John nodded his head sadly, still with that defeated look on his face as his eyes followed the forlorn figure as he lowered himself back down onto his bed. John's next words were so quiet that he was sure that he'd not heard him correctly. "You should have left me."
What the hell was that supposed to mean? There was no way that he was going to let his friend go through this alone. "I told you, John. I'm with you every step of the way here."
"That's not what I meant."
He frowned in confusion. "I don't get it. Left you where?"
"At sea. You should have left me out there to die."
He couldn't believe what he was hearing. After everything that all of them had done for him, this was how he repaid them? By telling them that they shouldn't have bothered in the first place?
Stalking over to the pitiful figure, he grabbed him by the t-shirt and barged him into the nearest wall, not caring that the air rushed from the man in a pained rush. His anger overrode any sense of tenderness and love that he felt towards the sorry man in front of him as he snarled in his face. "Now you listen up, I'm only going to say this once. Don't you ever let me hear you talk like that again, you hear me?"
"Andy…."
He fisted his hands tighter into John's t-shirt, pushing him further into the wall. "Shut up, you sorry piece of shit. I've had just about as much of this crap as I can take. You've got a woman that loves you, friends that care about you...more than that, you've got a kid who adores you. You've got more than most people have, so stop acting like the world owes you a favour." He took a moment to catch his breath and silenced John with a fearsome stare of his own. "You're gonna get your shit together and face it like a man, not some snivelling little turd. What happened to you sucks, but you gotta get your head out of your ass before you lose everything."
"But I have lost everything, look at me."
His short temper frayed once more as he pulled his former partner forwards and back against the wall again in an almost violent fashion. "This isn't just about you anymore. You've got a son sitting downstairs in the bar worried sick about you, you've left the woman you love for this. You're going to give all that up just because you're feeling sorry for yourself?" He loosened his hold on John's t-shirt as he felt his own anger dissipate into resigned frustration, watching as the younger man's bottom lip trembled as he tried valiantly to hold himself together.
He pulled John towards him, holding him close as he felt the wracking sobs that the younger man let out, his arms clinging to him for all he was worth. "It'll be ok, kid. We'll get through this," he soothed as he ran his hand up and down John's back, feeling the man before him get rid of some of the pent-up agitation that had been eating at him all day. "Let it out. You feel better for it, I promise you."
He couldn't really be angry with him, experience had taught him that anger and self-loathing had become part of the man's coping mechanisms over the past twenty years. When things got too tough and he found that legendary strength slipping, John would do whatever he could to push people away so that he could suffer on his own in silence, away from the concerned stares of the people that cared about him. John had likely not meant what he'd said about wishing he'd been left to die out at sea. It had just been his way of dealing with things at the time, the conflicting emotions swirling around in him had probably caused him to be unaware of what he was really saying.
The selfish part of him had hoped that John would have had his meltdown in private so that he didn't have to deal with the emotional train wreck of a man in front of him. Yet another part of him felt honoured that someone as private and reserved as John had become would let him see him at his lowest. Perhaps it was better that John get it out now, after hitting rock bottom, the only way would be back up. And so he held onto John for dear life as the man clung on for all he was worth, the tears and frustration he could now no longer hold back pouring out of him. Maybe once it had all come out John would feel on a more even keel and be able to deal with the hard few days to come.
"I don't think I can do this."
The words were no more than a whisper, yet the intention behind them could not have been clearer had John shouted the words from the top of his lungs. Of course he was frightened, the poor guy had every right to be scared shitless by what was to come. He'd be made to face the past, and this time there would be no getting away from the things that he had done. It still didn't make the whole sorry situation any easier to take, when would life cut John a break? How much more would he be made to suffer before the powers from above decided that his debt had been paid?
He held the broken man in his arms as he felt the emotions flow out of him, painful and raw. The outpouring of emotions so much like the young man he used to know. John was still in there, somewhere underneath everything that the man had endured. John was still a small spark within the tortured soul before him. But he wasn't just John anymore, sooner or later, the stoic lieutenant would return to the fore and take charge of the body that they both inhabited. The defences would come back down, he would reinforce the image that he was fine and that he was coping, while the deeply hidden emotions bubbled away inside of him, the pressure steadily growing until it forced its way through one of the many cracks in the troubled man's psyche.
But John wasn't on his own this time. This time he had someone by his side who would take the man at his lowest, offering him firm words when needed. A man that would stand by him through everything, making sure that he knew that he would not have to weather the storms alone. Maybe John was stronger than he gave him credit for, allowing him to see him at his lowest ebb and for the man he really was, the man who was so wrapped up in his pain and confusion that he could no longer see a way out of his woes. He could have run away and hid, keeping his emotional state from the staring eyes of others, yet he had chosen to be honest and admit that he was frightened of what was to come.
This was John at his worst, but also at his most open and honest, no longer denying the truth that had been so painfully obvious all along. He broke away gradually as he heard the sobs dry away into small hiccupping breaths. Guiding his friend to the bed, he kept an arm around his shoulder, giving him an awkward pat on the arm. "Get some rest. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow."
John looked at him with reddened eyes as he roughly rubbed at his tear-stained face, nodding his head slightly. "I'm sorry," he mumbled as he lay back on the bed before finding himself covered with a blanket.
"Forget it. Just get some sleep, ok?"
The older man sat and watched his former partner from a chair in the corner of the room, hoping that when John woke tomorrow that he would be better placed to deal with the myriad of emotions that were to come.
It felt depressing to sit at the kitchen table, eating her meal for one, sitting alone in a house that she had gotten so used to sharing with the man she loved. She'd become accustomed to spending her evenings with Horatio, enjoying a good meal and genuine conversation with a man who was her intellectual equal. Maybe that was just wishful thinking though, many of the evenings that she had spent in this house with such a complicated man had often been fraught with tension and stress. Horatio at his lowest might have been hard work, but she would take that any day over the cold and lonely house that she now found herself in.
It was as if the ghost of him was still everywhere that she looked. Glancing across the table, she found her eyes falling on the chair that he would sit in, her mind conjuring up the image of him eating their shared meal in that graceful and dignified way that he had. She could see it so clearly, Horatio sitting at the table with his obligatory cup of morning coffee, straightening his clothes before steeling himself to leave the house for the day.
Everywhere she looked there were reminders. His coffee cup, the dinner plate with the chip in it that he favoured so often, the brand of bottled water he liked, hell, even his favourite cheese in the fridge. Everything in her house reminded her of him.
The man she loved.
The man who had left her behind.
The angry voice in her head commanded her to throw out every last reminder of the man who had broken her heart, yet she couldn't, she couldn't bear to throw out the last pieces of the man who had stolen her heart away so completely. Maybe this was God's way of punishing her for not finding Horatio fast enough when he had been at the mercy of the Malucci's, that this was her penance for not doing enough, for not being the leader that everyone had hoped that she would be.
Logically, she could understand why Horatio had felt the need to leave, but her heart refused to accept those reasons. The power to love had always been controlled by the heart - never the head, and it was this very reason that caused her so much pain. Her mind knew what was right, yet her heart denied any such truth in the matter. Her heart and mind were polar opposites in their beliefs yet so intrinsically intertwined that she would never be able to separate them, they would be forever linked by an invisible yet unbreakable cord, destined to cause her pain until her dying day.
And she did feel pain, a pain unlike any she had ever known. She'd loved and lost men in the past, but there was something so very different about her relationship with Horatio. It felt as if he were the one that truly completed her as a person, the one who could bring out the very best in her.
And the worst, lady. Her subconscious goaded her.
And she knew that the tiny nagging voice in the back of her head was right, that there was an undeniable truth to the sneering words that it spoke. Perhaps this was her chance to find out who she really was too, had she ever really stopped to think about the effect the last six months had had on her?
Probably not, she realised.
She'd been so swept away in her concern for Horatio that anything else became secondary, if it didn't benefit the man she loved, then it wasn't worth thinking about. Had she become so single-minded and blinkered in her thinking that it had blinded her to what had really been happening?
She liked to think of herself as a fairly intelligent woman, but matters of the heart were always easier to confront when you had a trusted friend by your side to help you navigate the pitfalls along the way. Sitting in and feeling miserable wasn't going to make Horatio return to her any faster, and so she pulled out her phone and dialled the number of someone who had never failed in her duty as a friend and a confidant, determined that she would do a little growing of her own as she sought to fill the time during her lover's absence.