Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events are property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer, CBS, and Alliance-Atlantis. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.

A/N: Contains spoilers for S1 and S2.

He had expected an apology the next day, but none was forthcoming. In fact, Flack refused to speak to him at all. When they met in the locker room the next afternoon, Flack brushed past him without so much as a glance in his direction, eyes to the front and fingers curled around a styrofoam cup of stationhouse coffee. The indifference was worse than the punch itself, and the anger that had first seeded itself behind his breastbone as he sat in the emergency room with wads of cotton stuffed up his ruined nose had only grown in the night. By the time he'd come to the lab this morning, it had been a hot hammerspike of tension behind his eyes and at the base of his skull, and no matter what he did, a single thought fluttered at his temples like a pulse.

Bastard hit me.

It was shock as much as anger. For all his bluster and screaming at the Knicks when they dropped the ball and everything else on the court, Flack was remarkably easygoing, cool under pressure and the last guy to rise to perps' bait in the interrogation room. Sure, things got a little heated once in a while on the blacktop court across from the precinct or at the pool tables down at Sullivan's, but they were supposed to. It was controlled chaos, a chance to blow off some steam without anybody getting hurt, and if by chance a line got crossed-a hard elbow to the chest on the courts or a snide remark about someone's mother over the smooth velvet of the pool table-there were always apologies sweetened by a glass of beer and a slap on the back. Flack was the first to admit when he'd been a prick, and as far as his friends went, he was the last to hold a grudge.

So yesterday had come completely out of left field. He'd known Flack for six years, and he'd never lost control like that, not even with dirtbag perps who tried to grab him by the balls in a bid for escape or bitten him on the calf as he wrestled them to the ground. He'd skated the line now and then-the day he'd threatened to break the child-killer's neck came to mind-but he'd never lost control, never let his emotions overrule common sense and endanger the badge he'd busted his ass for all these years.

He didn't lose control yesterday, neither, Louie pointed out matter-of-factly. Naw. In fact, he was as calm as you please when he punched you dead in the fuckin' face. One shot. Boom. He coulda kept kickin' your ass if he'd wanted to, probably coulda gotten you a matchin' bed right next to mine in the rehab hospital. But he didn't. He didn't 'cause that shot to the face was a reflex bite, an animal snappin' at an unwanted intrusion. Your fingers were gropin' in an open wound he's been coverin' up for a long time, and he just wanted you to stop and get the fuck away from him. As soon as you were no longer a threat to his sister's box, he stepped over you and took her where you couldn't hurt her no more.

Hurt her? That's fuckin' crazy, Louie. I can't hurt her. She's dead.

Not for him, she ain't. And she ain't never gonna be. He sees her everywhere he goes 'cause she's got his face and his eyes. She's always gonna be fourteen to him, and he's always gonna be sixteen and chasin' a sister he can't follow. You know what I'm talkin' about, don't you, Dan?

Yes, he did, and the thought of it made his chest cramp and his bruised, swollen eyes sting. Sometimes when he visited Louie in the hospital and gazed bleakly into that ravaged, vacant face, he caught glimpses of the old Louie, the one who could walk and talk and wipe his own ass, and who, when Danny was ten, had taught him dirty limericks in the dirty, cramped room they shared to ease the pain of his smarting mouth where Pop had exacted his ounce of flesh for some imagined wrong.

Sometimes the Louie he saw was a kid, eight years old with dirt smudged on his cheek and a cocksure, shit-eating grin on his face. That Louie used to pin a toddling Danny to the floor and Indian-burn him until he screamed and Ma came in to break it up with a dishtowel snap to the ass. That Louie had also carried him out of the house during his father's furious rampages and sat with him on the stoop, entertaining him with brightly-colored dice from an old board game and stopping his pudgy, baby fingers from putting them into his mouth like killing candies.

Sometimes he was fifteen and shoving an eager Danny away from him and his friends, all snarling, wounding mouth and tarry, acrid breath. That Louie wore leather jackets stolen from the back of truck in the garment district and greased his hair to the viscosity of a wet pussy, but that Louie had also gone to blows with Pop over whether or not Danny was going to follow in the family business. That had cost him a molar and a permanently crooked nose, but it had kept Danny from becoming a runner for his old man's bookie.

Sometimes he was twenty-two and smoking Lucky strikes while he handed a hooker a hundred bucks and told her to make his little brother a man. That Louie had sent him into a cheap motel room with a rubber and a hearty clap on the back, but when Danny had emerged from the hotel room twenty minutes later, shaken and sick with adrenaline and shame because he'd been too appalled by the sight of the hooker's artificially lubed and world-weary cunt to do anything more than make a beeline for the reeking, stopped-up toilet to heave his guts, that Louie hadn't scoffed at him and called him a limp-dick pussy. Instead, he'd taken him for a beer and told him that he'd probably spared himself a terminal case of the Clap.

Still other times, he was twenty-six and sending Danny fifty bucks so he could eat while he studied Criminology and chemistry at Syracuse. It always came in an envelope that smelled of Ma's furniture polish and Louie's cheap cigarettes, and Danny would tuck the bills into the pocket of his jeans and head to the diner on West 53rd where he washed dishes to pay the bills. Back then, he'd simply been grateful for the money and never stopped to consider where it had come from, but now he wondered if it hadn't been money from Sonny Sassone's coffers as payment for a body well buried. The idea of Sonny Sassone being responsible in any measure for his college education made him want to laugh and puke at the same time.

Sometimes-and this was the most painful of all-he was the Louie who might have been, the Louie he had lost to misguided protection. When he saw that face looking out at him, it was too much, and he could only rise from the ugly, vinyl chair and leave the room until he got himself together. Louie might be one step above an eggplant now, but Danny was damned if he was going to look like a gutless hairbag in front of him.

So, that's what you see, Louie said patiently. Maybe that's what Flack sees, too. Maybe he looks into that box and sees how things were before she died-puttin' frogs in her backpack, fightin' in the schoolyard 'cause some snaggle-toothed doot-de-doot was givin' her a hard time, goin' to Church to watch her First Communion. Or maybe he sees alla the things he shoulda got to do as her older brother. Maybe he's seein' her in her prom dress or her cap an' gown, or imaginin' her at his graduation from the Academy, clappin' and takin' pictures and tryin' to catch his white gloves as they fluttered to the dirt. Her graduation from the Academy, getting to be the proud older brother in his dress blues. Her weddin', standin' in the Church in that godforsaken penguin suit and pretendin' that the guy whose name she took wasn't a Grade-A asshole who could never take care of her the way he could, promisin' himself that if the guy ever laid a hand on her or broke her heart, they'd never find what was left of him again. Her babies, and bein' Uncle Donnie, who let 'em play with the lights on the patrol car. Maybe what he's got in the box are faded yesterdays and broken tomorrows, and he don't wanna let 'em go.

After yesterday, the odds of knowing what Flack saw when he looked into the Box of Moldering Papers were slim and Kiss My Angry Mick Ass, and anyway, thinking about it made his nose throb.

"Danny? What are you doing here? I thought I told you to take a few days off until the swelling went down."

Mac's voice made him jump, and he winced at the miserable flare in his face. "Ah, Jesus Christ, Mac!" he yelped. "You scared the shit outta me."

Mac stood in the doorway, forearm propped against the doorframe. A ballpoint pen dangled loosely between two fingers, and he swung it in a lazy, pendulous arc. "Sorry," he said, but there was a trace of amusement in his voice. Then he sobered. "What are you doing here, Danny? You're off the schedule for the next three days."

"Oh, yeah, I know," he answered nonchalantly. "I know. I didn't figure on getting' paid, if that's what you're worried about." Nervous and a little truculent.

"No," Mac said evenly, "that's not what I'm worried about." Danny was secretly elated until Mac added, "I'm more concerned about the possibility of blood from your broken nose contaminating evidence."

"Oh. 'Course you are," he said bitterly, and turned away from him in his seat. "'Course. 'Cause, you know, bein' a hothead, I wouldn't have the sense to stay the fuck clear of the evidence and just catch up on the backlog of paperwork."

"I never said that." Danny couldn't see him, but Mac sounded pained.

"You didn't have to, Mac. Even with my eyes swollen shut, I can read between the lines. So, I'll just be over here, doin' paperwork and stayin' outta your way."

"Danny…" Mac trailed off and tried a new tack. "Can you see?" he asked shrewdly.

"What? Fuck, Mac. Of course I can see. You honestly think I'd come in here and jeopardize our chances of puttin' some scumbag away? Unbelievable." He reached up to scrub his face with his hands, thought better of it, and ran his hands through his close-cropped hair, interlacing his fingers behind his burning nape.

"Of course not. I just-," Mac came into the room and closed the door. "How's your nose?" Mac nodded in the direction of his face.

"'S'aright," he answered dismissively. "Hurt like a motherfucker last night, but it's not too bad now. That Aleve's some good stuff. Don't know if it's worth fifteen bucks a fuckin' bottle, though."

"I imagine it did. You want to tell me how you really got it?" Mac sat on the edge of the table and tugged absently at the leg of his pants to smooth a crease in the fabric.

Danny feigned surprise and confusion. "What are you talkin' about? I told you. I walked into a door while I was readin' the DNA results on the Fitzgibbon robbery homicide case."

"I know what you told me," Mac replied calmly. "Now I want the truth."

"The truth? That is the fuckin' truth, Mac. Why does everything gotta be a fuckin' conspiracy with you? I wasn't payin' attention. I walked into a door. I looked like an asshole in the emergency room. End of story." He slapped his palm with the back of his fingers to emphasize the point.

"All right. Which door?"

"The door to the ballistics lab. Why? What difference does it make?"

"The door to the ballistics lab would require a ninety-degree turn from the hallway that leads from the DNA lab. You're telling me you took a ninety-degree turn without even glancing up to see where you were going?"

Danny shrugged. "Yeah. So? What's the big deal? You and Stella could walk this place blindfolded."

"Danny," Mac countered impatiently.

"What? You don't believe me? Fine. G'head and swab every door in here if it makes you happy."

His heart was racing, and the adrenaline was sour in his mouth. If Mac found out the door he'd walked into had been named Flack, the department would take Flack's badge again and send him back to that useless shrink who was too nosy and wore too much perfume. Danny had been at her mercy twice in two years, and the hours he'd spent engulfed in the musky, sweet smell of dog piss and academic pretension had been worse than the slow-motion nightmares after the Minhas shooting.

All he's got is that badge. No girlfriend, no lover. It was just the lab who went to see him in the hospital. You remember because Stella stormed into the lab one morning, pissed because neither of his parents had bothered to see him. Stella fuckin' pitched a tent in there, like she thought she could will him to a faster recovery. She says his badge was the first thing he asked for when he opened his eyes, and she couldn't give it to him because it had been taken into evidence.

He loses that badge, and he's got nothin'. Disability don't pay for shit, and the money don't replace the rush of knowin' you're out there, protectin' decent people from losers and scumbags. People who got nothin' don't live long. You've seen it yourself. Yeah, the job eats you alive and leaves behind nothin' but bitterness and burst veins in your nose, but it's a drug every cop needs to survive, worse than smack or speed or crack. If you lose it before you're ready to let it go, you'll drive yourself crazy tryin' to get it back again and thinkin' of all the mighta-beens if they'da stayed on just one more year, one more month. More cops eat their gun the month after retirement than kill themselves on the job. The job doesn't end with the badge, and they spend every day after they turn it in lookin' for its weight on their chest or hip. You don't let go of the job. It lets go of you, and more often than not, partin' ain't sweet sorrow.

He thought of Aiden then, who had set her gun and her badge on Mac's desk and told him with a straight face that she couldn't do it anymore. But the job wasn't finished with her yet, and she had done it some more. She'd applied for her P.I. license and watched D.J Pratt from the shadows, chasing leads and the rumors of leads and searching for answers by the light of her desk lamp and the comparison microscope she'd found on Ebay. She wanted to run him to ground before she laid the job to rest, but it was her who had been laid to rest. He'd carried her there himself, one numb shoulder balancing the cherry casket while his eyes and throat burned and his stomach heaved at the thought of what was in it.

That's what this is about, isn't it? Louie marveled incredulously. This is about Aiden. You think that if you help Flack, you won't have to close your eyes and see Stella scrapin' what was left of her out of the car with a spatula and a dental pick. You won't have to smell burning fat and think of Aiden as she turned to bone and ash and seeped into the upholstery. Maybe if you fix Flack, you can stop tellin' yourself that things woulda been different if you'd just called more or gone to her place once in while. If you had, maybe you woulda seen what she was doin' and coulda talked her out of it or at least offered backup. But the dinner plans you made came too late, and you never saw the pictures plastered on the wall or the slides she'd so painstakingly collected. You never got a chance to say stop, so now you're gonna catch Flack before he tumbles over the edge.

You're goddamned right, I am, Louie, he snapped to himself. My whole life, everybody I care about has gone to shit. Pop's drinkin' himself to death, and Ma thinks it's my fault what happened to you. You're gonna be laughin' at your Jell-O for the rest of your life, and my partner burned to death in a stolen car because I wasn't there to look out for her. Now my best friend is witherin' to dust inside his clothes and holdin' vigils for the dead when he should be asleep. He's the last chance I got to do somethin' right.

"I saw the blood on Flack's knuckles, Danny."

Shit. "How d'you know it was from me?" he countered, dimly aware that he sounded like a whiny twelve-year-old trying to explain the pot in his dresser drawer. That ain't mine, Pop, I swear.

"I don't," Mac answered simply. "But I saw the blood and your face and made the connection."

"'Course you did." He sighed. "Mac, I swear to God that it's not what you think. You gotta listen to me, Mac. If you report him for strikin' a fellow officer, the cocksuckers at IAB'll have his badge, and even if he gets it back he'll be ridin' a desk for the rest of his career. For God's sake, don't do that to him, Mac. He's hangin' on so goddamned tight right now by the tips of his fingernails. If he loses his badge, Mac, you mark my fuckin' words, we'll be hosin' his brains off the walls of his apartment."

He stopped and curled his fingers around the edges of his chair in a white-knuckled grip. Fuck, he'd just been rambling like a jonesing suspect. That would certainly persuade Mac that there was nothing to see here. Messer the Wonderfuck-up had struck again. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He fought the urge to laugh in self-reproach.

Mac held up his hands. "No one is talking about turning him in for anything, Danny. I just want to know what happened."

"Mac…I can't," Danny said helplessly.

"Off the record," Mac coaxed. "I'm not asking as your boss."

"Off the record?" Danny repeated dubiously.

Mac gave a single nod. "You have my word."

Danny relaxed. Mac's word was as good as a signed contract. He straightened in his chair and allowed himself the luxury of a stretch before he spoke. "Yeah, off the record I can do." He stretched his toes inside his shoes. "First off, Mac, it was my fault. You gotta understand that."

"Your fault how?" Mac replied cautiously.

"Well, see, I was comin' down the hallway there outside of the bullpen, you know? It was late-after midnight-and I saw a light on in there. So, I go in to take a look, and there's Flack, asleep at his desk six hours after he was supposed to go home. I was surprised as fuck to see him there, so I go over to wake him up, and there's this evidence box at his desk. It made me curious, so I ask him about it when he wakes up. I figure maybe I can help him out. Only he don't want my help, tells me to leave it alone. I backed off, told him I would, but I didn't. The next day, I go into the property room, check out the box…" Danny shrugged. "Flack found me in there lookin' it over, and he busted me in the face. One shot. Boom, done."

"Flack hit you over a case," Mac said slowly. "What case was this, Danny?"

Danny stiffened. "No, Mac."

Mac blinked. "No, what?"

Danny shook his head. "I ain't gonna tell you which case it was. It's not important."

"Not important?" Mac repeated. "With all due respect, Danny, you don't get to decide what's important in this lab. I do. And if Flack is unstable and tampering with evidence from investigations-,"

"Tamperin'?" Danny interrupted furiously. "Who said anythin' about tamperin', Mac, 'cause it sure as hell wasn't me. What's the matter with you? You think that since Aid-since one of us admitted the thought's crossed our minds, we all do it as a daily exercise now? Jesus Christ. Everything in that box was sealed and in its proper order. It was just sittin' on his desk. 'Sides, it wasn't an open investigation. It was a closed case from-never mind when it was from," he finished abruptly. "Just take consolation that it was an old, closed file."

Mac narrowed his eyes, and Danny suspected that there was a headache forming behind them. "If the case is closed, then what is the evidence still doing here? It should have been destroyed or returned to the family."

That's the thing, Mac. It never left the family. "Beats me. He said it was personal."

"Personal?" Sharp, alarmed. "This lab can't afford any more personal cases. A personal case is what cost Aiden her life."

Mac was right, and even as his brain processed the statement, he knew it, but the wound was too fresh, too raw, and Mac had no right to treat it like it was Aiden's fault.

You had no goddamned right, the Flack of yesterday muttered inside his head, crouching over the spilled papers of his sister's file and gathering them in his hands. Christ, Messer, you couldn't even be bothered to take care of her.

Danny leapt from his seat and slammed his palms on the table. "Don't you dare blame Aiden for what happened to her, Mac. Don't you fuckin' dare." He was furious, and red danced on the periphery of his vision like blood in water.

"Da-,"

"Naw, Mac, naw." Danny shook his head and began to pace, hands opening and closing into bloodless fists in time to his harsh breathing. "Aiden was nothin' but a goddamned victim in alla this. Pratt's a fuckin' scumbag, and he don't deserve to be getting' three squares in prison while she rots in the ground. You wanna blame somebody? Blame him. Or better yet, blame us, because we hadn'ta turned our backs on her, maybe she'd be alive now."

"Blame me, you mean," Mac corrected dully. "Because I'm the one who fired her."

He blames himself for what happened. He probably has since her face turned up on that digital recreation. He doesn't say nothin' 'cause of Semper Fi and all that crap, but he probably sits in his office and shuffles the papers on his desk and wonders if he coulda done somethin' different, if he coulda stopped it by takin' Pratt's weasely little lawyer more seriously.

"Naw, naw, Mac," he said hastily. "That ain't what I meant." But the protest was sad and empty because it was precisely what he had meant to say, and they both knew it. Danny could only stare miserably at him from behind the smudged lenses of his glasses and wish for a hole in the ground to swallow him up.

"Do you feel," Mac said after a long, ugly silence during which they looked anywhere but at each other, "that Flack poses a danger to himself or others in the field?"

"No," Danny answered. "No, I don't. Flack's too good a cop to put others in danger. You know that. The only reason he got blown up is 'cause that numbnut was listenin' to his Ipod too goddamned loud. And lemme tell you somethin', Mac. I wouldn't be surprised if that's half the reason he's so fuckin' pissed off. I would be, too, if I'd almost gone to meet my Maker on the strains of Barry Manilow's greatest hits."

Mac gaped at him for a moment and then uttered a short bark of laughter. "I think he would have preferred Zeppelin, honestly," he said drily.

"Doobie Brothers," he murmured absently. "He likes the Doobie Brothers." Then, torn between amusement and shame that he was laughing while the world fell apart, "Fuck, Mac. Just…fuck."

Mac laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. He'll be all right, Danny. Just give him time."

"It ain't the bombin' that's botherin' him," he said suddenly.

"What do you mean?"

"It's a ghost."

Mac only looked at him. "We all have ghosts, Danny. Some more than others," he said at last, and he wasn't laughing anymore.