A/N: Because of the spoilers for season two: a character death: what if it is Aiden? I own nothing, not the song or characters or anything else you recognize; this is Danny/Aiden, because they really were sort of meant to be.
Where to?
Where do I go?
If you've never tried then you'll never know
-Coldplay
Danny sipped hospital coffee and jittered his heel. One would've thought he felt numb, but he felt such a large range of emotions that it was hard to pick just one. Anger. Worry. Sorrow. And so many more. It was hard to pick just one.
He'd gotten the call an hour before, but it felt like days. His throat was tight with the effort of holding it together. Stella had called him in a shaky voice and explained the situation. Crime scene. Shooting. Three shots. New York Presbyterian. Twelfth Floor. Not looking good.
He'd hung up without a word and hailed a cab, paying the guy an extra fifty bucks if he could get him there in the next ten minutes. He had gotten him there in five and Danny was so grateful to this perfect stranger that he would've given the guy his wallet if he'd asked for it.
He'd been trying to convince himself it was all some sick joke; that he'd imagined the phone call, but when he's burst onto the twelfth floor and saw Stella covered in Aiden's blood, he knew it was real. She'd really been shot; and he was really expected to wait here while the doctors cut her apart in a room behind the doors he wasn't allowed to go through.
What were they doing in there? Why was it taking so damn long?
Someone told him once that if it's taking a long time, then that's a good thing, because they're making progress, and there's still a chance. You don't want the doctor to come out, they'd told him.
He couldn't remember who told him that; but if that person was there right then, he probably would've ripped their fucking head off and tossed it across the monochromatic waiting room he was imprisoned in.
The thought that Aiden was alive kept in slightly sane, though he could feel himself drifting into the place it shouldn't have gone. To a funeral that hadn't happened. To boring lab, and Friday Nights spent without the company he'd become so accustomed to.
Then it happened.
The thing he'd been hoping for and dreading.
A man in scrubs came out- covered in blood and all sorts of other stuff Danny didn't want to think about when it came to her. That stuff was supposed to be inside of her, keeping her heart beating, keeping her veins pumping, but instead, it was on a middle-aged man wearing a surgical mask and a grim face.
"I'm so sorry." He said, and then Danny felt it.
The numbness.
The thing everyone associated to the death of a loved one.
He felt it, and it was so real, even though it felt like nothing.
He didn't slip into denial, though he almost wished he had. He wished he didn't feel alive. Couldn't feel his heart beating almost out of his chest as the doctor went through a lot of technical things that Danny felt like he knew so well, but didn't ever want to think of happening in the context of them happening to her; never, ever to her.
"Is she, is she actually gone?" He heard himself ask, though he couldn't remember actually thinking it; because he knew. He didn't sort of know, there wasn't even that single shred of doubt.
"She's brain dead." The Doctor said in his practiced sympathy voice. "She won't make it through the night. You can go in, when you want. Again, I'm very sorry."
He heard Stella asking him if he wanted to go in, if he wanted her to with him, but he waved her off and told her to go with Mac, he could wait.
What felt like seconds later, Mac and Stella were back, Stella holding onto Mac's arm in a very un-Stella way.
"Go ahead, Danny." She said in a composed voice, but her face gave her away. That and the fact it looked like Mac was physically holding her off the ground.
He felt his eyes glaze over and he blinked, once, twice, three times before taking a shaky step towards the hallway, into her room.
He stood in the entrance for a second before sitting down bodily in the hard plastic chair beside her bed. Her long hair was pulled back and he reached over to pull her long tresses out of the elastic, because he knew she like it better down. He knew lots of stuff about her. She loved baseball and she was artsy and fun and witty and everything he could've asked for.
More than he could've asked for without being deemed unrealistic.
He grabbed her hand, and God; it was really like ice. He knew she was long gone, but he talked to her anyway, because, hell what else could he do?
At first, he figured he was talking just for him, but then he decided he was doing it for the both of them. He knew she could hear him, see him, wherever she was.
"It was always you, wasn't it?" He asked quietly.
"You know, when you first came, and Mac told me I was going to be your long time partner, that I was going to be training you, I was like, 'great, here we go.' I thought you were overly eager and maybe a bit of a show off, and definitely with an attitude, but I think that's what I liked about you. What I still like about you. You liked me, despite the fact that I was bossy, and maybe a little mean sometimes, not to mention whiny. And…. and then you started to grow on me."
He broke off, but swallowed hard past the lump in his throat and continued.
"And I'm not going to make this long and fancy, because we weren't like that. You…you were it. And now this has to go and happen. I love you. I've always loved you. I always will. I'll miss you, and I promise I'll go leave flowers…all the time. I promise, Aid."
He pulled the gold necklace off his neck; it had been his mothers. He'd always worn it. Thought it was good luck. Figured she should have it now, even though it was too late.
He wrapped it around her hand and held her other one. He didn't know how long he stayed there, probably a few hours, listening to the beep of the heart monitor and the systematic whirl of the oxygen machine.
He was with her to the very end, because he knew she would've wanted it that way.
He watched her take her very last breath, and he didn't take another one until he was sure she wasn't going to. He dropped his head onto the bedside, for a second, willing himself not to sob in the cold, sterile hospital. He kissed her forehead, lingering, knowing it was going to be the last time.
He stood up roughly and got a nurse, who disconnected her from the large array of machines that had kept her body alive for the last few hours. Danny looked at his watch. 6:10 in the morning. He'd been there for hours. The nurse unhooked the last IV and sympathetically smiled at Danny motioning to him that she was going to push the bed out of the room.
Danny clenched his jaw and nodded, swallowing hard, seeing the tears blur his vision, and feeling the unfamiliar sting behind his eyelids. The nurse pushed the bed into the hall, Danny holding Aiden's hand until it slipped out of his own.
He watched until the bed disappeared around the corner and out of sight.
He walked down a hospital corridor, stopping to gaze out a window to where the sun was rising. The sun was coming up on the horizon, a brilliant mix of colors, hitting the skyscrapers and reflecting off into the early morning sunlight. He let out a deep sigh, and finally let the tears run fast and hard down his cheeks as he decided that she would've loved this.
The sunrise, the colors, seeing the massive buildings, being here with him.
There was nothing Aiden loved more than New York, except Danny.
He decided that maybe this was her way of saying her final goodbye, and wherever she was, that this was for him, and for them.
A/N: I've reduced myself to a crying mess now. Reviews are greatly appreciated.