Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".

A/N: Thanks as always to people who leave a review; I really like to know what struck readers about each chapter. Thanks to all the people who are just reading the story, too; I hope you continue to enjoy it!

Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY; all song lyrics are from The Beatles.

It's A Long Journey Home

Chapter 14: Nowhere, Man

He's a real Nowhere Man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plans

For nobody

Danny flipped open his phone and checked the Caller ID before answering the call. "Yeah, Mac?"

"Danny, are you at home?'

"Naw, just coming back to the lab. We got a case?" Danny rubbed his eyes and looked around to see exactly where he was. "I can be there in ten minutes."

"Okay, meet me at my office, would you?" Mac hung up his phone and looked at Stella. "You were right. He's on his way back here. Again. What the hell am I going to do with him?" His voice was tight with frustration.

Stella was slouched down in the chair, her eyes closed and feet up on a table. "I don't know, Mac. Don and Shel tried to talk to him, and he wouldn't say a word. Don told me he didn't even eat. The world must be coming to an end when Danny Messer can't eat."

Mac grinned a little at Stella's wry tone, but he hated this, he really did. Contrary to popular belief, he was okay with personal relationships in the office. Well, not totally comfortable, obviously – heat rose in his cheeks thinking back to how he had rejected Peyton's gesture of sympathy in the office – but he was trying, at least.

If Danny and Lindsay had feelings for each other, he was fine with that. But he needed a functioning lab. It looked like Lindsay would be needed in Montana for some time; he had had a message from the Sheriff in Bozeman, asking for her to be released on secondment until they had finished re-processing the evidence from the Forbes case, and naturally, he had given his permission. Now Danny seemed poised to go off the rails again, and Mac wasn't sure how to pull him back.

"Can you talk to him, Stel?" Mac was aware that there was a touch too much pleading in his voice.

Stella didn't answer for a moment, and Mac was able to hope that she was considering it.

Finally she sighed, opened her eyes, and said, "I'm going home."

"So, is that a no?"

"Mac, I know you don't want to do this. I won't insult you by pointing out it's your job, because I know you aren't just avoiding it on a whim. I would talk to him if I thought he'd tell me anything, but I can promise you he won't. Don says something happened last night: Danny told them he'd fucked everything up at 1:00 am today. They only left here a little after midnight. That doesn't sound like something a man talks to a woman about, now does it?"

She looked at Mac in compassion as he slowly shook his head. "He needs a friend that he can trust not to judge him, to help him work out what happened. If you listen, which you can be awfully good at, Danny will probably figure it out for himself." She stood up and stretched. "It has been a very long couple of days, and I am supposed to be off tomorrow. Call me if you need to talk, okay?"

Mac smiled as she walked off down the hall, making sure she was well out of sight before he pulled a horrible grimace in her direction. She had dumped this in his lap so neatly, with such undeniable logic. He really hated that.

When Danny turned up about five minutes later, Mac waved him into the office. "Close the door, would you, Danny?"

Danny froze with his hand on the door handle, then forced himself to turn around and face his boss. That did not sound good.

"Mac? I thought we had a case." He tried to keep his voice steady.

"Sit down."

Danny did, holding his breath until Mac came around and leaned against his desk. Danny sighed in relief: if he were in real trouble, Mac would have kept the desk between them as a signal of his authority. It was a prop for him: behind the desk, he was the boss; in front he was – a friendlier boss.

"What's up?" Danny looked up at Mac suspiciously. The one person he had thought he wouldn't have to avoid for the next little while, and here was Mac acting like a friend. Damn. Danny had waited outside until he had seen Stella come out the door; she really was the last person he wanted to talk to. He wasn't sure he could ever look her in the eye again.

"The sheriff in Bozeman emailed, requesting that Lindsay be seconded to their office to help investigate the Forbes shooting. It looks like the kid's story has some evidence to back it up. Trial's been postponed."

Danny sat back and shook his head, staring at his hands. "How long?"

"I don't know, Danny. It could be a while. She has to work this case through. Somehow she needs to put it to rest."

"I know." Danny was silent for a minute, eyes still focused down. "How long did you know about …?"

"The shooting?" Mac waited until Danny nodded, hoping he would look up. When a minute passed without Danny moving, Mac cleared his throat. "It was in her application file," he admitted.

"So, when you didn't want her to process the scene at the pharm party…?"

"I was worried that she would have trouble with it, yes."

"She wouldn't let me help. Never. I tried. I kept trying." The whispered admission was heartbroken. "Then I screwed it up, Mac. I pushed too hard. I fucked up everything."

Mac looked with compassion at the wrecked young man in front of him. He'd seen Danny through bad judgment calls on the job, through a careless adolescence coming back to haunt him, through the beating death of his brother. He'd stood by him while his life was threatened by madmen; he'd talked him through the death and near death of two of his best friends. Mac shook his head: a hard enough blow to the heart is nearly always fatal. Who would have thought that little girl from the Midwest would pack such a punch?

"I'm sure it can be fixed, Danny."

"Naw, not this. I took her home last night. I drove her to the airport this morning." Danny shut his eyes against the reality of what had happened between those two simple acts.

Mac closed his eyes briefly too. He could see where this was going. He cleared his throat. "Danny, do you care about Lindsay?"

Danny's eyes shot open and he finally looked up at Mac. He thought about all the things he wanted to say to answer that question, but Mac wasn't a person you spouted poetry at when he asked a direct question. "Yes."

"Have you talked to her since she got to Montana?"

Danny shook his head, shamefaced. "I don't know what to do, what to say."

Mac had to laugh at the idea of him giving relationship advice, though not as much as Peyton, or Claire for that matter, would have laughed had they known. But some lessons had to be passed on from generation to generation, and it looked like Messer Sr. had missed this one, as Mac suspected he had missed others equally vital.

"Danny, women need to hear it. Whatever you are feeling, whatever you want to say, you have to say it. You may think you showed her your feelings…"

"Well, you certainly showed her a little something-something!" interjected that bitter voice in Danny's head,

"… but trust me when I tell you that she needs to hear it. Over and over. If you messed up, she really needs to hear it."

Danny was shaking his head, not in denial, but in pain. "Mac, I raped her."

Mac lost his breath for a minute as he had visions of that playing out in the court of public opinion, not to mention the fallout in the lab. Then reason rushed back into the void left by Danny's agonized admission, and it was his turn to shake his head.

"I doubt that, Danny, I really do. I know you and I don't think it's in you to do that. You need to talk to her, but first, you need to sleep for about three days. We'll fix this. I promise we'll make it right."

Danny couldn't look at Mac; he couldn't believe he had blurted that out, exposing himself, exposing Lindsay. He could feel the darkness he had been fighting for the past few days just overwhelm him, and he let go, suddenly and completely. Mac had said he would take care of it.

Mac looked at the young man asleep on the couch in his office. The pain evident in his face began to smooth out as he went deeper, and Mac pulled out a blanket he kept in the office for nights and days when a quick kip on the couch was all he had time for.

He remembered with a pang Claire taking him shopping for a couch that wouldn't have him limping in pain for days after. She had made him lie down on twelve different ones before he found one he could be comfortable on. They had been chased out of one store, although she had insisted he take off his shoes. It was a golden day, one of many which seemed filled with laughter. It had taken them six months to pay off, and she had gone without a much-needed new winter coat, but she had hugged him and said it was more than worth it.

"Watch over him, Claire. I think he needs an angel right now, the practical type who looks for a couch instead of a silver lining. Help me figure out what to do next."

Mac picked up the phone and dialed a number he knew by heart in more than one way.

"Stella? You said I could call. Yeah, I talked to him. Sorry, I can't speak up; he's sleeping on the couch. I don't want to wake him. I need you to talk to Lindsay. Would you call her?"

Mac listened to Stella for a minute, his eyes never leaving Danny's face. He interrupted. "He says he raped her."

The silence on the other end of the phone lasted long enough for Mac to read through the email message from Montana again. Then he moved the phone away from his ear as Stella's incredulous voice shot through.