A Risk Worth Taking?

Summery: -

Disclaimer: I do not own CSI NY

A/N: Sorry the last chapter was very impromptu.

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She twitched in the intense lighting, aching to open her eyes, but she knew the instantaneous brightness was not how she wanted to great the world. Slowly turning her head away from the glowing light, that was visible from behind her close eyes, she began to slowly open them. White was her first stage of vision. Blue was her next. Colours began merging with each others as she opened her eyes further. She hadn't expected to see anyone there. She expected her self to be alone in a white washed hospital ward with IV tubes and heart monitors in every corner. She wasn't half wrong though. There was heart rate monitor to her right; the slow monotonous bleeping reassured her of her aliveness. A drip was attached to the back of her left wrist and a clear solution was slowly being past through her veins. As her vision became steady, the outline of a person became clearer but it wasn't a vision she expected to see. Don was her obvious first choice of spectator at her glorious awakening however, in the seat, placed next to her bed, sat neither Don nor any other obvious work colleague but instead,

'Ms. Croft?' the words left Jess quietly but audible in the small, empty room.

'Hello,' she simply reply, smile beaming back at Jess. She was dressed in her normal moth-eaten full length skirt and frilled shirt. 'I'm glad you are wake. I hope you feel fine.'

Jess hadn't given much thought to it and as she moved her body into an sitting position pain overcame her. She realised she couldn't move her left arm for the pain was too great and as for the rest of her body, it felt like a hangover mixed with the feeling of being hit by a car. Every part of her body ached and her head was throbbing in beat with the heart rate machine.

'What are you doing here?'

Picking a chocolate out of a gift wrapped box Ms. Croft looked up at Jess, 'Oh, I thought I would come visit you. After all you could have been killed yesterday, I'm glad you're alive,' she stopped and even though Jess was bound to a bed her detective sense were still on high alert. Ms. Croft's tone indicated she had more to say, 'Well, actually I just wanted to say how sorry I am. All of this shouldn't have happened if only I had been more careful.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I knew Diego Thomas was going to come after you. I mean after what he did to my niece I wasn't going to let him get away with it again and especially not with you. You don't deserve this.'

'I don't understand – how did you know he was going to come after me?'

'Well, you must have heard about the case against Jessica Jones, she was my niece,' Jess thought for a second. The case from a few years back, the culprit was never caught but Diego was a suspect. 'Everyone knew that Diego had done it, there was just no evidence to back up everyone's 'gut feeling',' Ms. Croft gave a sad sigh, 'I should have watched over you more, I knew this was going to happen.'

'You knew the first victim. You knew he was going to come after me because we shared similar features and traits. Why didn't you say anything?'

'I couldn't. Who was going to believe an 80 year old woman? Everyone thinks I'm senile but no one knew that my husband used to be a detective, I learnt lots off of him – like how to spot a culprit,' she smiled at Jess, remembering the old times, 'I tried to help, I made sure you were never alone when you were around the apartment,' the Laundromat, 'I even tried to get the police's attention diverted to Diego,' the mystery phone call, 'I guess none of that worked, he still caught you.'

'No,' Jess called out, 'it did help! No one would have suspected Diego if you hadn't called Mac. You lead him to us.'

Ms. Croft gave a heart warming smile towards Jess, 'Yes, maybe, in a way I did help but you still got hurt, so I didn't protect you the way I wanted to.'

Jess toned down her voice, looking straight into Ms. Croft's blue tinted eyes, 'If it wasn't for you I would still be out there and probably right now be dead. Thank you, so much.' Jess reached out with her hand to lay it on top of Ms. Croft's. Her hands were smooth but cold, wrinkly yet strong, her hands were made for comforting.

'Now, listen. I must dash, it's getting late. You should get someone to see to you now that you're up,' she stood up from the hard plastic chair and grabbed her walking cane. 'I'll see you back at the apartment when you feel better.'

With one last smile and wink she got up and left the room. Jess lay there for a moment simply wondering, how on earth she could possible do that. Ms. Croft had saved her life.

'Jess!' From the ajar door Jess could just see out and running towards her ward was Lindsay. 'I am so glad you're alive!' Leaning on Jess's fail, bed ridden body Lindsay squeezed Jess into a hug. Trying to contain her pain she smiled up at Lindsay.

'What are you doing here, now?'

'Oh, thought I'd pop in before going down to the precinct. Can you wait a second I need to call everyone!' Lindsay was jolly, hyper and happy, she turned away to make the phone call to the rest of the team and even though her back was constantly to Jess she leaned over her shoulder every so often to check up of her. Her eyes bright with bewilderment – almost like seeing Jess was unexplainable.

'Everyone thought you were going to make it,' Lindsay was sitting in the hard plastic chair watching as a doctor examined Jess. Scanning her cast arm up and down he checked her bandages and handed her a set of pills.

'Why? What was wrong with me?' Jess had lots of questions she couldn't answer – what happened, how long was she out, where was Don?

'Well, according to Sheldon he said you had several fractures around your skull, possibly causing some concussion. Also, besides getting hit by a bullet you were pretty torn up. Your fingers were sliced deep.'

Jess's eyes diverted down to her bare hands lying limp by her sides. Most of it was exposed but certain small areas were plastered up. White cuts trailed along her fingers and palms and it began coming back to her; the glass shard she kept in order to escape, how she constantly was dropping it and searching again with her bare hands. She still could feel the acute pain sending shocks through her arm every time the glass pierced her skin.

'I remember the doctor said that if you feel really weak and always tired it because you haven't eaten in 2 days. He starved you didn't he?'

Jess nodded. She hadn't thought about it but it was true, her stomach was grumbling and she felt empty; she wanted desperately to get rid of the emptiness and hollow feeling starvation resembled.

Somehow it didn't feel like work. She didn't need to force herself to recall every little aspect that happened – she remembered everything clearly. In her job, she was constantly interviewing victims who had trouble piecing their memory together after traumatic events but Jess; she could remember everything up to the smell of Don's cologne when he grabbed her frail, battered, gun-shot wounded body. It wasn't hard to recall everything, yes what she went through was traumatic but as much as she wanted to black everything out she kept visualising it.

'Everyone's really worry. I don't think Don's had any sleep over this.'

Jess began recalling event as early back as the day all this started but one moment stood out amongst all others. It was the Friday morning, after her burglary. She'd had an altercation with Don the previous night and even though she swore she'd be angry at him, his words changed all her feelings for him - 'I care for you so much that if anything happened to you I don't know what I would do. I don't think I could carry on.' She was inches from death, close enough to feel the cool, claming breeze that surrounded the white light to know that dying would hurt him more than it would hurt her.

'Jess?' The remark was surprising and though Jess knew she should be hurt for thinking that her colleagues didn't think she would pull through she knew they could never stop worrying.

Mac, Stella, Sheldon and Danny walked through the doors and into her ward. Their faces were brimming with bright smiles and heart warming gestures of fruit baskets and flowers. She felt happy and loved and more now that she'd ever done. It was almost a perfect way of returning back to reality.

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After the team left Jess to continue back at work she began feeling a sudden wave of disappointment pass through her. She'd realised that Don hadn't arrived with the rest of the team and she was well aware that the news of her consciousness had been past through the precinct and the lab so that even on-duty officers took the time to call up and explain their joys of hearing the news. She couldn't help thinking that his absence was her fault. She could only image the sort of trauma Don must have gone through but him not turning up was something she couldn't explain. She wanted to know that he didn't blame himself for everything that had gone wrong and that he wasn't being held back by this in anyway.

'Hey,' she'd been so submerged in her thoughts that she hadn't noticed the soft, familiar voice come from the open door of her ward.

'Hey,' she called back, smiling, as he approached her. He was pale and his tiredness was showing in his blue eyes. She'd studied the significant glow of his eyes for hours on end on a slow day at the precinct and could tell that today the brightness had left him and a shadow was being cast over him preventing his true colour from being shown.

'How you feeling?' he sat down on the chair by her bed and lent over resting his elbows on his knees. There was no sense of connection in his voice. A statement that sounded more like it had come from a distant colleague she'd met once than someone she had true feelings for.

'Battered and bruised but…. alright.' Jess forced a smile but she could tell there was something on Don's mind. His atmosphere was missing. There was no joy and happiness and she almost began to feel jealous there wasn't more of a connection between them.

'Listen Jess-'

'No,' she cut him off; he looked up from the floor biting his lip. She wasn't sure what he was going to say, but she needed to tell him her side of the story before he changed her mind. All sorts of emotions had been running through her head in the past few hours from happiness to mystery and joy but right now she felt lost, more so than when she had to make a choice – here or heaven. 'I can't do this.'

'What?' he replied softy, not breaking into any tension. His words were flat and he fidgeted in agitation. He was nervous when he walked in but her words worried him even more.

'You said to me once that you'd never be the same if something happened to me,' she paused but he didn't reply – she didn't want him to... not yet, 'All this, it got me thinking… and I don't want to hurt you anymore.'

'Jess,' he tired to stop her from continuing. He didn't want to hear it.

'No, let me finish. I can't let this get between us. I heard what happened to you from moment I was kidnapped up until now and I kept thinking that… I can't do this to you.' Jess could feel her voice cracking in the uneasiness of the situation. She didn't want it to end like this but it never actually started. 'I can't hurt you. I can't make life hard for you and I know officers who jumped into romances and relationships that never ended well and I don't want something to happen to me and for you not be able carry on. I can't do that to you… I'm not worth it.'

Don simply shook his head, 'You are.'

'All this torment?' she asked, 'all this constant wondering and fear of what might happen, what has happened to me – I bet you couldn't sleep, I bet even when you dreamt you dreamt of me. I bet that you didn't know what to do, you felt lost.'

He nodded.

'If I'd died-'

'No,'

'Listen, 'if' I'd died, what would have happened?'

She could see him question himself.

What would he have done?

'You wouldn't have been able to continue, right?' Jess could feel a tear drip down her face. 'I can't let that happen, Don. I can't make you go through all the torture and self hatred; I'm not letting you blame your self for anything that might happen to me. I care for you to much.'

'I understand but this is not the way Jess,' jumping from the chair Don slid to his knees at the side of her bed and took her hand in his. 'I understand the risks, the endless horrors we're probably putting ourselves through but this isn't the way.'

'There isn't any other way,' Jess looked deep into the bottomless pits of Don's bright blue eyes.

'There's no risk in being safe.'

'What?' Jess was lost.

'You always said this job brings risks and dangers that we have to face everyday. We risk our lives everyday and everyday we could be killed or saved. This is just one of the risks we have to take. It's just like another pursuit; we must step in and risk ourselves in order to understand the situation, to understand them.'

Jess tried to conceal her smile but several more tears began dripping down her cheek. 'Only you can associate our relationship with a raid.'

Don smiled back at her.

'So?' he asked. 'Are you willing to take this risk? To jump into the unknown and see where it takes us? You'll never know if you're doing the right thing unless you actually try.'

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A/N: And that is actually the end.
I hoped you enjoyed and understood my writing. I know it's a pathetic ending but I think it's a good place to stop otherwise there'd be a WHOLE new story to follow. If it's any consolation I took AGES to writer the last bit between Don and Jess. It took me at least 3 days of writing and rewriting and understanding what I was actually writing. So, to all who have STUCK with me all this time – I bid you a happy reading and thank you.
Enjoy!

Oh, and do tell me what you thought XP