In brief glances and extended remembrance, their time together fell somewhere between the cold starkness of reality and the stuff of dreams. Maybe because they spent the better part of their lives fighting for themselves and each other beyond any means of comprehension and they lost themselves before they started.
And other times, because, he let himself see her and she let him look.
And they met and become whole above any normal measure, as though even the fallible constraints of humanity couldn't sever what they had built.
They had built a foundation of trust and hope, and even love, as he thought of it now; love that he struggled admitting to himself, let alone her, but love that existed somewhere between the false touch of forced love and the love you couldn't have.
It wasn't the lies that hurt so much as the truth -- truth so bitter and biting you couldn't escape it until it became you and nothing made sense -- not the life you once had, not the life you even wanted.
It wouldn't be the same again, because scars never really faded.
But he thought of him and her and their time together -- how perfect it was, how perfect it could still be.
Jack thought of how they fit together -- and they were beautiful.
*
Not much could be understood from her brother's incoherent speech. What she could gather was that Lex was dead, shot. The rest fell between the sobs of unintelligent gibberish. She wanted to be there for him, watch over him, but with Vincent Marro apparently still on the outside, that wasn't an option, at least not now.
Jack looked a little loose, like he might go over the edge and she appreciated his worry, but didn't want to be smothered by it. They needed to catch the guy, yet using herself as bait wasn't even a possibility in his mind. But it needed to happen, it did. It was the only way.
"Jack, " she said, approaching him carefully, "you have to let me do this. You know we have to catch this guy, you know he's after me."
"Sam --" he started, hand digging into his pocket.
"Jack, I'll be careful."
He sighed.
"We have to end this."
"I just want you back safe, " he whispered.
She nodded and ran a hand down his arm, assuring him she would be all right.
She had come here so long ago, fresh, ready to do something for the world. Humans and their misgivings and life in general, she surmised, had stripped her of that previous idealism. She'd met Jack and ridden a wave that rose and fell like the tides. She had come with a love for him and been sure of it, then unsure, then just completely sure of its end. And now...now it seemed here for the taking, but she didn't know if she had it in her anymore to try.
*
When he was alone, when the rest of the world was stripped away, Danny Taylor stopped feeling like Danny Taylor and more like the kid, sometimes, that he'd once been. He liked that feeling -- that feeling like nothing bad could happen and you'd come home from little league, Mom would be in the kitchen cooking up some pork and biscuits and all those foods that made you feel warm and loved.
When he was alone, he liked to pretend he still had his mom. It felt warm again. He hadn't been the only child to ever lose his mother, sure. God knew kids went through some shit, some kind of shit that he'd seen himself and couldn't comprehend even an adult being able to walk away from; even an adult who was about as stable as you could get.
Some things, some things happened that you just couldn't shake off and that's what his mother was. He couldn't shake her off. Mainly, he thought, because he'd been in that car with her. Been with her as his father yelled and he heard that horrible sound he made when he did it, that horrible sound of his mother falling step by step to the ground.
Then the sound of metal hitting metal, then screaming, then nothing.
Nothing at all.
That was the worst sound. The sound of silence. So quiet, you couldn't even hear breathing.
So he had grown up, grown up fast, and tried to make sense of himself. He wanted, most of all, a family, just one person he could look at and say, Yeah, that's home. He found it in Samantha, he thought. Funny, but yeah, that was her. She was his best friend, his sister, his partner, the one who understood him.
He had Vivian too, who reminded him of the aunt he'd stopped seeing when he was five, the one he finally realized a year later had died, but he was a kid and well, kids don't need to know those things, right? He would've liked too, liked to have said goodbye.
That's the thing, the thing that hurt most.
In all his losses, his aunt, his grandmother, father, mother -- he'd never, not even once, said goodbye.
He didn't know why, and it seemed so long now that goodbye would feel strange and foreign, like saying hello an hour into a date.
Danny didn't like losing, had started hating it, in fact, when he'd lost his parents. Couldn't stand to lose a game, a trophy, a race, a case. He could afford to give himself to his cases completely so he wouldn't lose them.
He hadn't lost someone in a long time, hadn't lost someone who he depended on to keep him here, to keep him focused and alive. If you stripped away Samantha and Vivian, Martin and Jack, what did you have?
Loss -- loss wasn't something he could deal with again, couldn't face head on. He decided tonight, for no real reason other than being tired and maybe a little too introspective for three a.m. on a Saturday night, that he would secure his family to the end, if that's what it took.
Because he didn't want to have to say goodbye. He didn't want it at all.
*
2:36 a.m.
She had been contacted by phone and told where to go. The drive from the office to Queens seemed agonizingly long. The minutes allowed too much time for holes in their plan and what could happen if this and that weren't done right. Danny was the only bright spot on the drive, actually.
"It's one of my favorite movies."
"It's a Wonderful Life?"
"Yeah. It is, you know. It is a wonderful life."
"Getting sentimental on me?"
He pointed to himself mockingly. "Me? Never."
"Huh."
" 'Huh' what?"
"Well, you like Al Pacino and those other rough guys, I would've figured you for a...blood and guts guy."
"I'm a guy, Sam, it doesn't mean I can't have a heart too."
She smiled at him. "You're one of the few, Danny, one of the few."
"So, we're exchanging gifts?" he asked.
"I might as well tell you because you're going to get it out of me before Christmas anyway. And...it's only five days away. I actually got you It's a Wonderful Life on tape, you were asking for it."
"Great, we can watch it on Christmas Eve. And I got you ice skates."
She looked at him in confusion. "Ice skates? Why?"
"Because you don't know how to skate and I'm going to teach you. And there's two tickets to a Christmas symphony sitting on my desk and since you're a lazy New Yorker who hasn't seen a symphony in Radio City Music Hall yet, I've got to take you."
She reached over and hugged him briefly.
He stopped the car a few blocks ahead of the intended destination to give her room enough to approach Vincent Marro without him suspecting cops around. But Danny didn't think for a moment that the guy didn't know there would be cops.
He knew Martin was holed up in the ghost bar next to him. Jack and Vivian were ten minutes away, camped out in a van with other agents. Danny was there to watch her back implicitly and watch it, he did, waiting until she was far enough ahead of him before he exited the car as quietly as he could.
Pulling the hood of his gray hoodie over his head, he stuffed his hands in his pocket, gun in his right hand, and sauntered down the darkened street slowly. He could still see her figure as he kept his head to the ground, told himself there was no way in hell this guy would touch a hair on her head.
It seemed to drag on forever until she reached the spot. Vincent was waiting, dressed in a tux with flowers. What a sick bastard. He handed them to her, but she swatted them away. She could feel Danny behind her, though he'd hidden behind a wall for now. The wires on her chest itched for a moment and she would only keep Danny away long enough to get a confession out of this guy.
"It's been a while, Samantha. I see you've joined the FBI."
"Yeah, Vincent. You've kept us busy this week."
"It's 'Vincent' now? I miss 'Vinny', but it will have to do. So tell, Samantha, did you like my artwork?"
She turned away momentarily.
"You son of a bitch."
"I hear Detective Collins is dead. Pity. I was having a little fun with her. Now, I'm going to have some fun with you."
"What are you going to do to me?" she asked, hoping he would admit it here and now so they could save time in an interrogation room with bullshit lawyers getting him off with light sentences.
"What I did to them."
"Who's them, Vinny?" she used his nickname, hoping to throw him off by it.
"Come now, Samantha, I am a cop, you know? I know what you're doing. And it won't work. I won't say their names. You probably have enough to tie me to it anyway, put me in jail for a good twenty years, at least."
She pursed her lips. "Was it worth it, asshole, what you did?"
"It was. It really was. But, you see, I have one more letter to go until 'You all lose' and that letter is you, Samantha. You're my last, my perfect one."
Her hand moved in the signal and Vincent pulled her against him, gun to her head. Danny ran to them, his own gun drawn now too.
"Put the gun down, Vincent, put it down. Come on. You kill a federal agent, you're going to fry."
"But it would be so much fun, Agent Taylor, " he spoke, pressing the gun closer to her temple.
Danny calculated the situation. It was a slim chance, but a chance he would have to take. Either way, Samantha might die. If it worked, he could save her and it would be worth it. Lowering his gun slightly, he managed to throw Vincent off for a split second and make his move. He launched himself against the guy and they rolled for a minute.
The gun went off and the bullet grazed a vein in Samantha's arm and she stumbled against the wall from the impact. Danny knocked Vincent to the ground, for good, he thought, and rushed to Samantha to inspect her wound.
Back turned, he didn't notice Vincent falter back to his feet. When he turned around, Vincent's gun was level with Samantha's head. He pulled the trigger and fired and Danny jumped in front of it.
Samantha, slightly dizzy from blood loss, raised her gun shakily and fired. Vincent fell back, blood mixing with the freezing snow that had begun to fall. Martin, distantly, started running towards them.
She couldn't have cared less at the moment about her arm injury, but panic at Danny's immediately set in and she fell towards him, pulled him against her as she sat on the concrete. He'd been wearing a vest, just like she, but the bullet had hit at the base of his neck.
Merry Christmas, he wanted to say.
You're my best friend, he wanted to say.
Don't forget me; don't worry about me; it doesn't hurt too much; watch movies and laugh and cry; learn how to ice skate and see the symphony; I'm scared, I'm really, really scared, he wanted to say.
He couldn't manage those words, not in his wildest imagination. She held him like a child, pulled him as close as she could and held him, ignoring the lightheaded feeling overcoming her, the pain in her arm, the tears blurring her vision.
"Danny, " she choked, "you're my best friend, my family. Don't -- you're going to be fine."
She sobbed at his wheezing, labored breaths. And despite his own obvious pain, he still wore a goofy smile, though it shook with effort and she thought it might be the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
"It's okay, honey, it's okay. W-we're all right."
She rocked him, the blood soaking her clothes and the concrete, the snow building around them.
Martin reached them, checked for a pulse on Vincent and upon finding none, knelt before Danny. He'd contacted Jack and Vivian when he'd heard the shots, mentioned there was an agent down and pulled the radio from his ear, not wanting to worry about communicating every little detail to them right now. They would get here soon enough.
Danny's final breaths came quickly and spasmed.
"Michaelangelo, Danny -- he's going to paint you Heaven."
His hand, shaking violently, traveled to her cheek where she clutched it tightly and he spoke, with raspy breaths, the only thing he could.
"G-goodbye."
And softly, he drifted away.
*
Hearing that an agent was down, without verification of that agent, left Jack going out of his mind. He imagined it being Samantha, seeing as she was the intended target. They had been unable to hear what transpired after Vincent took Samantha at gunpoint; the wires got unattached somehow.
They drove as fast as they could, ambulance siren blaring in front of them. When they reached the spot, he saw the saddest thing he might have ever seen in...well, a long while, anyway. Christ. Vincent was dead, Samantha was covered in blood and Danny, cradled in her arms, had his eyes shut, his neck bloodied.
The paramedics eased him up first, covered him with a sheet as they did so. Jack hurried to Samantha, stood next to the paramedic who asked her, "Ma'am, where are you hurt?"
"H-his blood, " she said, "it's his."
"Ma'am, are you hurt?"
Her arms, soaked in blood, were spread out on the snow, her eyes: empty.
"My arm, " she finally spoke, "my r-right arm."
And then, the tears came back. She fell forward into Jack's waiting arms.
"Shh, shh, it's all right, baby, it's all right."
He lifted her gently, laid her on the awaiting stretcher. She was restless while they tried to put an I.V. in and they sedated her. Jack kept her hand tightly between his, brought it to his lips as she slipped into a sleep that would keep her calm for a few hours at least, give her body a rest it hadn't had in a week.
*
December 24, 2004
When he gets to Heaven
To Saint Peter he will tell
One more soldier reporting sir
I have served my time in hell
The grass was cold, covered in snow, and he was thinking of ways he could have fixed this. He was thinking of ways this hadn't needed to happen at all. If he'd...carried his flashlight in, he wouldn't be standing here at all on a day when no one should be mourning the people they love. But it goes like that sometimes. It just has to, he thought.
Knowing that didn't make it any easier and it never would.
Samantha stood near him, arm in a sling, as she studied the tombstone of her friend. The ground was too frozen to bury the bodies, but the markers were placed nonetheless and so they were standing on hollow ground, imagining the ones that could've been here with them instead of lying on slabs in cold morgues with people who didn't know their names.
"I have a hole inside, " he heard her say. God, that's the fucking truth. A hole so big and dark it would never, ever go away.
A few more minutes of silence, and she pulled him away, and he walked her back to her apartment. They sat on her couch over a cup of hot chocolate that neither of them drank and pondered the eternity they were touching.
"I think -- I think I came back wrong, Sam, " he finally spoke.
She didn't have to ask what he was referring to.
"You all did, Matt. Every single one of you. And Patrick Morrisey --"
"Patrick?" he blinked in recognition of his old friend.
"He killed himself."
"God. I -- I never wanted to be that. I don't want to be that."
"You won't, you've just got to --"
He set his mug down.
"But it was my fault, plain and simple."
She thought about it for a minute.
"You can't change what you did. You've just got to...find a way to live with it."
"But there's something missing in me, Sam, something big. And it hurts."
"I know, " she said.
*
He was leaving to see his family, but he had wanted to do this before he went. A flower had seemed fitting, though now it just seemed incredibly cheesy. Danny would have asked for...a deck of cards or a CD or something that meant more than just looking pretty.
But he'd gone with the flower and so here he stood, Martin Fitzgerald, remembering his friend that hadn't always been his friend and wishing there was a way this could become a hellish dream.
Instead, here he was on Christmas Eve saying goodbye to a guy he'd known once who liked Al Pacino and baseball and grew up in Florida. He grew up warm and died so very cold. And Martin Fitzgerald dropped his flower and wept.
*
10:34 p.m.
She found herself here tonight...for him. As a girl, she had been dragged to church on Sunday in her best dresses with her best hair, praying to things and for things she didn't understand. No one had ever explained to her how the world worked and the people in it -- that you couldn't have everything and sometimes people died, and though it hurt, it was meant to happen.
She went to church for her mother and promptly stopped as soon as she moved away. When she'd met Danny, he'd goaded her into attending Catholic mass with him every so often and she found she liked it, liked the feeling it gave her when she sat in the pew and listened to the words that now started making sense. And Danny, wonderful Danny, would explain it to her in ways that made her wish she'd had faith all along.
They would have come here tonight, together. They would have watched the movie and come here for the Christmas Eve service and he would have put his arm around her when they sang "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, " leaning in close to make sure she was singing as well. Then he'd tease her about her voice, all the while thinking it sounded like an angel and he'd stand with her in the warm church with the snow falling outside thinking how much he loved her, Samantha, this best friend of his; he'd stand there thinking, there isn't anything better in the world.
And she'd think the same and they'd crash collectively at one or the other's apartment -- hers, this year -- and sleep in. Then Matt would come over -- he would have brought Alexis -- and Vivian would bring Reggie and they'd all sit down, this fragmented family of theirs and count themselves together as complete.
Then Danny would have taught her to skate, laughed at her failings and rejoiced her triumphs and held onto her as she would start to fall. Then they'd stop and collapse on the snowy ground and look up at the sky, pretending they could see the stars so dim from the city lights.
"We all have stars when we die, " he'd tell her and talk again about the ones he'd named for his mother and grandmother and aunt and she'd smile in spite of herself and recite the story in her own head from memory.
So here she was in church, alone, thinking how different it would be, this year and always. Vivian slid in beside her, coat still tightly bound.
"I thought I'd find you here, " she spoke, hands on the wooden pew.
Samantha nodded. "Danny took me every year. It seemed -- I wanted to do it for him."
"And for yourself, " Vivian added.
She nodded again. "Yeah, for myself too. I don't -- I don't know what to do, I feel...God, I miss him. How does -- how is it going to get better?"
"Danny, " she said after a beat, "loved so deeply he was -- he was afraid to let go of anything. He had us in his heart and told himself nothing would ever happen to anyone he loved again. Because of his parents, his mother mostly. And he just -- he couldn't let something happen to you, so he took that bullet, without thinking, and that was the last thing he could give. He gave you a great gift, Sam, he gave you your life. And he'd want you to use that gift, to find a meaning again to keep you whole."
Vivian's own eyes filled, as did Samantha's, and she fell against the older woman's shoulder for a while as the choir sang a broken chorus in hope and faith for the birth of a man who'd given the world a great gift as well.
As they left the church, Sam tightened her scarf and looked up at the sky. The brightest star hit her eye and she could see it, even above the lights of the city, and knew this one -- this one was Danny's.
They had both been so young when they came to this city and they'd found each other so perfectly it had to mean something. They both were lost and shaking with weary pasts, but they found each other. They found the pilgrim souls within themselves, they saw who they were written on the other's face and they found something at once, something so beautiful it made her heart ache because of it.
"Merry Christmas, " she said, and smiled as it twinkled back to her.
And for one last moment, on that cold Christmas Eve night, Danny Taylor was alive again.