Title: Love Apart

Disclaimer: Poem is copyright to Robert Frost.Slash. Violence. Language.

POV: Danny

Chapter Seventeen: Goodbye Lover

I stand by the window watching the sun rise. I want to be at the hospital with Speed. I want to be by his side. But he doesn't want to see me. He sent me away. Why? How my heart aches. It all started with just one simple call. All he wanted was to get away. To see someone he loves. Does he still love me?

Nick wraps his arms around my waist. "My plane leaves in an hour."

"Do you really have to leave?" I ask.

"Unfortunately, yes. Grissom wants to know what's keeping me away. He's getting nosy. And I'm sure that if I don't return soon, Ecklie will tell Gris to fire me."

"Oh, then I guess you do have to go."

He must hear the disappointment in my voice because he holds me tighter.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" He asks.

"How can I not? Where did I go wrong?"

"It's not your fault, Danny. You did what you thought was best. Speed just needs to get some help. We both would if we had to bear that guilt."

"What guilt? It wasn't his fault."

"I know that and you know that. He probably knows it too. He just doesn't want to admit it."

I turn to him. "I can't help but feel so alone."

He looks pained. "Is my love not enough for you?"

"Oh, Nick, I di-"

"Look, I need to be leaving. I have a plane to catch. I'll talk to you later, Danny."

I don't move as he walks out the door. My heart is numb. I was planning for a happy weekend. Instead I lose everything. Why did it happen? I close me eyes and feel the warmth of the sunrise. It washes over me but can't chase away my blues.

A knock at the door brings me smack down back to earth. "Come in," I call.

"I just saw Nick leave," Horatio says. "I thought that I would come check on you. Are you doing okay?"

"Ha, okay? Speed won't see me and I believe that Nick is mad at me. Other than that, I guess I'm just fine."

"I've talked with Speed."

"He'll let you see him?" Why not me?

Horatio shakes his head. "No, he won't. I've been using the doctor and the nurses as messengers. However, Timmy has talked with Mac. They really seem to hit it off."

I roll my eyes. Another stab of pain. Speed would rather talk with my boss than to me. "Well, that's, uh, nice."

I turn my back on him. I feel the tears run down my cheeks. Horatio steps in front of me. He than embraces me. Everyone needs someone to hold them. Especially when their heart is breaking.

"It's okay," he soothes.

"No, it's not. Nothing is okay."

"As Robert Frost once wrote, 'to yield with a grace to reason, and bow and accept the end of a love or a season?'"

End

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?