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Chapter Twenty: Home No More

City of Chicago

All was silent, not even the slightest wind made a noise. No one could make a noise; barely could find their voice to speak, after what had happened to the beloved city of Chicago. Even the cries were held back; everyone was afraid of making a sound to show their despair.

For her, it was all she could do to let out her feelings, her cries of sadness. She couldn't stand the destruction of the city, her second home. It was like everything was being taken away from her, just like it had been a year ago, in the hurricane of New York. It wasn't fair, the way things could be perfect at one moment, and then fall apart the next. Why it happened, she didn't know, but it shouldn't happen, not to someone undeserving of it. And when she meant someone undeserving, she meant herself.

She believed that was insensitive, but she had just gotten used to living in Chicago, and now it was gone. Nowhere else could compare to her two homes of Chicago and New York, she wasn't going to evacuate to some other place, in hopes of new life. She would stay here, at this very spot by her apartment and wait for everything to go back to normal. Though she knew nothing would go back to normal if she didn't make an effort to help rebuild Chicago.

The sound of footsteps came closer to her and she turned around to see Mac walking towards her. She gave him a quick smile and then turned back to gaze at the city, broken apart and full of weeping citizens. The sky didn't portray a fine mood either; darkening clouds still filled the sky, even after the tornadoes. What had Lindsay called the weather before? Horrid, that had been it. Dark and gloomy, everyone hates everyone; those were word she used to describe the world.

But that had been the Lindsay a year ago, after she had disappeared and the FBI came to the CSI department. Lindsay worked with the FBI now, and she seemed to have forgotten all about her troubles from that time. That still left one question: Is Lindsay Paige Hobson? She didn't think she would ever find out the truth, the answer to her question had probably already been solved, and she didn't know about it. She pushed the thought out of her head; she didn't need to know the answer to that question.

The wind picked up and it began to lightly rain. The tears that were falling down her face were now accompanied by the raindrops that hit her face. "Why?" she cried. "Why did this happen to us?"

Mac stared at her, like the answer to her question was in her tear filled eyes. "It happened because it was meant to happen," he said. "There was nothing we could do to stop it from happening."

"We were making a living, though," she said. "First New York is taken away from us and now Chicago. We didn't deserve this."

"No one deserved this," said Mac.

"You don't understand!" she yelled. "I've already gotten my home taken away from me, and this is just too much. New York is where I grew up, worked my first job, and where you and I fell in love. Now, it's like I'm watching it happen all over again, where everything is being taken away from me."

"Do you not think I don't understand?" questioned Mac. "Chicago was where I grew up, the first place I lived, way before I came to New York. Stella, this is hard for everyone. But you've got to move on, start over again."

"But you're missing the point, Mac!" exclaimed Stella. "You have family, an actual home. I grew up in the orphanage; I didn't ever get to see my real parents! New York was the closest home I had; everyone at the lab I worked with was my family. I've started over so many times before; I just don't think I can do that again." She believed that just because she hadn't ever met her parents and grew up in foster care after foster care homes didn't make her special and everyone had to feel sorry for her loss. But now, after the two storms she had been through and losing two homes, she wanted someone to feel sorry for her. Though she knew she shouldn't just feel sorry for herself.

Mac, who was still staring at her sad stricken face, didn't say anything. He had experienced hard times in his life too, the time Peyton left to England, when he lost Claire, his first wife, on September 11, in 2001, having to watch one his friends get beaten up when he was a child, and then having to face the memory again when Drew Bedford, the 333 caller, imprisoned him and held him hostage in the New York City Subway. But she too, had faced hard times in her life, getting trapped in her apartment with Frankie Mala, her now deceased boyfriend, who wanted to kill her, having a scare with almost getting HIV after getting cut by a piece of glass that had been affected with the disease, being involved in a cold case with Detective Scotty Valens, which led to Mindy Sanchez, her foster sister. And never getting to know her real parents, never knowing if they knew of her, if they were dead, never hearing them say they were proud of her. She had dealt with too much in her life, and now these storms had made everything worse.

"I'm sorry Mac," she said. "I guess that sounded a little insensitive. I…I just can't start over again, not after all the tragedies in my life. Don't you feel the same way?"

Mac sat down on the stairs that used to lead to the front door of their apartment. Now they led to nothing. She sat down besides him. "Have I ever told you the story of that beach ball?"

"Yeah," replied Stella, remembering the story. "Claire blew it up, and you were unable to throw it away because it still contained some of her breath. Do you still have it?"

"No," said Mac. "I left it in New York. I wasn't able to retrieve it before we left to Chicago."

Stella nodded, thinking that it had been a dumb question to ask anyway, since she should have known the answer. She had been with Mac during the evacuation to Chicago; they had never gone to his apartment. Mac took her hand in his, and that made her turn to look at him.

"This is exactly what I'm talking about," he said. "If I hadn't moved on, I wouldn't have fallen in love with you. If we hadn't moved on, we would have never gotten married and moved to Chicago. If we don't move on now, we'll never get to see a new side of life."

He paused, to glance at the sky, and then turned to look at her again. He took his hand to put the hair that had fallen in her face, behind her ears. "Stel, the memories, New York, the things you've lost, you don't have to forget about them. But you can't let it bother you for the rest of your life, or you'll never see the light in the day. You'll be too focused on memories you can't get back. Life isn't perfect; it will never be. You have to live in the moment, enjoying life as it goes on."

Stella smiled. She met his gaze, looking deep into his eyes, just as he was doing. For a whole second, the world seemed to freeze, and everything that had been bothering her was forgotten, as they leaned closer to each other. There lips were just barely touching, and as the rain began to pour on them, they kissed. They leaned away from each other, and Mac smiled and she smiled back at him.

Mac laughed. "We should probably think about getting inside," he said, shivering from the rain, "before we get completely soaked from the rain."

Stella nodded her agreement. "But," she said, "I think we're already soaked from the rain." She tapped on the sleeve of her rain sodden coat. "And we're going to have to find a place to shelter, since our apartment is out of the question."

"We could have taken the car and drove somewhere," said Mac. "But that was before the tornado took our car and threw it somewhere else. It's probably broken now, wherever it is."

"Well," said Stella, getting up from the stairs, "looks like our only option is to walk to some public building that's still standing. Did you recover an umbrella from the wreck?"

"I wish I had," said Mac, also getting up to stand, "but unfortunately, we'll have to walk in the rain without one." He put his arm around her and then they began to walk down the street, to where, their destination was unknown. The next closest building, a library, a bank, or something, would be where they would shelter from the rain. But she was fine with walking in the rain without an umbrella; as long as Mac was by her side, everything would be okay.

In the next chapter, Lindsay will arrive in Montana and we'll get to see how Danny and Lindsay react to each other after not seeing each other for a year. Definitely some D/L in chapter twenty one! Hope you guys liked this SMacked chapter!