All These Things

by misslucy21

AN: Here we are with part 3 of what seems to have become a series. If you haven't read Blind Memory or The Edge of Darkness, I really suggest you do so first. These are all Lost Son AU.
In our wheels that roll around
As we move over the ground
And all day it seems we've been
in between the past and future town

We are nowhere, and it's now
We are nowhere, and it's now

"We Are Nowhere and It's Now", Bright Eyes

Horatio sighed as he slumped back into his desk chair. If the last six weeks hadn't been the worst in his life, they were ranking up in the top 5. He just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, pull his pillow over his head and never wake up. It was a futile desire, though; he hadn't slept more than four hours a night since the warehouse. He was being stretched in too many directions and so he barely slept and only ate in an attempt to calm the gnawing of his stomach. It usually didn't work, and he'd lost weight. Not a lot, just enough to make the waistband of his pants looser where it had been snug. Enough to move his belt buckle over a notch. Probably a good thing, actually, given that he was getting to that middle-age metabolic slowdown point, anyway. Not like Speed, whose ribs and collarbones now showed through his shirts.

Thinking of Speed made his chest tighten. His friend was still in a world of hurt. It made Horatio's heart ache to look at him, to hear his slurred speech. But Horatio forced himself to go over there two nights a week and sit up with Speed for a couple hours. They didn't talk much- Horatio didn't think Tim talked much at all anymore, really. Usually they watched a movie, but even that was hard for Speed to take anymore. He flinched at loud noises and bright lights. But Horatio knew Speed needed his support. And maybe more than that, Calleigh needed a break. She'd all but moved in with Speed at this point.

At least Calleigh had been back at work full time for the past two weeks. That helped. But then…then there were the new people. Horatio sighed as he put his head down on his desk. The new people. He'd hired three rookie CSIs. None of the lab staff had wanted to move up into field training, so he'd had to hire outside. Since none of them had hardly any real experience, he'd hired three of them. He'd never replaced Megan, anyway. And it had become apparent within a week that he desperately needed to hire people. Losing Eric was incredibly difficult- he'd been a good CSI and a good friend, and Horatio missed him deeply. And he knew that losing Calleigh was very temporary- as soon as Tim was able to be on his own for hours at a time, she had come back to work half-days. But it was really losing Speed that had brought out the desperation. Horatio hadn't realized just how much work Speed did. That fact was hammered home two days after Tim had left the hospital, when Carrie came up to him all a-fluster because the mass spec was malfunctioning, and "Speed just does something to it, and I don't know what he does, and it's broken, and I need it!"

After calling the manufacturer help line and discovering just how Speed fixed the mass spec (apparently, it was a combination of resetting the cylinder and rebooting the machine), he'd sat down with Carrie, Valera, Sam and Tyler and made them come up with a list of everything Speed or Eric had done that no one else either knew how to do or was assigned to do on a regular basis. The list for Eric was a reasonable, but not overwhelming length, and mostly aquatic centered. The list for Speed, however, was two pages long and included everything from fixing the mass spec to ordering supplies, to backing up databases. Horatio had blinked at it in disbelief; he'd known Speed worked long hours and worked incredibly hard, but he had no idea just how many things on top of his caseload the younger man had just taken over without complaint when Megan had left. Or even before that, in some cases. There were apparently benefits to having an insomniac working for you. He needed to get people into the lab but fast, or else none of them was going to be getting any sleep, apparently.

So he'd hired three people: Jack Maret, Kiara Johnson and Scott Henson. And just as he was trying to figure out how to train all three of them at once, two members of the night shift showed up in his office one morning. He'd been staring at the computer when Kara Whittier and Valerie Hamilton just…appeared.

"We're your saving graces," Kara had said cheerfully. "We're transferring temporarily to whip your trainees into field shape."

He'd blinked at them. "You are?"

"Yup," Valerie said. "I'm only going to stay until I go on maternity leave in six weeks," she explained, rubbing her very pregnant stomach, "but Kara will stay at least until Calleigh comes back to full time."

"Maybe until Tim comes back, too, if you still need me," Kara said, nodding. "But we ought to have the three newbies mostly up and running by the time Val goes."

"Besides, it's something new for us. We've always worked night shift and we've always worked with Manny. Time for a change," Valerie said.

"Right. And we know y'all would do the same for us, if we needed it," Kara said. "So, where should we start?"

And they had been saving graces. They'd completely taken over training the new people, and just having that pressure lifted from him meant that he could actually almost do his job. Almost. He couldn't catch the people who'd put them all in this position in the first place. And that was most of what kept him up at nights; the fact that his promises were going unfulfilled. Unfulfilled promises, and a nagging sense of dread that he couldn't place.

A ping from his email program made him raise his head to look at the computer screen. The subject heading made him sit up and peer at the screen: "Is this your man?"

He opened the email and found a camera phone photo, along with a message that read:

Horatio- Saw this guy outside the post office. Sorry for the bad photo, but description matches the one you sent. White male, 6'2-6'3, 230-240lbs, prison built, sandy brown hair. Don't know if it's anything, but might help. – Ronnie Jackson.

Ronnie Jackson had been a detective with the MDPD until about four years ago. His wife had died of cancer and he'd taken their two small children back to the town where he'd grown up in North Carolina where his family could help him raise them. He'd kept in sporadic touch over the past couple of years, and when Speed had finally been able to be calm enough to give Horatio something resembling an actual description of the man with the blue tattoo, Horatio had emailed it to Ronnie, along with everyone else he had a contact with in law enforcement. The description was almost a match to Andrew Markham, but it was too vague to warrant an APB, and too vague to really be certain. But it was enough to ask people to keep their eyes open if they were so inclined. It was a long shot, Horatio knew, but it was all he had. And now it looked like the long shot might have paid off…

He pulled Jackson's number from his contacts list and punched it into his phone. Jackson picked up on the second ring. "Jackson."

"Ronnie? It's Horatio Caine. I got your email," Horatio said.

"Hey, Horatio. I'm glad you called. Look, sorry for the crappy photo, but I had one of my kids with me and I didn't really want to attract attention," Jackson replied.

"I understand completely," Horatio nodded. "Can you tell me anything else?"

"He's not from around here, I can tell you that," Jackson replied. "I didn't hear him say anything, though, so I couldn't tell you where he's from, but he just stuck out for some reason. We're not so small that I know everyone on sight, but you do kind of get a sense of who belongs and who doesn't, you know?"

"I know what you mean," Horatio agreed.

"Well, he just didn't fit. Which is why I noticed him in the first place, and then I thought that he kinda fit your description, so I snapped his photo quick-like, and when we got home, I double-checked your email, and sent it to you."

"Ah," Horatio said. "Did he have a blue tattoo anywhere you could see?"

"I'm sorry, I couldn't tell. Where is it supposed to be?"

"That's the problem. I don't know, and if Speed's remembered anything beyond the fact that the blue tattoo exists, he hasn't told me," he sighed. That was the sticking point. Speed insisted there was a tattoo. He just had no idea what it was a tattoo of or where on his assailant's body it was located. Pushing him just led to panic, so Horatio had dropped all mention of it.

"How is Speed, anyway? Is he back to work yet?" Jackson asked.

Horatio winced. "No. He's not likely to be back until after the first of the year. He was very badly injured."

"Must have been, to keep him out that long," Jackson said in a tone of wonder. "Damn, I wouldn't have thought anything could keep that guy down."

"We wouldn't have either until now, really," Horatio admitted. The thing that worried him the most was that Speed wasn't even whining about the enforced absence from work. At least not to Horatio.

"Well, I'm sorry I'm not more help," Jackson said. "Hang on a second…Michael, I am on the phone, I'll sign off on that later…yes, go play Nintendo…Sorry," he said.

"No, no problem," Horatio said. He frowned at the photo again. "How long a drive is it up there, anyway?"

"To here? 'Bout 16 hours. Why, you gonna come up?" Jackson asked.

"Maybe," Horatio mused. "This is the best thing I've had so far."

"There's an airport at Asheville," Jackson said. "It's not far away."

"Driving is easier on the budget," Horatio explained.

"Right," Jackson said. "Well, if you are coming up, be careful. It might just now be November, but we're in the mountains up here, and it's cold already."

"I'll bear it in mind," Horatio said. "If we do come, I'll call you back."

"All right, man. Just let me know, I can find you a place to stay and all," Jackson offered.

"Will do. Thanks, Ronnie," he said.

"No problem. Have a good one," Jackson said.

"You too," Horatio said, hanging up. Where was Calleigh? He wondered. He was going to need her.