A/N: As the chapters are getting longer, I'm only putting up one at a time. Please continue to send your ideas and suggestions (Chocobetty has a pool going on the identity of the mysterious caller that some might want in on!)

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to CBS and the creative team at CSI:NY.

Koumbaros and Koufettas

Chapter 21: The Call of the Lost

Although Stella still was hardly showing, she had read all the books, and knew that the burst of energy of her second trimester was about to come to an end after New Year's. She was going to need a less exhausting work schedule, plus it was time to start the paperwork on her maternity leave, and prepare Mac for her to be out of the field. Before she made a general announcement, she wanted to tell Mac. She mentioned this to Don the night before, while they were getting ready for bed.

"Mac? Really? So Soon? Umm, do you want me to go with you?" Don was a brave man, no one better in a fight, but he still found Mac more than a little intimidating. After all, the man saved his life with a shoelace, for God's sake. And Don was not positive, but he had a vague memory of standing at a doorway, getting ready to go through, when he heard Mac's voice calling him back. How was Don supposed to treat him as human after that?

Stella laughed at his half-hearted offer. "No, I think this is something I'll do on my own, thanks, love. But you don't need to worry; at least he won't need to bring out his shotgun!"

Don's laugh at the joke was a little forced. He decided to avoid the lab if he could for a few days.

"Mac, got a minute?" Stella stood in the doorway, watching him struggle with the scheduling for the next two weeks. It was never easy, and she knew that her news would make things more difficult. Still, she thought Mac would be happy for her. At least, she hoped he would.

"For you, two minutes." His smile lit up his face, making him look like a different person. Stella sat in the chair he indicated as he came around to the front of the desk and leaned against it casually. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, in about four months, you can act as koumbaros for Don and me." Stella's voice was quiet. When Don and she had talked about godparents for the baby, no one had seemed quite as perfect for the job of godfather as Mac. Of course, Don tended to hear the word GODfather when Stella said it; he prefered koumbaros.

Mac's eyes grew wide, and then he did something completely unexpected: he threw his arms around Stella, lifted her out of the chair, and swung her around, hugging her and shouting, "You're pregnant? Stella, that's wonderful!"

Giggling, she said, "Yes, it is, and I guess you have just saved me the trouble of telling anyone else!"

It was true. Out in the lab, money changed hands like snowballs in a winter battle. Mac put her gently down on her feet, and kissed her, still laughing, though with a glimmer of tears in his eyes. "Where's Don? He didn't come with you? He must be over the moon!"

Stella shook her head, "He couldn't get away, and I wanted to tell you on my own. He can hardly stop himself from crowing like Peter Pan!" She decided to protect Don's reputation and not out him as the coward he was. "I must love him," she thought in amazement. "Well, maybe I'll tell Danny, anyway!"

"Are you sure you want me to be godfather, Stel? It's a pretty big thing in your church, isn't it?" Mac's voice betrayed a little uncertainty, which was as surprising as the joyous shout a few minutes ago had been.

"You would be an important person in this baby's life no matter whether you accept or not, Mac. After all, without you, this baby wouldn't even have had a chance at life. If you hadn't been there when Don was trapped in the bomb blast …" Stella's voice gave out; it was not something she could bear to think about often.

Mac kissed her again, on both cheeks. "I would be deeply honoured to be the baby's koumbaros. Thank you, Stella."

She smiled at him, her heart in her eyes. She knew her baby could not have a better person in his or her life than Mac Taylor.

After the news spread through the lab, Danny and Lindsay were in for a lot of teasing about what they knew and when and how could they have not let anyone in on the secret, and did they have any other secrets to pass on? Danny took it all with a wisecrack and a smirk, but Lindsay had a harder time. She eventually started looking for quieter parts of the lab to work in where there were fewer people to chew over the baby question.

She had tried, she really had. Since Stella and Flack had come back from their honeymoon, Lindsay had thrown herself into baby-planning conversations with Stella, and had talked Don out of more than one fit of the panics over being a father. Danny's answer to most things was to take Don out for a drink, which was fast making him Stella's least favorite friend, but it kept Flack from asking any questions Danny couldn't or wouldn't answer. Lindsay would take Stella home and make her tea and listen to her rage against Danny on those nights.

Only Danny saw the toll it took on her. Sometimes, when they got home from working the same shifts as Stella, Lindsay would hide in the bathroom, taking long showers, and, Danny knew, crying. He would make her elaborate dinners and try to make her laugh. She would play along, picking at the food and laughing at the jokes with such blankness in her eyes he thought his heart would break. The only time he felt he could be honest with her was in bed, when he could show her how much he loved her.

Lindsay could hear Danny, could see him, but she felt as if she were behind a sheet of glass, able only to sense him at a distance. Some nights, when they went to bed together, she would hold on to him in desperation, making love as if the act alone could save her. After he fell asleep, she would roll out of his arms and go into the living room, to curl up on the couch so he could not hear her weep.

On those nights, he would open his eyes and stare blankly at the ceiling in the bedroom, waiting for her to come and ask for his help, and dying a little when she didn't.

And as those months between the wedding and New Year's went by, each silent failure of her dreams was flushed down the toilet, and she would bid goodbye to yet another promised child. Twice, her period was late, and she was in an agony of hope for three or four days before hope bled out in a bright parody of arterial blood flow. Then in January, she was nearly two weeks late, and when the blood came, it was so fast and excessive she was sure she had had a miscarriage. She was afraid to go to a doctor and be told it had been nothing of the sort, that getting pregnant was one thing, with all her education and intelligence, she could not do.

Danny was getting frantic. He wasn't sure he cared whether Lindsay and he ever had a child: he was fatalist enough to believe it would happen if it did, and not worry if it didn't. It wasn't so much the lack of a child he was worried about, as Lindsay. She was a little paler, a little frailer, every time he looked at her. As Stella grew, becoming more radiant every day, Lindsay seemed to shrink. She grew quieter and less focused: Lindsay, who had always had been sharply in tune with everything she was doing.

The worst thing was that there was no one to talk to. He couldn't talk to Don or Stella; Lindsay had threatened him in no uncertain terms. He was not to even breathe that they were trying to get pregnant. "I won't ruin this for them," she had said, almost hysterically. "Stella will never be able to talk to me about her baby again if she thinks it would upset me. What would I do then?"

He couldn't talk to Mac or Hawkes; he wasn't stupid enough to think that the same injunction didn't apply to anyone associated with the lab. His parents, supportive though they had been of his marriage, were still a little unsure of their new daughter-in-law, and the last thing Danny wanted to bring up was the possibility of grandchildren or the lack of them.

He had to admit, as well, that for the first time he had a sneaking worry that he was the problem. After all, he'd never got a girl pregnant before, at least not that he had heard about. And in his neighbourhood, he would have heard. Perhaps Lindsay was blaming herself, agonizing over this, and it wasn't her.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he kept hearing Lindsay's voice in the changing room at the reception, "It's not your fault. It's not anybody's fault." But what if it was?

When that idea hit one miserable February morning at 3 o'clock in the field, Danny knew he was going to have to face it - he was going to have to get tested. The very thought was enough to shrivel him up for good, but it was the only mature thing to do. He managed that stalwart thought for all of a minute before he closed his eyes and retched. One of the cases he and Hawkes had handled last year had been a fertility clinic where the doctor was inseminating women with his own sperm. Danny had been disgusted by the collection process; the thought of going through that just to find out he was the problem was too much.

Danny was on his way back to the lab to process the evidence he had collected when he was struck by a brilliant idea. He worked in a lab. He had access to whatever equipment he may need. He was certainly capable of examining sperm and checking its motility. That would be much easier to accomplish than trying to get through a doctor's exam.

He drove through the streets without paying much attention, concentrating on how to accomplish this. He'd need a quiet lab, so night shift would be best. He'd need some peace to "acquire" the sample, which had to be fresh. He'd have to make sure no one was around who could possibly figure out what he was up to - he shuddered at the thought of Adam or Hawkes catching him.

And he would have to be especially careful that Lindsay didn't catch wind of anything. He knew his Montana's competitive spirit; she could just about handle a draw, but a loss would destroy her. As long as they didn't know, she could keep going the way they had been.

Danny didn't think he could any longer. His jaw tightened. He was on call in two nights: he could manufacture a reason to go in. With any luck, it would be a quiet night, and he could get his private project completed without any interference.