Title: How to Survive A Broken Heart

Author: Courtney

Email: Danny/Aiden

Rating: FRT

Spoilers: 'Til Death Do We Part

Summary: Tag for TDDWP; Aiden and Danny talk about love.

Author's Note: I stole the title from Ben Lee.

"Have you ever been in love?" Aiden asked. She was looking wistfully at what remained of the wedding dress, the one that Hannah Bloom should have been carefully packing away by now, but was instead going to its final resting place in a basement evidence locker.

Danny shrugged at the question, even though she wasn't looking at him to see it. "I dunno," was his answer.

"If you don't know then the answer is no," she informed him.

"Okay, then no," he amended. "Have you?"

She shook her head and the expression on her face seemed a bit sad.

"You want to, though, right?" he pressed. She didn't open up very often, even to him, and he wasn't going to let this opportunity slip past him that easily.

"Every little girl wants to fall in love," she informed him.

"Somehow I don't see you as a little girl who pranced around in her mom's high heels and dreamed about her mystery date, Aid."

"You might be surprised," she replied softly. "There are things that you don't know about me."

"That, I knew," he agreed.

"What about you?" she asked, turning to look at him for the first time since the conversation started.

"What about me?"

"Do you ever want to be in love?"

"I'm not sure," he admitted. She looked at him quizzically and he continued. "It's scary. What if you let yourself fall in love and the other person doesn't feel the same way? What if you surrender yourself to someone else and it falls apart? What do you do then?"

Aiden was quiet as she took in his words, overwhelmed by the thought that Danny had obviously put into this subject. Finally, she simply said, "I guess I just figure if it's the right person then I won't have to worry about that. And if it's not then . . . well, I guess I'm better off in the end."

"I guess," Danny responded, but he didn't sound convinced.

The whole thing made Aiden wonder. Someone had hurt Danny. She tried to tell herself that she pondered whom that could have been out of curiosity, and not because she'd like to hurt them as badly as they'd hurt Danny.

"So, we're done here, yeah?" Danny asked as he sealed the last box of evidence.

"Yeah, I guess we are," she nodded. She figured he must be ready to get out of there, to escape their tense little exchange at last.

"Let's go get a beer," he suggested.

Aiden looked up at him in surprise and found herself nodding. "Yeah," she said, "a beer sounds good."

The End

March 19, 2005