We are done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung;
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us! For we knew the worst too young.
Rudyard Kipling
****
Ray Caine was coming home after failing to find his new friends following school. In his young and at times rebellious life, he always still came home. It would have never occurred to him not to return. His mother was the anchor of his life. He might toss at the top of the waves, he might resist her tight restraint, but deep down, her hold on his life was comforting. Horatio would be there ahead of him, of course. Horatio was three steps ahead of Ray in everything. The most infuriating thing, though, was his brother's mental agility. With no experience of doing wrong, Horatio could still outthink Ray at every turn, could see where he was heading miles away, and could keep their mother posted like a private intelligence service. It was like a child playing chess with a master. And Horatio shouldn't be that far ahead of him. Four and a half years wasn't that much difference. Ray's dreams were of one day being better than Horatio at something, with his mother looking on.
Ray turned the corner of their street and stopped in his tracks. Red and blue lights swirled against the white house, and an ambulance was pulling away. Police cars. Too many police cars. They didn't send four police cars just when someone was sick. And the ambulance passed him somberly, silently. There was no longer any reason to hurry. Ray stood paralyzed at the corner. Surely nothing bad could have happened here. Not to his family. Ray couldn't remember his father, couldn't remember a loss, but he knew in this instant that something awful had happened to one of the two people whose presence he had always taken for granted. They couldn't die. As annoying as they were sometimes, they couldn't die. He broke into a staggering run down the street, finding himself hoping that it was Horatio in the ambulance, not his mother. Hating himself for hoping it. Hoping it anyway.
****
Horatio sat on the back porch. The detective had brought him a glass of water, but it sat untouched at his side. Anyone not looking at his eyes would have thought him perfectly calm. The policeman with him was looking at his eyes, and he thought the boy looked like he had just stepped straight out of hell. But only the eyes showed anything. The rest of him seemed calm. Too calm. "Is there any other family we can call, Horatio?"
"No, we don't have any family. Just the three of us." He might have been discussing the weather.
"You shouldn't stay here. Any friends? Anyone?"
"Why can't I stay alone? I'm 17. I can take care of us."
"You don't need to be alone." The boy did not react. "And legally, you know, you can't stay alone. There's a big difference between 17 and 18. We have to take you somewhere. You and your brother." Nothing yet. "Besides, we need this house for a while. We have people who will study the evidence, use it to find out who did this. You can't stay here; you'll interfere with the investigation." And who would want to stay here with the memory of that kitchen?
Horatio looked up, as if he heard the thought. The tortured eyes unfocused slightly, as if he was remembering the kitchen. Then they came together again with a sharp, analytical focus and a slight tilt to the head that startled the policeman. He had only seen that expression once before in his life, in the eyes of a veteran FBI agent whose capture record was legendary. "All of the evidence . . . it will show who killed her?"
"Absolutely." Not always, but no point in telling him that. "We have one of the best crime labs in the state."
Screams and sobs came from around the front of the house. "Let me in, I have to see her! I have to!" Horatio scrambled to his feet and started around the house. Two policemen reached the gate just as he did. Ray, kicking and fighting, was suspended between them, trying to break away. "Let me go!" Horatio gripped his brother's shoulders, hard. Caught in the triple grip, realizing the futility of struggling, the 12-year-old collapsed in a sobbing heap. Horatio knelt next to him, and the policeman who had been in the back yard jerked his head slightly at his colleagues. They pulled back a few feet, giving the boys privacy while still being close enough if physical restraint was needed. They spoke in low whispers.
"No family?"
"No family, no close friends. We have to do something with them."
"I guess we'd better call Child Services. That older one is a cool customer, isn't he? Can you imagine not going into the room, not disturbing anything?"
"Anyone could tell she was dead," said the first one. "But you're right, it's not natural somehow. Why isn't he freaking out? But you all know how many liars we've talked to over the years. I'd stake a month's salary that he's told us the total truth."
Horatio didn't hear them, focused on his brother. "It's better to remember her like she was, Ray. You wouldn't have wanted to see her." For one panic-stricken moment, Horatio himself couldn't remember what she looked like, what she had looked like, that is. He only saw the bloody, beaten face and the hair. He gulped and shook himself slightly. Ray was crying, all fight gone out of him.
"I don't believe it, Horatio. I just don't believe it. She was so alive."
"I know." Horatio couldn't believe it either. Just this morning, she had smiled at him across the table. Now she was gone. But he couldn't turn loose himself; he had to be strong for Ray. His mother's biggest worry had been Ray, he knew. He will be alright, Mom, Horatio promised her spirit, hoping that it could hear him. He will be alright. I'll look after Ray for you. And he'll make us both proud. Horatio knelt there on the grass, both arms around his brother. Ray's shoulders were still shaking; his voice had broken down into incoherence. Horatio gripped his shoulders tightly, and promised his mother again that he would take care of his brother, and promised himself that he would find whoever had done this.
But he did not cry.
****
Horatio was asleep again. Calleigh sat at the table in the break room in CSI, watching him. They had talked over coffee until she had exhausted her supply of trivial subjects. She was unused to leading in a conversation with him, and she was certainly unused to small talk. But she had stayed off the subject of work, too, realizing now that one of the things bothering him that day had been how much the victim on their present case reminded him of his mother. Gradually, as they talked, the tension had washed out of him. The exhaustion was still there, though; he looked even worse than he had that morning. She had finally persuaded him to stretch out on the couch in the break room. "I ought to get home," he said, but she understood why he didn't want to, why for once he did not want to be alone. "Why don't you just sleep a little while, and I'll wake you up in a bit. You're too tired to drive, really." His whole being shied away from the idea of going to sleep again, and she added, "I'll stay here with you. And if you start dreaming again, I'll wake you up before . . . before you get to the end of it."
The gratitude in his eyes at her understanding melted her. "Just a little while," he said. "You need to get home yourself. You're tired, too."
"I'll wake you up in an hour, and we'll both go home." He had stretched out on the couch then, finally, and he was asleep within two minutes. And Calleigh sat there watching him and wondering what the hell was going on. Her own fatigue had vanished in the light of a problem as intricate as any of the cases she had ever tackled on the job.
Study the evidence, she told herself. The evidence doesn't lie. Okay, fact one, Horatio had obviously had an awful time sleeping the last two nights because of some nightmare. She still remembered that wild, convulsive leap as he had awakened, the scream so unlike him. Whatever he was dreaming of, she had seen the horror in his eyes immediately afterwards. Not just fright, not just terror, but horror, the silent cry of the soul that what it has seen cannot be. What would he react that strongly to? Correction, what had he reacted that strongly to? Calleigh had no doubt at all that whatever he was dreaming had actually happened. Horatio was the least likely person she knew to dream of vague, fanciful monsters and bogeymen. And even if he did once, it wouldn't be recurrent, and it wouldn't have such an effect on him. No, this wasn't just a dream, like he had said.
She wondered if it involved his family. His reaction at the crime scene that day could certainly be explained just by the chance resemblance of chocolate hair, but could he have been thinking of his family anyway? Now that she thought about it, she realized how little she knew about Horatio's family. Ray Caine, his brother, had been a cop, possibly a dirty cop, and had been killed just after she got to CSI. She hadn't known Horatio long enough then to really gauge the effect of his brother's death on him when it happened, but since then, she knew, that was the one subject Horatio was never quite reasonable on. It rarely came up, and when it did, his mind simply refused to consider any alternative to his brother's honesty. So unusual for a man who habitually looked at everything from all angles. Was he dreaming about his brother's death, maybe? She didn't think he had been there at the shootout that took Ray's life, though, and whatever he was dreaming about, she was sure he had seen. Vividly and in person. She decided to try to find the police chart on that shootout and verify the facts.
What about his mother? What about his father, for that matter? She had never heard him speak of either one of them. The picture on his desk was obviously a studio family shot, not amateur, so she could assume that his father had been out of the picture by that point. Dead or just split? How old was Horatio in that picture, 15, 16 maybe? Without a father, but with a mother still. Let's see, she figured mentally, he's 45 now. His mother would be about 70 now if alive. She certainly hadn't abandoned the family, Calleigh thought, remembering the strength of that face. So she must be dead. And must have died young. Alexx, Calleigh thought suddenly. Alexx has known him longer than any of us. I'll ask her if she knows about his parents.
Horatio turned on the couch, shifting restlessly. Calleigh went over to him instantly and gently placed her hand on his arm, too softly to wake him up, she hoped, but enough to establish some contact wherever his mind was. "I'm here," she whispered. He quieted instantly under her touch. She stayed where she was, kneeling on the hard floor, maintaining the contact. Despite her promise, she had no intention of waking Horatio up after only an hour, and she had no intention of letting him spend this night alone. Whatever he was dealing with, his physical reserves were too low to handle it. He desperately needed a good night's sleep. And he was going to get it tonight if she had to spend the whole night here crouched on the floor at CSI.
Calleigh looked at the break room clock. 11:45, although it felt much later. What a day, she thought. That morning seemed an eternity away. Why this day, she suddenly wondered? Whatever is bothering him, family or other, why is it so bad today? He had seemed a bit subdued yesterday in retrospect but certainly his usual self when he left CSI. And he never went anywhere other than home. This job was his life. So what was the trigger? What had happened between last night and this morning? Kneeling on the floor there, her hand on Horatio's arm, her back against the couch, she memorized every line of his face, enjoying the opportunity to be this close to him. And eventually, she fell asleep.
****
"Calleigh?" Calleigh opened her eyes. Bright early morning sunlight spilled into the break room. Slowly she focused on Speed.
"Ugh." She sat up, wondering where Horatio was. She herself was now on the couch, not the floor, and he was nowhere to be seen. That at least said that he must have been some reasonable facsimile of his usual cat- footed self when he left. Still, she couldn't believe she hadn't woken up. He must have picked her up and put her on the couch. What a thing to sleep through!
"You okay? Have you been here all night?" Speed offered her the cup of coffee he had poured for himself, and she gulped it in gratefully.
"Yeah, I was working late, and I just thought I'd sleep for a minute." Actually, she had slept very soundly, amazingly so for being on the floor. Sleeping that close to Horatio was like a dream. "Have you seen Horatio this morning?"
"No, I don't think he's in yet. Don't worry, he didn't catch you." Calleigh scrambled to her feet, not bothering to correct his assumption. "It's only 7:00," said Speed. "You probably have time to go home, shower, and change clothes if you want."
"Good idea." The coffee was taking hold.
"And if I do see H, I'll just tell him you aren't in yet."
"Do that." Calleigh poured a second cup of coffee and headed out into the hall. She walked down to the far stairs, the ones next to Horatio's office. It was dark. He must have gone home to shower and change himself. You're not going to convince me everything's alright, Horatio, she promised him silently. Damn it, someone is going to share this with you. I'm going to share this with you. She left CSI and headed for her car. Today, she would talk to Alexx.
Rudyard Kipling
****
Ray Caine was coming home after failing to find his new friends following school. In his young and at times rebellious life, he always still came home. It would have never occurred to him not to return. His mother was the anchor of his life. He might toss at the top of the waves, he might resist her tight restraint, but deep down, her hold on his life was comforting. Horatio would be there ahead of him, of course. Horatio was three steps ahead of Ray in everything. The most infuriating thing, though, was his brother's mental agility. With no experience of doing wrong, Horatio could still outthink Ray at every turn, could see where he was heading miles away, and could keep their mother posted like a private intelligence service. It was like a child playing chess with a master. And Horatio shouldn't be that far ahead of him. Four and a half years wasn't that much difference. Ray's dreams were of one day being better than Horatio at something, with his mother looking on.
Ray turned the corner of their street and stopped in his tracks. Red and blue lights swirled against the white house, and an ambulance was pulling away. Police cars. Too many police cars. They didn't send four police cars just when someone was sick. And the ambulance passed him somberly, silently. There was no longer any reason to hurry. Ray stood paralyzed at the corner. Surely nothing bad could have happened here. Not to his family. Ray couldn't remember his father, couldn't remember a loss, but he knew in this instant that something awful had happened to one of the two people whose presence he had always taken for granted. They couldn't die. As annoying as they were sometimes, they couldn't die. He broke into a staggering run down the street, finding himself hoping that it was Horatio in the ambulance, not his mother. Hating himself for hoping it. Hoping it anyway.
****
Horatio sat on the back porch. The detective had brought him a glass of water, but it sat untouched at his side. Anyone not looking at his eyes would have thought him perfectly calm. The policeman with him was looking at his eyes, and he thought the boy looked like he had just stepped straight out of hell. But only the eyes showed anything. The rest of him seemed calm. Too calm. "Is there any other family we can call, Horatio?"
"No, we don't have any family. Just the three of us." He might have been discussing the weather.
"You shouldn't stay here. Any friends? Anyone?"
"Why can't I stay alone? I'm 17. I can take care of us."
"You don't need to be alone." The boy did not react. "And legally, you know, you can't stay alone. There's a big difference between 17 and 18. We have to take you somewhere. You and your brother." Nothing yet. "Besides, we need this house for a while. We have people who will study the evidence, use it to find out who did this. You can't stay here; you'll interfere with the investigation." And who would want to stay here with the memory of that kitchen?
Horatio looked up, as if he heard the thought. The tortured eyes unfocused slightly, as if he was remembering the kitchen. Then they came together again with a sharp, analytical focus and a slight tilt to the head that startled the policeman. He had only seen that expression once before in his life, in the eyes of a veteran FBI agent whose capture record was legendary. "All of the evidence . . . it will show who killed her?"
"Absolutely." Not always, but no point in telling him that. "We have one of the best crime labs in the state."
Screams and sobs came from around the front of the house. "Let me in, I have to see her! I have to!" Horatio scrambled to his feet and started around the house. Two policemen reached the gate just as he did. Ray, kicking and fighting, was suspended between them, trying to break away. "Let me go!" Horatio gripped his brother's shoulders, hard. Caught in the triple grip, realizing the futility of struggling, the 12-year-old collapsed in a sobbing heap. Horatio knelt next to him, and the policeman who had been in the back yard jerked his head slightly at his colleagues. They pulled back a few feet, giving the boys privacy while still being close enough if physical restraint was needed. They spoke in low whispers.
"No family?"
"No family, no close friends. We have to do something with them."
"I guess we'd better call Child Services. That older one is a cool customer, isn't he? Can you imagine not going into the room, not disturbing anything?"
"Anyone could tell she was dead," said the first one. "But you're right, it's not natural somehow. Why isn't he freaking out? But you all know how many liars we've talked to over the years. I'd stake a month's salary that he's told us the total truth."
Horatio didn't hear them, focused on his brother. "It's better to remember her like she was, Ray. You wouldn't have wanted to see her." For one panic-stricken moment, Horatio himself couldn't remember what she looked like, what she had looked like, that is. He only saw the bloody, beaten face and the hair. He gulped and shook himself slightly. Ray was crying, all fight gone out of him.
"I don't believe it, Horatio. I just don't believe it. She was so alive."
"I know." Horatio couldn't believe it either. Just this morning, she had smiled at him across the table. Now she was gone. But he couldn't turn loose himself; he had to be strong for Ray. His mother's biggest worry had been Ray, he knew. He will be alright, Mom, Horatio promised her spirit, hoping that it could hear him. He will be alright. I'll look after Ray for you. And he'll make us both proud. Horatio knelt there on the grass, both arms around his brother. Ray's shoulders were still shaking; his voice had broken down into incoherence. Horatio gripped his shoulders tightly, and promised his mother again that he would take care of his brother, and promised himself that he would find whoever had done this.
But he did not cry.
****
Horatio was asleep again. Calleigh sat at the table in the break room in CSI, watching him. They had talked over coffee until she had exhausted her supply of trivial subjects. She was unused to leading in a conversation with him, and she was certainly unused to small talk. But she had stayed off the subject of work, too, realizing now that one of the things bothering him that day had been how much the victim on their present case reminded him of his mother. Gradually, as they talked, the tension had washed out of him. The exhaustion was still there, though; he looked even worse than he had that morning. She had finally persuaded him to stretch out on the couch in the break room. "I ought to get home," he said, but she understood why he didn't want to, why for once he did not want to be alone. "Why don't you just sleep a little while, and I'll wake you up in a bit. You're too tired to drive, really." His whole being shied away from the idea of going to sleep again, and she added, "I'll stay here with you. And if you start dreaming again, I'll wake you up before . . . before you get to the end of it."
The gratitude in his eyes at her understanding melted her. "Just a little while," he said. "You need to get home yourself. You're tired, too."
"I'll wake you up in an hour, and we'll both go home." He had stretched out on the couch then, finally, and he was asleep within two minutes. And Calleigh sat there watching him and wondering what the hell was going on. Her own fatigue had vanished in the light of a problem as intricate as any of the cases she had ever tackled on the job.
Study the evidence, she told herself. The evidence doesn't lie. Okay, fact one, Horatio had obviously had an awful time sleeping the last two nights because of some nightmare. She still remembered that wild, convulsive leap as he had awakened, the scream so unlike him. Whatever he was dreaming of, she had seen the horror in his eyes immediately afterwards. Not just fright, not just terror, but horror, the silent cry of the soul that what it has seen cannot be. What would he react that strongly to? Correction, what had he reacted that strongly to? Calleigh had no doubt at all that whatever he was dreaming had actually happened. Horatio was the least likely person she knew to dream of vague, fanciful monsters and bogeymen. And even if he did once, it wouldn't be recurrent, and it wouldn't have such an effect on him. No, this wasn't just a dream, like he had said.
She wondered if it involved his family. His reaction at the crime scene that day could certainly be explained just by the chance resemblance of chocolate hair, but could he have been thinking of his family anyway? Now that she thought about it, she realized how little she knew about Horatio's family. Ray Caine, his brother, had been a cop, possibly a dirty cop, and had been killed just after she got to CSI. She hadn't known Horatio long enough then to really gauge the effect of his brother's death on him when it happened, but since then, she knew, that was the one subject Horatio was never quite reasonable on. It rarely came up, and when it did, his mind simply refused to consider any alternative to his brother's honesty. So unusual for a man who habitually looked at everything from all angles. Was he dreaming about his brother's death, maybe? She didn't think he had been there at the shootout that took Ray's life, though, and whatever he was dreaming about, she was sure he had seen. Vividly and in person. She decided to try to find the police chart on that shootout and verify the facts.
What about his mother? What about his father, for that matter? She had never heard him speak of either one of them. The picture on his desk was obviously a studio family shot, not amateur, so she could assume that his father had been out of the picture by that point. Dead or just split? How old was Horatio in that picture, 15, 16 maybe? Without a father, but with a mother still. Let's see, she figured mentally, he's 45 now. His mother would be about 70 now if alive. She certainly hadn't abandoned the family, Calleigh thought, remembering the strength of that face. So she must be dead. And must have died young. Alexx, Calleigh thought suddenly. Alexx has known him longer than any of us. I'll ask her if she knows about his parents.
Horatio turned on the couch, shifting restlessly. Calleigh went over to him instantly and gently placed her hand on his arm, too softly to wake him up, she hoped, but enough to establish some contact wherever his mind was. "I'm here," she whispered. He quieted instantly under her touch. She stayed where she was, kneeling on the hard floor, maintaining the contact. Despite her promise, she had no intention of waking Horatio up after only an hour, and she had no intention of letting him spend this night alone. Whatever he was dealing with, his physical reserves were too low to handle it. He desperately needed a good night's sleep. And he was going to get it tonight if she had to spend the whole night here crouched on the floor at CSI.
Calleigh looked at the break room clock. 11:45, although it felt much later. What a day, she thought. That morning seemed an eternity away. Why this day, she suddenly wondered? Whatever is bothering him, family or other, why is it so bad today? He had seemed a bit subdued yesterday in retrospect but certainly his usual self when he left CSI. And he never went anywhere other than home. This job was his life. So what was the trigger? What had happened between last night and this morning? Kneeling on the floor there, her hand on Horatio's arm, her back against the couch, she memorized every line of his face, enjoying the opportunity to be this close to him. And eventually, she fell asleep.
****
"Calleigh?" Calleigh opened her eyes. Bright early morning sunlight spilled into the break room. Slowly she focused on Speed.
"Ugh." She sat up, wondering where Horatio was. She herself was now on the couch, not the floor, and he was nowhere to be seen. That at least said that he must have been some reasonable facsimile of his usual cat- footed self when he left. Still, she couldn't believe she hadn't woken up. He must have picked her up and put her on the couch. What a thing to sleep through!
"You okay? Have you been here all night?" Speed offered her the cup of coffee he had poured for himself, and she gulped it in gratefully.
"Yeah, I was working late, and I just thought I'd sleep for a minute." Actually, she had slept very soundly, amazingly so for being on the floor. Sleeping that close to Horatio was like a dream. "Have you seen Horatio this morning?"
"No, I don't think he's in yet. Don't worry, he didn't catch you." Calleigh scrambled to her feet, not bothering to correct his assumption. "It's only 7:00," said Speed. "You probably have time to go home, shower, and change clothes if you want."
"Good idea." The coffee was taking hold.
"And if I do see H, I'll just tell him you aren't in yet."
"Do that." Calleigh poured a second cup of coffee and headed out into the hall. She walked down to the far stairs, the ones next to Horatio's office. It was dark. He must have gone home to shower and change himself. You're not going to convince me everything's alright, Horatio, she promised him silently. Damn it, someone is going to share this with you. I'm going to share this with you. She left CSI and headed for her car. Today, she would talk to Alexx.
