It's not the EDAX machine's fault. It simply scanned what was given to it and produced a result that said "colbalt." It couldn't help itself that it hadn't been there for Tim Speedle during the original case. It couldn't help that Tim was dead, that his friends would one moment confide their trust to one another and then the next act like nothing mattered between them. It wasn't the EDAX's choice to hire Ryan.
Fine, Ryan thought angrily after informing Delko that he wasn't trying to "out do" the dead man. Calleigh had said the same thing not two hours earlier. I have other friends, and they appreciate me.
But Ryan still blamed the EDAX machine.
-WG-
Eric held his hands up with the evidence bag, a look of shock on his face. Wild-eyed, Calleigh stood in front of him, gun trained directly at his heart. For the space of a heartbeat, Eric thought she had finally lost it and that he was about to join Speed.
"Calleigh!" he called. "Put the gun down!"
She lowered her weapon and seemed to come back to herself a little more. "Did you see anyone?" she demanded. "Was anyone else here?"
"No, Calleigh," Eric told her. "There's no one else here."
Calleigh slid her gun away, but didn't take her hand from it. She studied Eric as if for the first time. "You wouldn't draw a gun on me, would you?" she asked.
Something inside Eric felt as if it were dying. How could she ask him that? Didn't she know he could never, ever hurt her?
What had happened to the time when she did know that?
-WG-
"How does a man leave his wife and son and let them believe he's dead?" Horatio demanded of his brother. "I begged you not to work narcotics."
Raymond stood there and took the brunt of his brother's fury. Some part of him had thought Horatio would be glad to see him, would embrace him like when they were kids. Would welcome him home.
But Horatio's first concern was not for Raymond. It was that Raymond had hurt Yelina. He wanted to protest, to tell Horatio that he had no choice, and he did. But Horatio turned a deaf ear to his argument.
"Big brother always knows best, still?" Raymond finally retorted.
"Ray Jr. is missing," Horatio said. "And it's because of you."
I will take back my family, Raymond thought but nodded contritely to Horatio. "So, what's the plan?"
-WG-
Eric and Calleigh watched in disgust as the on-air reporter, Erica Sikes, reported that Miami-Dade Police had uncovered a plot to spread a dirty bomb. Ryan walked into the A.V. lab and glanced at the monitor-turned-television.
Shit, he thought.
The other two members of the lab turned from the newscast to his arrival.
"I didn't mean it," he said at last.
They glanced at one another and walked out, leaving him alone with the news.
-WG-
She could do this, Calleigh again reminded herself. Until a drop of John's blood fell from the ceiling and landed on her white lab coat. She stared at it numbly. John's blood. The same color as Tim's blood.
Carefully, she lowered the test pistol and took the cartridge out. She laid the pistol and the cartridge on the counter at the firing range and set her yellow safety goggles beside them. She stepped away and shrugged off her lab coat, hanging it on the peg beside the door as she passed.
-WG-
Eric finished changing for the day, his eyes trained on the small screen in the corner of the locker room. He stormed out before he could hear Ryan tell Sikes that the credit belonged to his co-workers, who save many lives that day.
As he left the building, all Eric could think, that while he stood there as Horatio diffused the bomb, was that Ryan had been safely tucked in at the lab. He didn't want credit, Eric thought as he walked alone to his car, all he wanted was to do his job and that kid would never be Speedle.
-WG-
Calleigh stepped into the elevator, her name plate in her hands, and refused to think about tomorrow. She was alone now.
-WG-
Horatio put on his sunglasses as the plane pulled away; the plane carrying his family, his brother. Carrying Yelina, who was never his to begin with. He was alone, without his family and without his team.
Somewhere in the dusk, as the plane became airborne and passed overhead, he remembered words from a poem his mother had liked. He never understood it, but they oddly made sense now.
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last," he softly repeated, "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
-WG-
Author's note: I don't normally write by borrowing so heavily from the series for lines and action, but I woke up Tuesday morning and a master's degree of rhetoric collided with my favorite show. The Second Coming seemed to describe the events of this past season and so I felt the need to share. If you can't figure out who I see as the "center" and the "beast," please let me know and I'll be happy to explain. Thank you for indulging me in this part fic, part plea to the series writers to fix what they have done to our favorite characters.