Now-That-I've-Got-Your-Attention-Summary: Flashes of Horatio's life and heavy conscience, focusing on the Marisol storyline (as portrayed and into an alternate future), with a bit of unrequited Y/H and H/C thrown in for good measure.
Disclaimer: I lay no claim to ownership over the featured CSI: Miami characters, nor shall I attempt to profit from portraying them in this story. They are all owned by some very important people who work for CBS; I'm sure Anthony Zuiker or Jerry Bruckheimer would be happy to provide you with a complete list if you so desire.
Disclaimer 2: Nor do I own the lovely bunnies of Beatrix Potter.
Notes: I've a goodidea how the actual Marisol storyline will turn out now, but this is just my little scenario, written mere days before spoilers started flying thick and fast. As for anything that's vague…it's probably intentional, but call me on it just in case.
Blood On His Hands
There is blood on his hands.
No matter how many murderers he puts behind bars, he will never save enough lives to make up for taking that one. No matter how many loved ones he loses, he will never suffer enough for his sin. All he can do is keep washing, seeking what temporary solace he can.
She was a Spanish-speaking beauty, and he loved her in the way that youths believe in love at first sight, for all of one minute until he saw her kiss his brother. From then on she was marked; not tainted but unattainable. Eventually, in the eyes of the law she became his sister, and they became friends and later colleagues, though there remained a persistent yearning at the corners of his mind, nagging what if I, what if she, what if…? But she had never belonged to him and she never would, so he loved her from afar, close enough to touch and talk to and protect but always with an invisible guard between them.
The other did not take his breath away the first time he saw her, for he met her in the company of a stern-faced arresting officer, a far cry from the charged, hazy air of a summer bonfire on the beach. At first she was only another misguided woman in need of his help, pretty enough, but then Miami women were always pretty. It was not until later that her name would make his heart leap into his throat. Marisol. Sea and sun, perfect descriptors – sea for her tousled hair and sun for the glowing tan skin, sea for her buoyant enthusiasm and sun for her eternal optimism.
There were barriers between them, too, but he knocked them down, leaving the repercussions for another time, the same way he left off the dance-around. She made him dinner under the guise of thanks, confident that he had never tasted anything like it, and she was right; better than that, he stayed there, talking, for hours. He didn't kiss her that night, but she sought him out the next day on the veranda. The only sight he remembered was her hesitant, hopeful expression before she leaned forward and he followed suit. The rest of the memory belonged to the other senses, to taste and scent and the soft, smooth pressure of her lips, chaste as far as kisses go, yet more intimate than he could have imagined.
He made sure it was a day just like that one, halfway between sun and shadow, looking out over the beach, when he asked her to be his wife. "What took you so long?" she laughed. Thereafter they made a life together, in more ways than one, and ignored the ominous ticking of the metaphorical clock.
His raven-haired beauty was only passing the room, but the image therein caught her eye, and she paused. Just the barest corners of her lips curved up in a smile as she leaned against the doorway with arms crossed, watching her husband read Peter Rabbit to their daughter, lamplight glinting off the red of his hair and highlighting the shine of the girl's black locks. Feeling her gaze, he lifted his head and paused in the reading for a moment. "Hello," he smiled. "Would you like to join us?" This was accompanied by beseeching eyes and vigorous nodding from the toddler on his lap, impossible to resist. Crossing the darkened room, she curled up with her head resting against his shoulder, and soon they were only three figures nestled as one in the corner of the sofa, spellbound within Beatrix Potter's world where cottontails wore coats and lived lives unchanged for a hundred years.
This is happiness.
There is blood on his hands.
This is not figurative but frighteningly real, staining the pillow beneath her, a cruel reminder of the reaper waiting to collect his dues. Not yet, he pleads. Don't take her yet. The ambulance takes her instead, and he's lost in triage, waiting. There is a priest passing through, on his way to administer last rites somewhere. Though the visage is unfamiliar, Horatio turns his face away, as if the holy man can see the bloodstain on his soul, the one he has spent a lifetime trying to erase.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
He can't remember a time like this, not even before Teresa was born, when he was terrified something would happen to make him lose both in one fell swoop. He'd been lucky then. The knot of dread now was incomparable.
Once upon a time, penance was five Hail Marys.
He looked at the clock every five minutes but afterwards would never remember how long he sat there, fingers laced tight in unsent prayer. Teresa filled in half the pages in a coloring book, grew bored, made up songs, curled up in his lap and slept without understanding why they were here. She woke up and climbed into the chair next to him, was swinging her feet absent-mindedly when the doctor finally emerged. "Wait here, I'll be right back," he promised. The walk to the door took a lifetime; hope flagging with every step. With heavy trepidation his eyes sought an answer, but not until they were met with a shake of the head and the same routine "I'm very sorry" spoken a hundred times before did the last glimmer of hope blink out. Face sagging, Horatio turned slowly to look at Teresa, who left off her swinging to beam a bright, innocent smile at him, a smile that broke his heart twice over.
"Your daughter?" the doctor asked, following his gaze. He affirmed this with a dip of his head, not trusting himself to speak.
"I can have someone bring you with her to family services, if you'd like a moment alone." Another nod.
He doesn't look at the bruises on her arms where the lines have been connected; he focuses on Marisol's face, pale and washed out but somehow still lovely as ever, hair pressed in limp waves against the sheets. He takes her hand, already growing cold, seeking the last vestiges of heat that he may never forget the warmth of her skin under full sun. He bows his head, brokenly apologizing for being unable to save her, and cries.
He is not a young man, but the lines around his eyes are premature, too old for his face, a testament to his tireless crusade…or borderline martyrdom. He doesn't see it that way; he'd tell her a martyr suffers unjustly for a good cause. She might agree, and admit it's the right letter but the wrong word; he wants "masochist."
"No one expects you to save the world, Horatio," she told him once, softly, watching with him watch Alexx cover the face of a twenty-something Jane Doe, for whom their best efforts could find neither identification nor killer. Calleigh couldn't read the myriad of expressions that flashed through his eyes, nor how he might have wanted to respond, for he said only, with a twinge of regret, "I know," and drifted away.
"Lord, we commit thy servant into Your loving hands…"
It should be raining, or snowing, doing something to reflect the tragedy that has befallen. But it never snows here, and the sky remains obstinately bright and clear as she stands beside him in the cemetery, before the casket. She still can't read the expression in his eyes, which close her out. Part of him is distant, off somewhere she'll never quite reach, so they stand in silence and she does nothing because there is nothing she can do. It is a terrible thing to watch a lion crumble.
Yelina is the only one who understands firsthand how this new pain torments him, slipping her arms around his neck, promising it will get better. Dimly he registers the scent of coconut and something fruity that might have been her shampoo or some new perfume, but where once he would have cherished this, now it brings him no relief. She was married once, is married still to a man everyone believes dead. The difference between his loss and hers is that Marisol will not be waiting for him somewhere in Brazil.
They're fighting again.
Teresa is fifteen and after living so long in complete amity, they've been battling the same timeless arguments all year over his refusal to grant her unlimited liberty for who she can see, where she can go, how late she can stay out. He tries to make her understand what he sees on the job every day, what he's seen in a lifetime on the job, but fifteen-year-olds always know best, and if an older guy with a cool tat and a job at the marina thinks she's pretty and pays attention to her, then she's hit the popularity jackpot…
...until she comes home disheveled and in tears, bleeding from a split lip with the collar of her shirt torn, and tells him, you were right.
"Will you get him?" she whimpers into his embrace, a frightened little girl again, all the attitude lost. His anger at her dissolves and promptly redirects itself. "I will," he promises, with steely determination. He always got them, eventually.
"You can't pin no murdered girls on me," the suspect was sneering, overly confident at his first interrogation.
Horatio tilted his head at the grammatical flub and smiled his practiced, patronizing smile. "You're right. I've got several murders to pin on you. And enough evidence to put you away for at least a few lifetimes, I would imagine."
"Like what?" he challenged, but less smug now, and Horatio took great pleasure in detailing exactly what connected him to the three dead women and why he would not escape conviction. Just before he gave the officer permission to haul the murderer away, Lt. Caine dropped the victims' photos on the table – Patti, Sarah, and a familiar stranger from more than ten years past.
They had had half her name all along, but now Jane Rikaris could lie in peace, the question mark erased from the end of her story. Alone in the evidence locker, he took a moment longer to contemplate the photo, and then slowly lowered it back into the box. In doing so, he noticed his hands were lighter.
There are hundreds of teenagers lined up near the stage, but he has eyes for only one, even though in the excitement of the day and the crowded auditorium she hasn't yet found him. Someone at the microphone reads her name and she strides forward to take her diploma, white teeth gleaming as she smiles in the dazed way of one who hasn't quite processed reality.
She'll be leaving him soon too, but it won't be forever this time, only a little way up the road at the university. Teresa Caine is off with dreams of becoming a doctor. He's glad she hasn't chosen law enforcement. She'll never have to battle demons like his.
His thoughts are interrupted by her voice; the ceremony is over and in the milling crowd she's finally found him, splitting from her friends to receive his hug, as strong and solid as it's been her whole life. And when her eyes light up for him as if there exists no greater hero, at long last, he realizes something:
The blood on his hands is gone. He has done enough.