A/N: I forgot to mention that these chapters will not be named. I'm tired with trying to come up with names all the time. Also, there will be much Danny/Stella friendship, with some Danny/Aiden friendship stuff as well. No romance! I'm not fond of romance much.

Ch. 1

Present Day

The night was moist, hazed in a thin mist of drizzle and humidity that was causing Stella's blouse to cling to her back. The warm night and the lack of a breeze was making the now foul air hard to breathe as Stella leaned in close to the blood-soaked corpse. A bullet wound the size of her fist gaped open at her like a frozen fish-maw, breathing out the sticky stench of blood and rotting meat. Stella swatted flies from her face as she snapped more pictures, the bulb flashing like distant lightning in the darkness.

The guy had been sitting out in the sun for the better part of the day, and now night had come and Stella had to suffer through the aftermath of it. Warm days and glaring sunlight was keen on speeding up decay to the most nauseating point possible. And of all days, she had forgotten the Vicks to put under her nose and stifle the smell. The officer standing a few feet away – the first on the scene after the report of the body – had offered her some mints, but like Stella was going to shove Tic-Tacs up her nose.

By now, however, she was starting to consider it.

When she finished snapping pictures of the wound, she sat back on her haunches and took a casual perusal of her surroundings. It was the kind of neighborhood where a body could definitely go unnoticed for a while. Dark, quiet, with apartments barely occupied except by those who made a practice out of minding their own business. Around the corner was a park with an old swing-set, dry grass, and liquor bottles scattered everywhere like a trashy glass menagerie. The only light source Stella had besides her many flashlights was a street lamp on the other side of the street.

Why people couldn't discover bodies during the day like most people was beyond her. Stella swatted more flies from her face, took a deep breath, and leaned in close again to study the wound.

" Hey Stella!"

Stella sat up and turned her head, then smiled at seeing Danny jogging across the street. When he was on the other side, he held up a small container of Vicks Vapor Rub, then tossed it to her. She caught it in both hands, then proceeded to remove her gloves to place the potent smelling stuff under her nose.

" Danny, you are a life saver beyond comprehension."

Danny crouched by his kit and began rummaging through it. " You say that now, but next time you're the one runnin' up and down streets lookin' for an open market. I got that stuff from a Chinese guy who could barely speak English."

The burning scent of the Vix was like heaven compared to the smell of rot. Stella leaned back in toward the corpse without compunction and angled her flashlight to peer into the wound.

" Close-range shot, point blank I would say," she said. " And I'm thinking something stronger than a hand gun. Maybe a rifle..."

The vic was a young African-American male who looked to be no more than eighteen or nineteen. Along with the gunshot wound were abrasions and bruises to the face, and a bent arm indicating a break. The kid had been beaten before he was shot.

" Could be gang-related," Stella said, " race-related... or the kid had been seeing someone else's girl. Too many possibilities. I've just never heard of any gang using rifles rather than automatics."

Stella felt Danny's presence beside her, and she looked up at him. His hands were busy adjusting his gloves, and the wan light from the street lamp flashed off his watch. He was in a short-sleeved tan shirt, and like Stella it was clinging to his back and shoulders.

" Depends on the gang," Danny said, and crouched down beside her. " Some guys, they like the damage more than the deaths. The bloodier the better, or the more painful the better. When I was a kid, there was this guy my dad knew who had a boy two years older than me – and taller than me. The kid was a sick freak. Whenever he came over, he would try to get me alone somewhere, then he would knock me to the floor and stand on my back."

Stella widened her eyes in disbelief at Danny. " Really? Didn't your parents find out?"

" Jack wouldn't let me rat him out. Jack Quinn was the kid's name. Said if I told anyone he would skin me alive, and he cut my arm once just to prove it. But I knew he was full of it, guys like him always are. But he liked causing pain, you know? I think he used to torture animals too, which is why he hated me. He had this dog he kept locked up in a shed, and when my dad brought me to the Quinn place for business, I let the dog out and set it lose. Jack really beat the snot out of me for that one. But it wasn't too bad since I got a good kick to his nose and broke it. Didn't have a choice, you know? Him or me kind of deal."

Stella shook her head. " You're a violent man, Danny Messer."

" Hey, I got a right to defend myself..." he said in a dead serious expression, then grinned, " and dogs if I feel like it."

Stella grinned at him. Danny could be a hard guy to read – good had maintaining a poker face when he was being sarcastic or kidding – but at least she knew where his heart stood.

The whispering rush of a car brushed by them, and Danny twisted his head around to watch it go. It was a habit of his, one he probably didn't even realize he was doing, to watch cars roll past, especially at night. Stella had only started noticing it now that so many evening cases were being called in, and found it amusing. But with his expression blank every time, she couldn't tell if he did it out of admiration for the cars or slight annoyance at the thought of someone stopping to snap a picture of a real crime scene.

" Hey, what's that," Danny mumbled, then rose fluidly and headed over to the edge of the sidewalk, taking the camera with him. He crouched, flashed a picture, then gingerly picked up what looked to be a piece of red glass. Danny pulled out his flashlight and clicked it on.

" Looks like it came from a car," he said, turning the glass over in the light. He shined the light into the street, then grinned. " Aw, look, they left a trail. Could you bag this?"

He set the glass behind him, and Stella stretched to pick it up. Danny moved out into the street and crouched again, this time picturing and picking up some white glass. " Our killers might have hit something, or something hit them. Maybe our vic?" Danny glanced over his shoulder. Stella could only shrug.

Danny fished a small plastic baggy from the pocket of his jeans and placed the glass inside. He flashed more pictures of the street, the trail of glass, and what also looked to be metal. He set the camera down behind him, then went to his hands and knees, studying the trail. " Leads to the other side of the sidewalk. I'm thinking they did a U-turn once they finished up here." The street was wide. Danny, holding up his flashlight, stretched his arm to pass the beam across the street to the other end.

Stella heard the squeal of tires echoing at an uncomfortably close range.

Danny smirked. " I think I see tire marks..."

" I think you need to get out of the street," Stella replied.

" Yeah, I am, I just..."

Tires squealed again. The car flashed into existence from around the corner. It hit Danny with a bang and a crunch, snapping him to the left and in the same heart-beat instant flipping him onto his back light as a rag doll being tossed by a rabid dog. The car peeled away back into the darkness beyond the lamp, squealing tires fading away in less than a heartbeat.

And Stella could only watch. The car had come and gone too fast for warning, denying Danny the time to so much as look up. She blinked, and like a camera flash reality snapped back into her awareness.

" Danny!" she screamed, scrambling to her feet and rushing out to the writhing prone form. She dropped to her knees on the right side of Danny's body and felt the heat of blood absorbing into her pants to stick to her legs. Danny was awake, eyes wide enough to rip, gasping in breaths so ragged in sounded as though his throat were being torn up. His arm that was still stretched above his head was blood-drenched and bent at the bicep. There was blood oozing from the shoulder down the side where his shirt was tattered. Stella cast the beam of her flashlight on that tear and nearly gagged on rising vomit.

Not only had that side of the shirt been ripped away, but some of the flesh as well, as though the bumper of the vehicle had been covered in spikes. Through the gash she could see the red-smeared arch of Danny's ribs, cracked and splintered like dried sticks.

Stella covered her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut until the burning vomit receded. When she opened her eyes again, she focused on Danny's terror-twisted face as he struggled to breathe. On the next breath, it caught, and he coughed. Blood sprayed out from his throat, then slid from the corners of his mouth like crimson worms. All the while, his hand on his uninjured side clawed at the ground.

Stella didn't know what to do. Blood was pouring from so many places, and the rasping, liquid intakes of air were making her mind reel wildly in a mesh of panic.

She took a deep breath, and honed all her concentration on Danny's gaze.

" Call 911!" She screamed at the officer she heard running toward her.

" Officer needs assistance and medical at..." she heard the cop rattle off, then stopped listening. She took Danny's face in her hands, then leaned over him to put her face in view of his sight.

" Danny, it's Stella. Listen, I need you to look at me Danny, look in my eyes. It's going to be okay, you'll be all right, help is coming."

Danny's uninjured arm shot up and his hand gripped Stella's arm painfully. She ignored that pain, and let Danny hold on, in turn moving one hand to grip his good shoulder and hold on as well.

" Come on, Danny, slow, shallow breaths. You've still got another lung in there that should be working fine..."

Danny hacked up more blood, then took a short, harsh breath with only one side of his ribcage expanding. She could feel him trembling violently through her fingers, and the blood absorbed past her knees. She wanted, more than anything, to stop that bleeding but the gashes were too long and too deep to be stopped. Plus, she had nothing to use to stop them with.

Stella's eyes burned with tears that she couldn't blink back. They fell warmly down her face, and she irritably wiped them away on her shoulder. Danny stared up at her, pleading without words for the help she couldn't give him. She felt blood on her hands, and saw blood staining Danny's hair from a head-wound she couldn't see in the poor light.

" Hang on, Danny, just please hang on. You'll be all right," she repeated over and over again. Her heart pounded, and cold sweat trickled down her neck. She was shaking just as badly as Danny.

The wail of the ambulance echoed to them through the maze of buildings and streets, then came to them only minutes later, flashing up the neighborhood in strobing red and blue lights. Paramedics surrounded them with kits and strange equipment, taking over. Stella had to pry Danny's hand from her arm, and her own hand from his shoulder. She rose on unsteady legs and backed away, but continued to hold Danny's gaze when he let his head loll to one side to watch her, still pleading, still terrified, reminding her of a small child lost in a big place as strangers crowded around him.

She wanted to go with him. Someone needed to. But the crime scene..."

Stella pulled her cell from blood-stained pants and pulled up Mac's number.

The phone rang several agonizing times.

" Taylor."

" Mac!"

" Stella?"

Stella ran her hand halfway through her hair and left it there, gripping tightly. " Mac, it's Danny, he's been in an accident. He's on his way to the hospital..." she related breathlessly, panting to match her racing heart.

" Stella, slow down, what?"

" Danny's been hurt! Oh, gosh, Mac... I need someone out here. I need to get to the hospital, please..."

" Are there officers around?"

Stella had not noticed the arrival of two cop cars and the four cops now talking to the on-site officer.

" Um, yeah, yeah, there are."

" Tell them to hold the scene until Sheldon and I get down there. Then go to the hospital and call me back after you arrive."

Stella nodded despite the fact that Mac wouldn't see it. " Yeah, sure."

Stella shoved her phone back in her pocket, then hurried over to the officers. She explained, almost in a single breath, what they needed to do, then ran to the car and practically jumped in. Twisting the key, the engine roared to life, and she pulled away.

Stella's heart would not stop its incessant hammering. Giving way to panic had never been a problem with her. Self-control came as naturally to her as breathing. But she'd never seen anything like what had just happened. She had seen dead bodies mangled and mutilated, torn apart and skinned; but Danny was still alive. It wasn't the blood that burned itself into her brain, or the sight of Danny's stained and cracked ribs through the torn flesh. It had been his eyes, the eyes of someone she knew, looking up at her in so much agony and fear, begging her to make it stop as though she had the power to. And she couldn't. It sickened her, enraged her, that someone had plowed into Danny as though he were nothing, just something to turn into road kill, then drive away without a second thought – probably because they were too drunk to care. That was the only explanation she could fathom at the moment.

Stella slammed her fist against the steering wheel. " Damn it!" Another tear traced an unseen path down her cheek. The blood on her pants was growing cold, and the blood on her hands was drying and causing her hand to stick to the wheel. She murmured a prayer in Greek that Danny wasn't going cold as well.

CSINY

Aw man this can't be happening! What's happening? What happened? What's going on? I can't breath! It hurts, oh man it hurts too freakin' much...!

There were noises too mangled and congealed to make sense, and flashes of movement like a blurred, psychotic dance whirling around Danny. He would have liked to have said that it was all a dream, but people weren't supposed to feel in dreams, and he was feeling too much. Mostly cold – freezing – and hurting in a way he had never felt before. He wanted Stella's voice back, and the sight of her face – terrified and pale as it had appeared – to hover in his line of sight and give him something to focus on. He needed something to focus on. It wasn't so bad then, even when he was trying to breathe.

He heard his name several times, and garbled words of comfort, but words weren't something he could focus on. He was feeling way too much to listen to anything. And without his glasses, whatever reality he had landed in was nothing but a haze of colors.

Where are my glasses? He wanted to ask as much, but was still trying to get air down his throat. Half-way down, it would feel as though he had sucked in some water, and in turn would begin to cough. Coughing would then ignite a torrent of agony that made him want to scream, and the cycle would repeat itself.

Then he felt something new, and it was inside him. It had to be, because it was the gut-wrenching sensation of something pulling and manipulating his ribs.

Yet, oddly, it didn't hurt as much as it probably should have. That did not mean it didn't feel wrong, grating and grinding so that he could hear it just as much as feel it. He wanted to shrink away from it or at least rip out whatever was doing it but he couldn't move. He was forced to endure it. He sucked in a terrified breath, choked, coughed, and heard loud rapid beeps and wails. He tried to take another breath, and choked again.

What's happening!

Someone was telling him to calm down and take short breaths.

Stella? No, the voice was male.

The world became dark and misty, and Danny could feel his mind slipping mercifully away. He heard his name being shouted this time, and was only vaguely aware of something being slipped unnervingly down his throat. At that point, instead of heeding to the voice that was telling him to stay awake, he let himself slip into darkness. He was sick of feeling.

If I don't have to take it, then I won't. Doesn't mean I'm dead.

A man should only have to take so much.

CSICSI

A/N: Am I mean to Danny or what! But you know what's really bad? This is only the beginning. Oh, the things I have in store for our boy Messer!