-1This time, Lindsay drove.

Yet even more of the quintessential silence we normally shared, was exchanged. This time, the air was so thick around me, you needed an axe to cut through it. I've never felt this vulnerable, the one place I never let myself go. The lump in my throat grew and grew, my tears held back by every bit of strength left in my body.

I felt ultimately responsible for my involvement in all of this, though my role was small. Now my past has come full circle. Threatening to collide with the life I have known for the past 8 years, threatening to destroy the new life that I have known since I've met Lindsay.

I'm finding myself breaking, breaking into the Danny Messer before he became part of the NYPD.

As Lindsay pulled into the underground parking lot to the lab, I didn't even wait for her to finish parking.

"Hey Danny!.."

I wanted to hide from the world. I was a 31 year old man, reduced to a 10 year old hiding under his bed with his favorite dinosaur toy. Hiding from a monster known as Tanglewood.

I bee lined through the hallways of the lab, ignoring Lindsay's constant protests behind me when Adam stopped me in my tracks.

"Hey Messer, I got your trace on the Belushi victim."

"Later" I push him out of my way.

"Last time I do you a favour. Which side of the couch did you wake up on?"

"Just stop." I hear Lindsay stop Adam from following me.

Locking the door behind me, I turn on the security glass to my office and I just let myself go. I did whatever I could to vent the fear, rage, anger, frustration, every conceivable feeling that I had encapsulated since seeing Michael.

I stop when I realized my fist was bleeding, and that there was a gaping hole in the wall of office that'll probably come off my paycheque. Falling into the corner of the floor, I release the little 10 year old boy and let him cry.

"Danny….."

It was Lindsay. Her voice laced with concern, and worry.

"Go Away."

"It's my office too. Not to mention, I have a key. I'm coming in……don't throw anything at me."

Lindsay comes in, locking the door behind her. She was the only other person to see me this way, the other being Mac. Nobody else saw Danny Messer this way.

"I don't know what to do." The cries escape from my lungs, as Lindsay takes me, comforts me.

I bury my head into her shoulder, her hair gently wiping my tears from my face.

"You give up, they win Danny."